Jameson Berkow 
Feb 7, 2012 – 3:25 PM ET
| Last Updated: Feb 7, 2012 5:34 PM ET

Lynn Farrell/National Post

John C. Eaton (far right) pictured at a downtown Toronto Eaton’s store in 1999 weeks before the 130-year-old company went bankrupt. Ryerson University announced a new chair will be appointed in his name on Tuesday

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Ryerson University will use a $1-million gift from the Eaton family to help establish a new chair of social innovation and entrepreneurship, the Toronto-based institution announced Tuesday.

A search committee is being created to find the first person to hold the position, Ryerson said. That person will be tasked with developing and expanding an interdisciplinary program intended to create opportunities for students to apply social innovation and entrepreneurial skills to address social challenges facing marginalized youth.

John C. Eaton, who made the donation together with his wife Sally, is the great-grandson of Timothy Eaton, who founded the Eaton’s department store chain in 1869. One hundred years later, in 1969, John was appointed chairman of the company’s board and remained in that role until Eaton’s went bankrupt and was sold to Sears Canada in 1999.

He then became chancellor of Ryerson, where he holds an honourary doctor of commerce degree. In 2006, the Eaton Garden was unveiled at the University’s downtown campus to mark the end of Mr. Eaton’s seven-year term.

The Eaton family has a long history of good will toward Ryerson, stretching back to 1994 when the Eaton Chair of Retailing was established. He also gave the school $1.5-million in 2002 to launch a community health program named after his wife who is a former registered nurse.

“The John C. Eaton Chair in Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship truly reflects the uniqueness of Ryerson University as an innovative, urban university with a strong commitment to our community’s health and well-being,” said Ryerson president Sheldon Levy in a release.

Ryerson will fold the new position into the existing School of Child and Youth Care. The chair will function as a five-year endowed position and will collaborate with the Ted Rogers School of Management to form a course structure.

Posted in: Entrepreneur, FP Tech Desk, Social Responsibility, Startups 
Tags: Eaton’s, John C. Eaton, John C. Eaton Chair in Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Ryerson University, Ryerson University Eaton family, Ryerson University John C. Eaton Chair in Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship

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Article source: http://business.financialpost.com/2012/02/07/ryerson-gets-1m-to-establish-new-social-innovation-chair/

Borrowed from the Sunday, February 5th edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer

Social entrepreneurship not a one-note approach

Brett Smith of Miami University

By Brett Smith

Contrary to popular belief, social entrepreneurship does not equal nonprofit organizations. While social entrepreneurship may occur within and through 501(c) 3 organizations, the legal entity is not the primary criterion for social entrepreneurial activity.

In social entrepreneurship, it is the explicit social mission that distinguishes social entrepreneurship from other start-ups. In this way, social entrepreneurship can occur along a continuum of for-profit to nonprofit organizations where the social mission is central and explicit. Following are a few of the many examples in the Cincinnati area that use different models to deliver social value.

Nonprofit focused on social value creation: GCEA

Andy Holzhauser, executive director of the GCEA, stands with Mt. Washington United Methodist Church members inside the church’s boiler room, home to a new boiler, paid for with help from GCEA’s efficiency program. The Enquirer/Amanda Davidson

Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance (GCEA) is a nonprofit organization whose explicit social mission is to lower consumer, business and nonprofit use of energy. The Department of Energy provided early-stage funding with goals of reducing energy/environmental costs and of creating jobs for Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. A recent study indicates that energy efficiency could save residents and nonprofits more than $60 million and create more than 300 jobs, adding another $13 million in economic benefit to the area. In this way, the founding of GCEA by Andy Holzhauser created a nonprofit organization focused on creating social value by reducing unnecessary energy consumption.

Nehemiah Manufacturing example of for-profit model

Although GCEA started as a nonprofit organization, Nehemiah Manufacturingorganized its business as a traditional for-profit manufacturing company with one primary difference: The goal is to generate social value through the company. Launched by Dan Meyer and Richard Palmer,

Nehemiah Manufacturing CEO Dan Meyer talks with one of his workers on the line in January. Meyers and a fellow PG veteran, Richard Palmer, founded the company in 2009.

