Social Innovation

Description: <p> For many years I have been actively involved in the social economy, within social enterprise on the one hand, and different spheres of government and public policy on the other. </p> <p> I am an industrial economist. I was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and did my masters at the London School of Economics.  I then joined the London Business School, where I lectured in Economics, and then moved to the Institute of Development Studies, the national centre for the study and teaching of development at the University of Sussex, where I was a Fellow for many years. </p> <p> During this time I acted as a consultant on industrial and development issues to a wide range of governments, and served as Director of Industry in the Greater London Council in the 1980s and as Director of Community Economic Development in the Government of Ontario in the 1990s. </p> <p> This work led me to the conclusion that there was a major role that could be played in achieving social goals by mission driven third sector companies. In the field of development I co-founded Twin and Twin Trading in 1985. Twin works with existing farmers co-operatives, and helps establishes new ones, while Twin Trading imports and sells their products in the UK. They have in turn established producer co-owned branding companies, in coffee, chocolate, fresh fruit and nuts. Together with their partners, this group of companies (of which I currently chair two and am a board member of a further three) now has a turnover of £90 million, and acts as a trading and marketing arm for some 300,000 small farmers. </p> <p> In parallel I have also developed a range of new ventures in the environmental field. My interest here is in the economy of distributed systems, and their potential for environmental and social sustainability. I co-founded the environmental partnership Ecologika, whose members work in the fields of waste, energy, transport, food and health. As a group they played a leading role in the re-direction of UK waste policy between 1996 and 2002, including new social venture formation, and between 2003 and 2007 worked with the Deputy Mayor of London to establish the London Climate Change Agency, and a London-wide Green Homes concierge service. </p> <p> From 2004-5 I was seconded to the Design Council as Director of RED, its innovation unit, where I led the team working on new forms of health care, particularly in the areas of chronic disease management and public health. </p> <p> &nbsp; </p>

Description: Vicki Costello is a Development Manager on the Innovation Challenges programme at NESTA. Launched in March 2007, the programme is a series of experimental, high-impact projects, designed to create opportunities for innovation in response to major social issues. Challenge projects are clustered around themes including health and the environment. Amongst other things, Vicki is currently working on The Big Green Challenge, a £1 million prize fund designed to encourage and reward people working together to develop and implement new approaches that will lead towards significant reduction of CO2 emissions in communities. The competition will encourage new approaches and solutions to climate change, and explore the conditions needed to support community-led responses in the future. Vicki has previously worked on other schemes at NESTA, including on creative approaches to teaching and learning. Before NESTA Vicki worked in the arts as a fundraiser and manager.

Description: I am currently trying to work out how I can create a space to work on issues around gender, poverty and inequality - not easy in this current political and economic climate! You can read what I'm up to at www.sparkthinking.co.uk. For the last couple of years, I've been working with Kent County Council, where I set up the Social Innovation Lab for Kent, a council-based hub for user-led innovation projects, methods, and networks. I am a Demos associate and have published pamphlets on the potential of design for public service transformation, and on the implications of user-driven innovation for public services. I'm also a partner at ESRO, and have a deep interest in how ethnographic research can help us to identify new needs and opportunities for innovation in society.

Description: Justine Munro is the CEO of the New Zealand Centre for Social Innovation, an independent vehicle which brings together public, private and community partners to create new solutions to NZ’s most pressing social needs (www.nzcsi.org ). The Centre was launched in April 2009 with event series focused on INNOVATING THROUGH RECESSION and featuring Geoff Mulgan as the guest speaker. The Centre is working towards operating an initial incubator, in partnership with a District Health Board and a central Government agency, focused on independent living for older people. A SI Camp initiative is also underway (www.sicampnz.ning.com ).

