Socially Responsible Business
CR Leaders Corner
Business, Finance, and Media That Matters: A Conversation
Back in the 1990s, then-Harvard Business School professor J. Gregory Dees described the convergence of characteristics and principles governing non-profit and profit organizations, a nexus he dubbed “social entrepreneurship”. At that time, he was developing HBS’ Social Enterprise Initiative, and then went on to launch Stanford’s Center for Social Innovation and Duke’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship [CASE], where he continues to work.
AccountAbility Senior Research Fellows Marcy Murninghan and Bill Baue posed the following 10 Questions
Marcy Murninghan: You‘ve participated in many cross-sector and public-private partnerships. What key qualities do you look for in partnership initiatives? And what warning signs alert you to possible problems—particularly when multiple parties are involved?
We are living in a world in which cross-sector and public-private partnerships have become essential to all stakeholders’ core missions. Whether on a global, country or local level, the world has transformed in such a way that the old boundaries of ‘siloed sectors’ have become blurred. In fact, many discrete sectors are converging with others and are in the process of re-forming in ways that have not yet been determined. Plus, we now live in a world where perhaps we may never truly reform in any permanent sense. The new rules appear to be that change is iterative, requiring flexibility to adapt with every new seismic shift in world populations (such as the current so called Arab Spring) or technology (the latest kind of social media tools). As change presents itself, we need to be open to viewing our world with open eyes that are not framed by the lens of previous views of what reality is.
I know this all sounds quite esoteric at best and difficult to imagine as a framework for guiding one’s actions going forward, yet the current and future status quo
Business, Finance, and Media That Matters: A Conversation
Back in the 1990s, then-Harvard Business School professor J. Gregory Dees described the convergence of characteristics and principles governing non-profit and profit organizations, a nexus he dubbed “social entrepreneurship”. At that time, he was developing HBS’ Social Enterprise Initiative, and then went on to launch Stanford’s Center for Social Innovation and Duke’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship [CASE], where he continues to work.
AccountAbility Senior Research Fellows Marcy Murninghan and Bill Baue posed the following 10 Questions
Marcy Murninghan: You‘ve participated in many cross-sector and public-private partnerships. What key qualities do you look for in partnership initiatives? And what warning signs alert you to possible problems—particularly when multiple parties are involved?
We are living in a world in which cross-sector and public-private partnerships have become essential to all stakeholders’ core missions. Whether on a global, country or local level, the world has transformed in such a way that the old boundaries of ‘siloed sectors’ have become blurred. In fact, many discrete sectors are converging with others and are in the process of re-forming in ways that have not yet been determined. Plus, we now live in a world where perhaps we may never truly reform in any permanent sense. The new rules appear to be that change is iterative, requiring flexibility to adapt with every new seismic shift in world populations (such as the current so called Arab Spring) or technology (the latest kind of social media tools). As change presents itself, we need to be open to viewing our world with open eyes that are not framed by the lens of previous views of what reality is.
I know this all sounds quite esoteric at best and difficult to imagine as a framework for guiding one’s actions going forward, yet the current and future status quo