Nehemiah Manufacturing has an explicit purpose of building brands, creating jobs and changing lives. As brands are developed and grown, Nehemiah Manufacturing creates jobs for people who have challenges finding employment, including those with criminal records or gaps in employment. As a result, the for-profit organization, which manufactures licensed products such as Kandoo personal care products, creates the social value of providing jobs for those who may not have otherwise found employment.

Flywheel Cincinnati helps nonprofits generate revenue

While nonprofit organizations have often relied on grant and donation models to fund their operations, an increasing trend is occurring where nonprofit organizations create revenue-generating strategies, commonly referred to as social enterprises. Flywheel Cincinnati is a social enterprise hub where services range from initial training classes to one-on-one consulting, designed to meet organizations wherever they are in the process of considering or executing a social enterprise. Flywheel Cincinnati is working with nonprofit organizations in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky to accelerate the development and execution of revenue-generating strategies that improve financial sustainability and deliver their social mission. In this way, Flywheel Cincinnati helps nonprofit organizations take greater control over their destiny by integrating economic and social value creation.

Each of these entrepreneurial organizations launched within the last few years in Greater Cincinnati. More importantly, these organizations represent both the diversity and promise of the field of social entrepreneurship creating value in our region through the identification, development and execution of an explicit and central social mission.

Brett Smith is the director of the Institute for Entrepreneurship and founding director of the Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Miami University.

Article source: http://enterchange.cincinnati.com/2012/02/07/guest-post-brett-smith-of-miami-u/

In 2011, the terms ‘social entrepreneurship’ and ‘social business’ began to make weekly appearances in mainstream media (see recent Huffington Post coverage here, here, and here). These startups are at the forefront of the ‘new economy.’ They make money by solving social and environmental problems, and they do not fit into the traditional nonprofit or for-profit mold. When I entered the workforce 5 years ago, I mostly heard that my generation was ‘difficult to work with,’ ‘savvy with that social media thing,’ and ‘free-spirited.’ Now people see us differently. In 2011, we were the entrepreneurs, survivors, and ‘generation sell.’

Oftentimes people ask me about the future of social entrepreneurship. This is because I founded Ayllu, an organization that tracks social businesses in 80+ developing countries and reports on market trends. I tell them that right now social entrepreneurship is a hot trend and there are funders, conferences, university departments and newspaper sections devoted to it. I believe that in the not-too-distant future, social entrepreneurship will become so prevalent that it will no longer be a niche sector. It will simply be part of the new economy that emerges from today’s convalescent markets.

In the years ahead, social entrepreneurs will take advantage of innovations in the technology sector. Here are technology-related trends that have major social change potential in 2012 and beyond:

Crowd-based Models: Crowd-funding brings people together online, and pools their money to finance a project. It is a big social entrepreneurship trend, which Kiva made famous a few years ago. Now many social entrepreneurs have innovated on this concept. Solar Mosaic makes it possible for anyone to fund community solar installations in places like schools or hospitals. inVenture realized small businesses in developing countries need growth capital, so they created a crowd-investing platform. And One Percent Foundation innovated on the giving circle concept by pooling 1 percent of its members’ income and donating it to charities.

In the future, as technology becomes cheaper and more prevalent, social entrepreneurs will move beyond crowd-funding. They will use other crowd-based models to create social change. This trend is already manifesting itself in the mobile technology space.

Mobile Technology: Today, nearly 70 percent of people in developing countries have mobile phones. In just a few short years, more than 1 billion people who were formerly ‘off the map’ are on it. This market opportunity is tremendous in terms of size and scale, as are possibilities for social innovation. Social entrepreneurs are building new models: Labor Voices combats human trafficking with a ‘yelp model’ where migrant workers can rate and review their employers anonymously. In developing countries, Medic Mobile uses mobile technology to help rural health workers coordinate with clinics and patients. In Kenya, people use their cell phones like credit cards, and Kopo Kopo helps business owners accept mobile payments from customers.

Health Technology: Healthcare is one of the most diverse areas for social entrepreneurship. Lumoback, a mobile healthcare startup, designed a smart phone-powered device that improves posture and chronic back pain. Embrace developed a low-cost baby incubator to save premature infants in the developing world. And BioSense created a device that tests pregnant women for anemia in rural India, and can save thousands of lives each year.

