News & Events

Business & Society: Breakthroughs In Social Innovation

Breakfast Dialogue: 15th September 2009, RSA in London

What drives social innovation? Under what circumstances are break-throughs most likely to occur?  What challenges do organizations and sectors face in driving social innovation? And what are the new and emerging break-throughs in the social innovation field?

Participants at our breakfast Dialogue session considered the above questions and shared their perspectives, experiences and insights in the process.

Co-chaired by Jean Oelwang (CEO of Virgin Unite) and Manny Amadi (CEO of C&E Advisory) the session involved senior representatives from BT, The Cabinet Office, Credit Suisse, Global Action Plan, GlaxoSmithKline, The National Social Marketing Centre, Siemens, Virgin Unite, and WWF.  

The session highlighted Wikipedia, Fair trade, Grameen, Micro-credits, Open University, carbon-trading, cooking stoves and other 'bottom of the pyramid' commercial products as examples of high impact social innovations. Using the easy definition: 'new ideas or adaptations that work to meet pressing social and environmental need' as a common framework, the wider discussion which followed covered a lot of ground. It also pointed to the drivers of future social innovation.

Please email via our contact page if you would like to receive the session summary.