Ben Hecht (Living Cities): Mainstreaming Social Innovation With the Public Sector

This article was orginially posted (16.04.2012) in the Huffington Post

Social innovation has been a hot topic for a number of years now, but never more so than today. Conferences, awards, magazines, even a White House-led Social Innovation Fund, are dedicated to it. And for good reason. People have lost confidence in the institutions that they historically relied upon to solve our most pressing problems. Leaders have realized that if they want to change the status quo in their lifetimes, they need to stop waiting and start building their own solutions. More often than not, however, when we refer to social innovation, what we really mean is innovation sponsored by the social sector ("social sector innovation"). We're talking about nonprofits created to fill gaps in a terribly broken system, such as connecting patients and their families with the basic resources they need to be healthy (HealthLeads) or providing urban young adults with the skills, experience and support that they need to reach their potential through professional careers and higher education (YearUp). Organizations like Echoing Green, Ashoka and New Profit, have accelerated the creation of a social sector innovation field by supporting the emerging leaders of these organizations with grants, business planning and connecting them to a network of similar 'social entrepreneurs.'

To read the full article please follow this link to the Huffington Post website.