These trends are part of the big data and collaborative consumption movements. With so much information at our fingertips, solutions are emerging to analyze and organize information (big data). And thanks to the Internet, online collaboration is creating new kinds of marketplaces (collaborative consumption).

In the past 10 years, we humans have become dependent on technology and it’s difficult to navigate life without it. Sometimes it feels as if our devices are in control of us, and not vice versa. But, in the next 10 years technology will become ‘smarter.’ It will adapt to us and become more integrated with our daily activities. Millennials will play a large role in evolving technology to create social end environmental benefits. Social entrepreneurship is our way of addressing the immense global challenges we inherited (see here and here). We will use it to shift the global economy in a positive direction.

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-richer/how-millennials-are-shaping-future_b_1260933.html

BY LAURA OLENIACZ

loleniacz@heraldsun.com; 419-6636

DURHAM — The impact of the web-savvy Generation Z on the state’s economy and work force was the focus of the first of a two-day forum that drew business, education and government leaders to Raleigh on Monday.

The Institute for Emerging Issues, a public policy group housed at N.C. State University, hosted the forum that continues today at the Raleigh Convention Center.

“(We’re) now in a period, due to the economy, where we need serious solutions, and the younger generation’s taking it seriously,” said Ted Zoller, an assistant professor of entrepreneurship at the UNC Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School who was included in a panel of speakers at Monday’s forum. “Gen Z is taking the bull by the horns, and is really making this happen.”

In addition to the panel on entrepreneurship on Monday, there were also panels that focused on issues including integration of the generation into the work force, out-reach to at-risk youths in the generation, and education innovations.

Anita R. Brown-Graham, the institute’s director, said the institute is looking to capitalize on the qualities that define the generation. From the two-day event, participants will produce a list of “marching orders” for the state to help address the group’s challenges, she said.

The institute zeroed in on Generation Z, which she said includes people born between 1990 and 2002, for the institute’s 27th annual Emerging Issues Forum because challenges facing the group will impact every sector.

The generation is a group that’s “always connected,” Brown-Graham said, is comfortable with diversity, but is also facing the fall-out from the deep recent recession.

Zoller said members of “Gen Z” are turning to entrepreneurship to try to solve social and other problems, but one of the challenges they face is a digital divide that separates them from previous generations.

He said many Generation Z entrepreneurs are turning to Twitter and other forms of communication facilitated by the Internet to learn from each other.

Zoller told members of the generation not to “forget people north of you in chronology,” while he told older generations to “get with it” and “ride the wave” of technology.

“Those who did not (grow up with the Internet) are really now holding the keys to the car, they’re holding the purse strings, they’re holding the power socially,” he said. “In order for entrepreneurs to be successful, they have to engage a wider group of entrepreneurs who might represent generations that are not necessarily their peers.”

Madhu Beriwal, president and CEO of the Durham-based firm IEM, was also a speaker on the entrepreneurship panel.

The firm offers consulting services to government agencies and businesses in areas including homeland security and emergency management, and employs about 75 people in Durham, Beriwal said.

IEM employs members of Generation Z, and national and global challenges in the next decade or more will be faced by members of the generation, she said.

Beriwal told members of the audience not to make career and education decisions based on what they expect to lead to lucrative careers, but about “who you are as a person, and what do you want to do to accomplish yourself.”

“What is it that motivates you, what excites you, what motivates you out there?” she said. “It’s more about you than that other place that you want to mold yourself to.”

Beriwal also said that often people often to think to ask for permission to do certain things, but that’s the wrong mindset for an entrepreneur.

“Figure out through innovation what want to do, what works,” she said. “There is not a magic formula … that will tell you what you need.”

Gov. Beverly Perdue, Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton are slated to speak at the second day of the forum.

The list of panelists also includes Kelly King, chairman and CEO of BBT Corp., and Sally Jewell, president and CEO of REI, or Recreational Equipment Inc., the national outdoor gear and clothing retailer.

Article source: http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story/17420131/article-Generation-Z-part-of-%E2%80%98emerging-issues%E2%80%99

While Harvard’s most well-known innovative (dropout) student was at the center of media frenzy last week, the university is already thinking about the next crop of Zuckerbergs. Harvard is hoping to nurture the culture of innovation in campus through a new innovation lab (i-lab), aiming to foster team-based and entrepreneurial activities and deepen interactions among Harvard students, faculty and entrepreneurs.

