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Detroit, Ghana, and Fashion
Unusual post today: short thoughts and some shout outs. Jake Cohen generously gave me an hour of his time yesterday answering questions about Detroit Venture Partners (DVP), the Gilbert family of companies, and rebuilding Detroit through entrepreneurship. At the end of our conversation, he mentioned some other people to talk to. One was Jerry Paffendorf, […] Read More
Metaphors for Reviving Detroit
I was in Detroit yesterday learning more about incubators. I came away thinking about metaphors. My morning began in TechTown, where Faris Alami gave my research associate, Neesha Modi, and me a heady introduction to all that is taking place. TechTown is at once a research and technology park, a business incubator, and a collection […] Read More
Make Education Bigger
The four ideas I stress in teaching social entrepreneurship are these: Big Picture Design (which, itself, encompasses “designing everything,” and “stealing shamelessly” the ideas of others); Making It Appropriate; Making It Stick; and Making It Bigger. Most people have a handle on the last item — Making It Bigger — equating this with the important […] Read More
Detroit 2.0 or 2 Detroits?
Are we creating Detroit 2.0, or are we creating 2 Detroits? There is a renewed sense of energy and optimism in Detroit. I am seeing this as I explore Detroit’s business incubators (writ large), and there is much to applaud. Detroit Venture Partners is creating attractive workspaces for businesses to rub elbows, learn from, […] Read More
Rural Schools Need Help. Here’s How.
Matt Salefski was a student in my graduate level class, Solving Societal Problems through Enterprise and Innovation. He wrote a term paper, which I have modified slightly, that talks about the “hidden” problem of serving the needs of poor, rural students and presents ideas for addressing this problem in a cost effective manner. Think of […] Read More
Can You Change the Climate (for the Better)?
Can You Change the Climate (for the Better)? By Michael Gordon The Erb Institute at the University of Michigan along with the Union of Concerned Scientists held a workshop last weekend titled, “Increasing Public Understanding of Climate Risks and Choices: What We Can Learn from Social Science Research and Practice.” A video from the public […] Read More
Food Gleaning Hybrids
glean verb: to pick over in search of relevant material –webster.com In America, the wealthiest country in the world, more than one in seven families are unsure if they will have enough to eat. Among these 50 million people are 17 million children. Yet, our country has more than enough food to feed us all. […] Read More
New Year, Better World
Happy New Year. Two Thousand TWELEVE! Once again, we appear to have dodged a meltdown, even if 2012 is supposed to be the year of an apocalypse or miraculous planetary transformation (a “slight” difference in opinion according to which fringe group you listen to). But, unfortunately, what we are almost certain to see […] Read More
The Art of Social Entrepreneurship
I just closed the book on fall semester. For the past few weeks, I’ve been plowing through an eight-inch stack of papers my students wrote on topics related to microfinance, social entrepreneurship, and the base of the pyramid. I’d be lying if I said I never complained about all the grading, but there’s a […] Read More
Juhudi Kilimo
Two key questions about microfinane and then an amazing model for extending credit to poor, rural African farmers: 1. Does microfinance reduce poverty? A recent study reviewed the evidence from field experiments. Recently published randomized control studies of microcredit variously found: business creation as well as increases in non-business (i.e., “consumption”) spending (India); improvements for farmers but […] Read More