Description: Sharifah manages training and research at the Lien Centre. She coordinates the Centre’s publication, the Social Space - a collection of articles by academics and practitioners in the social entrepreneurship and non-profit sector. In her line of work, she is particularly interested in the documentation of innovative projects that are led by social organizations in Asia and is in a quest to determine if different historical and cultural contexts will determine different trajectories or models for these endeavors in a different part of the world. She was previously a research officer in a nonprofit organization for two years, covering issues of social progress and modernity.

Description: Founder and Director of the Inspire Foundation (Australia) established 1996, Inspire USA Foundation established 2006, Inspire Ireland Foundation established 2009. Founder and Global CEO of One Inspire established 2009. Inspire's mission is to help millions of young people lead happier lives and our 2020 goal is to make a global contribution to young people's mental health and wellbeing - appreciate any advice on how to scale successfully. Have been a follower of TIbetan Buddhism for 13 years and am also blessed by a wonderful wife and two kids.

Description: I am a management consultant with extensive experience at senior levels of government, business and in the non-profit sector. My interest is in aligning interests across sectors to scale up projects and initiatives to meet the social challenges that cannot be met and addressed sucessfully by any one sector using existing traditional methods of managing, financing and executing.

Description: I work mainly for Digital Pioneers: Funding, advising and bringing together small scale internet projects in the public domain and the Digital Pioneer Academy: Supporting small organizations with building a financial model around a social project. View my full profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/corlinevanes [ P2P-FUSION: p2p software project, where co-design environment for communities in p2p software project is built

Description: : My father’s job meant I spent my childhood living in a number of countries, in Europe, Africa and Asia. From an early age, I witnessed how ordinary people innovate to survive and then to improve their own lives, and the lives of their children and their communities. Taking action is one thing – becoming aware of the potential in those actions and hearing narratives that convey the imagination, confidence and resilience such innovatory actions entail has yet to happen on a scale that matters. On the contrary, often the language around social innovation fuels an unecessary mystique that creates barriers. Once those barriers are dismantled, yet more innovatory talents will be released; more lives will be changed. That’s the area that I’m interested in and in which I would like to recruit allies. In the 1970s, then without children, I was working in current affairs television. I was also active in a trade union. I joined forces with representatives from other unions and we established one of the first work place nurseries in the country. At the time, we didn’t know that what we were doing was social innovation. Thirty years later, after involvement in a number of grass roots projects, I became one of a team transforming a playground in a Victorian primary school with a large proportion of chidlren from economically deprvied backgrounds. The 420 children came from over forty countries. We worked with them for five years to create a new world in their playground that included an open air green oak amphitheatre; a peace garden; an activity centre; a climbing wall; a wild garden and a number of other features. Again, we didn’t know that was an example of social innovation – but as pioneers in the field of playground transformation, in the design, consultation, fund raising and execution of the project, every child in the school was acting as a social innovator. Would it have mattered if they had known that at the time? Would it have made a long term difference if we had all understood more clearly how we were innovating and what tools worked better than others? I believe it might. For every story told about social innovation, it’s power and efficacy grows. My background is as a journalist in television, newsprint, magazines and radio. I originally specialised in the Middle East then moved on to documentaries, politics, social policy and comment. I have written several non-fiction books on men, women, relationships and the politics of the family; contributed to other works and authored four novels, now working on a fifth.

Description: David Albury is an independent policy and organisational consultant specialising in innovation in, and the transformation of public services. From 2002 to 2005 he was, for half his time, Principal Adviser in the UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. David works extensively with top managers, leading professionals, senior civil servants and Ministers in Departments, agencies and organisations across the public sector. He has helped turn round failing and under-performing organisations in health, education and local government and assisted high performing organisations to break new ground and push the leading edge. David was co-author of the influential UK Cabinet Office report on Innovation in the Public Sector. He is a Board Director of The Innovation Unit, a member of the International Board of Kaospilots, a Governance Member of the Public Services Reform Group and an Associate of Demos. His current work includes supporting innovation in education, health, the third sector and local government. He is an Expert Adviser to CapGemini and an Honorary Professor at King’s College London.