The new i-lab is supposed to help Harvard to enhance its innovative activity and innovative reputation. Just think of green businesses as an example – how many of them were created by Harvard alumni? I could think of two – Opower (Daniel Yates)  and RelayRides (Shelby Clark). I’m sure there are many more I’m missing, but let’s admit it – when talking about innovation and universities, you think about Stanford or MIT, not Harvard. Now, the i-lab hopes to change this perception.

The i-lab is operating in a building that once housed by local TV studios in Allston, MA, nearby the Harvard Business School (HBS). According to Harvard Magazine, HBS has provided the funding for renovating and staffing the lab (about $20 million), which has roughly 30,000 square feet of space. It has been designed to provide its users an entrepreneurial feel with exposed ceilings, ventilation, bare concrete floors, surfaces coated with white-board paint to accommodate free-form recording of ideas, a kitchen stocked with goodies and an adjoining large-screen TV with an Xbox Kinect game controller.

Basically it’s a place where “people can try out their ideas and see if they are worth putting to use,” Prof. Joseph Lassiter, who is faculty chair of the lab, explains. HBS dean Nitin Nohria added before the ribbon cutting ceremony last November that the facility is embodying “a wonderful spirit of ‘Why not?’ and ‘How about?’”

These visions are translated into a variety of activities in the i-lab that are mostly focused on utilizing Harvard’s most valuable resource – human capital, especially in terms of interaction and making the right human resources available. A great example of the combination of these two could be seen an ideabomb event that took place last November at the i-lab with over 100 Harvard students from nine different schools, from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine to the Graduate School of Design.

The first part of the evening was a brainstorming group session with the students splitting into 12 groups, based on industry preference, including consumer goods, education, healthcare, clean tech, low-cost technology and entertainment and media. For an hour the groups discussed trends, unmet needs and potential solutions, generating some interesting ideas such as a consignment store on wheels, or a platform that would be capable of sharing students’ data in real-time with parents who don’t want to wait for bi-monthly report cards.

After the ideas were presented to the audience, participants had the opportunity to talk with Harvard alumni currently working in the venture capital field. VCs from Highland Capital, Bain Capital Ventures (and no, Mitt Romney wasn’t there to offer advice) and Spark Capital were there, among others, offering insider advice, helping teams build on their ideas.

Innovative Harvard students are offered help in many ways, such as assistance from experts in residence for refining their ideas, opportunities to find team members for their start-up, workshops that will help them think through the first steps, classes in innovation and even a mentor. The idea is to make the i-lab the home base for this students with great ideas, where they can interact with peers and experts, maximizing the chance that great businesses will come out of these ideas.

Students seem to be happy with the i–lab and the opportunities it provides. Scott Crouch, an engineer studying computer science and engineer, told WGBH Innovation Hub the i-lab is helping he and his team better develop Rover, a company that builds Web and phone apps. “Before the I-Lab, Harvard’s entrepreneurs were really segregated, there wasn’t much collaboration, but now we’re all here working together in groups, the ability to bounce ideas off each other has been phenomenal,” Crouch said. ”

Will we see green innovations coming of the i-lab? I believe the answer is yes. Although the i-lab has not specific focus on sustainability, my guestimation is that sustainability will be part of their innovative agenda, especially with regards to social entrepreneurship as they would like to become the east coast equivalent of  Stanford’s innovation hub, that brought to the world social enterprises such as Embrace and d.light. You can already see that they approach social entrepreneurship from the lab’s list of events: the calendar shows a debate next Monday on the question if business is essential to effectively deliver public services to the poor or a legal workshop for social entrepreneurs on March1st.

It is going to be interesting to watch the green business space in couple of years and check for alumni of the i-lab. The creators of i-lab certainly believes the right creative space, a lot of coffee, mentorship and interaction between very smart students, faculty and entrepreneurs can eventually make a difference, making Harvard synonymous with innovation. We’ll have to see if they got it right.

Raz Godelnik is the co-founder of Eco-Libris, a green company working to green up the book industry in the digital age. He is an adjunct faculty at the University of Delaware’s Department of Business Administration, CUNY and the New School, teaching courses in green business and new product development.

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Article source: http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/02/harvard-hopes-new-lab-will-new-zuckerbergs-campus/