Social Enterprise
The promise of the digital economy cannot be divorced from the gravity of the perils facing humanity and the globe. Individuals who embrace this challenge and opportunity manage to create innovative new technologies that do good in the world and chase the bottom line. These are their stories.
Here’s how to build a smarter app that could make working families richer
American workers need a financial tool that knows their story. Most apps fall short. The reality is that working families across the country face a variety of pain points when trying to improve their financial lives. Many experience volatile incomes, for instance, that make it hard to build savings. Others may find themselves shut out […]
Space tourism adventurism
Hopes are high in the private space sector that the rapidly falling costs of accessing space will yield a wide range of profitable activities. In the near term, Earth observation and telecommunications opportunities will capitalize on swarms of newly-launched small satellites. Farther out, space manufacturing at scale, resource mining, and even solar energy capture bring […]
Deliver social impact by speaking directly to consumers
The idea of using data to drive social impact sounds sexy, cool and exciting. But what does it mean in practice? Where are the tangible examples of how it is being done? Let’s first start with a more basic question. What constitutes social impact? To me, social impact occurs when a person has experienced a […]
Could a hackathon help solve the heroin crisis?
Is crowdsourcing really the proper strategy for tackling a health crisis as severe as the opioid epidemic? We admit to having our doubts. However, this case from Professor Mitch Weiss addresses those underlying skepticisms and offers a fascinating look at what can happen when innovative minds use creative tactics to get disparate stakeholders for a desperate problem in the same room together so they can finally start talking.
Mapping the burden of diabetes
Approximately 1.5 to 2 billion people in the world suffer from diabetes, pre-diabetes, or a complication associated with it, and yet more than 90% of them never even get tested. To combat this challenge, Professor Tarun Khanna developed a simple diagnostic device that works with any smartphone in the world. The result is a game-changing innovation that is reshaping the state of diabetes testing, treatment, and data analysis around the globe.
CV Harquail on generative business practice
On November 5th, 2014 the Digital Seminar series hosted CV Harquail from FeministsAtWork. CV gave a talk called “Generative Business Practice: How Digital Technologies, a Network Orientation, and an Ethos of Generosity Combine to Transform How Businesses Work Together.”
