Tag Archives: New Profit

Valuing Social Enterprises

Panel Description for ForSE 2009

As a number of young entrepreneurs launch their social enterprises, one of the areas they all struggle with is attracting socially conscious investors. A challenge for all is how to evaluate a social focused business on metrics other than strict return on investment. A number of innovative organizations have tackled this problem from different perspectives, developing alternate metrics, scorecards and criteria that weigh the benefits from an investment beyond cold dollars and cents. The panelists, all significant actors in this arena, either invest or provide access to social investors and will highlight several interesting approaches that funders use in evaluating social investments.

Panelists

Moderator

  • Prof. John Whitman, Professor, Babson College

Register for ForSE 2009 before rates go up!

Some thoughts on Clayton Christensens article on Social Innovation

Clayton Christensen, who has written extensively on a number of strategic ideas, recently opined in The Huffington Post about the potential role the White House Office of Social Innovation could play. (The article was co-authored by Vanessa Kirsch who founded New Profit – an interesting organization itself espousing a venture philanthropy model) Continue reading

Innovative models for Social Change

Last year I had written a piece for a conference blog with the title “Innovative models for Social Change“. I think the theme and topic is still relevant and I have reproduced it below.

Next week, I will be moderating a panel that will be addressing this theme at the 50th Anniversary celebrations for my alma mater, the Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay (IITB for short) in New York. The panel is titled “The New Philanthropy – New models for Social Impact“. I am fortunate to have several of the innovative organizations that I mention in the post to be a part of my panel. The panel consists of:

It promises to be an engaging discussion and one, I hope, that will answer some of the questions raised in my post from last year. Continue reading