Social Innovation

Social innovation and entrepreneurship are rising forces in the world. As stakeholder capitalism takes root, and as the extent of systemic challenges becomes clear - from climate change to income inequality to food security to health care and beyond - more and more of the best and brightest will hear the calling to become innovators and entrepreneurs who develop and deploy solutions to the world's thorniest problems.

Innovation is the main event of the modern age, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living standards and unsettling changes in our society. Forget short-term symptoms like Donald Trump and Brexit, it is innovation itself that explains them and that will itself shape the 21st century for good and ill. Yet innovation remains a mysterious process, poorly understood by policy makers and businessmen, hard to summon into existence to order, yet inevitable and inexorable when it does happen.

Apply the seven universal elements of powerful stories to dramatically improve how you connect with customers and grow your business through social media channels.

Early True Believers: The Untold Story of Silicon Alley is a 1990s saga of ambition and innovation set in Manhattan’s Silicon Alley, a swath of downtown that served as New York City’s nerve center of tech entrepreneurship. The series features the stories of a forgotten cohort of early internet visionaries, countercultural social networks, the digital gold rush, and the lavish events that came with it, including one held in an underground Tribeca bunker that abruptly ended in a police raid—a harbinger of the upheaval to come.

Space entrepreneur turned innovation pioneer Peter H. Diamandis and award-winning science writer Steven Kotler document how progress in artificial intelligence, robotics, digital manufacturing synthetic biology, and other exponentially growing technologies will enable us to make greater gains in the next two decades than we have in the previous 200 years.

For fans of Sapiens and The Dawn of Everything, a groundbreaking exploration of gendered oppression—its origins, its histories, our attempts to understand it, and our efforts to combat it.

Visionary physicist Geoffrey West is a pioneer in the field of complexity science, the science of emergent systems and networks. The term complexity can be misleading, however, because what makes West's discoveries so beautiful is that he has found an underlying simplicity that unites the seemingly complex and diverse phenomena of living systems, including our bodies, our cities, and our businesses.

In an irresistible invitation to lighten up, look around, and live an unscripted life, a Stanford University professor and master of the art of improvisation explains how to adopt the attitudes and techniques used by generations of musicians and actors. These secrets are currently being taught to entrepreneurs, engineers, and first responders in a crisis as well as housewives and Alzheimer caregivers. Let's face it: Life is something we all make up as we go along.

When you create a high-quality, dependable brand and meet a need in the market, you have a business idea that can truly flourish… and the world of vending machines is the perfect place to watch that happen. This comprehensive guide to building a vending machine business primed for growth contains everything you need to build the foundations and watch your business soar to great heights.

In The Geography of Genius, acclaimed travel writer Weiner sets out to examine the connection between our surroundings and our most innovative ideas. He explores the history of places, like Vienna of 1900, Renaissance Florence, ancient Athens, Song Dynasty Hangzhou, and Silicon Valley, to show how certain urban settings are conducive to ingenuity.

Can a well-programmed machine do anything a human can - only better? Complex algorithms are buying our groceries, picking our partners, and driving our investments. They can navigate more data than a doctor or lawyer and act with greater precision. For many years we've taken solace in the notion that they can't create. But now that algorithms can learn and adapt, does the future of creativity belong to machines too?

Social Innovation, Inc. declares a new era where companies profit from social change. Leading corporations like GE, Wellpoint, Travelers and Wal-Mart are transforming social responsibility into social innovation and revolutionizing the way we think about the role of business in society. Based on four years of measuring the social strategies of America's leading corporations, Jason Saul lays out the five strategies for social innovation and offers a practical roadmap for how to get started.

Understanding that the psychological well-being of individuals is inextricably linked to the health of their communities, environments, and cultures, the authors propose a radical interdisciplinary reorientation of psychology to create participatory and dialogical spaces for critical understanding and creative restoration.

Published in more than two dozen countries, How to Change the World has become a bible for the field of social entrepreneurship. It tells the stories of people building innovative and pattern-changing solutions to social and economic problems.

In this volume, Steven Johnson explores the history of innovation over centuries, tracing facets of modern life (refrigeration, clocks, and eyeglass lenses, to name a few) from their creation by hobbyists, amateurs, and entrepreneurs to their unintended historical consequences. Filled with surprising stories of accidental genius and brilliant mistakes - from the French publisher who invented the phonograph before Edison but forgot to include playback, to the Hollywood movie star who helped invent the technology behind Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Every medical decision - whether to have chemotherapy, an X-ray, or surgery - is a risk, no matter which way you choose. In You Bet Your Life, physician Paul A. Offit argues that, from the first blood transfusions 400 years ago to the hunt for a COVID-19 vaccine, risk has been essential to the discovery of new treatments. More importantly, understanding the risks is crucial to whether, as a society or as individuals, we accept them.

Cognitive behavior therapy, which has been adapted to treat so many problems, has also brought data-driven and data-yielding treatment to insomnia. Focusing on this evidence-based modality, cognitive behavioral treatment of insomnia (CBT-I) is a much-needed treatment manual that provides clinicians with the whys and hows of this approach in concise and practical terms.

Drawing on considerable original research and case studies from Wang’s acclaimed firm, Constellation Research, this groundbreaking guide reveals which kinds of companies will thrive and which will get crushed by the powerful forces now at work. Ultimately, you will understand how the business world is changing in the face of extreme competition and, most importantly, you will learn how to adapt now to stay relevant and in demand.

This riveting biography from the American Bar Association visits the spectacular life of Edwin Land, breakthrough inventor. At the time of his death, he stood third on the list of our most prolific inventors, behind only Thomas Edison and one of Edison's colleagues. Land's most famous achievement was the creation of a revolutionary film-and-camera system that could produce a photographic print moments after the picture was taken.

A revelatory synthesis of cultural history and social psychology that shows how one-to-one collaboration drives creative success. Weaving the lives of scores of creative duos - from John Lennon and Paul McCartney to Marie and Pierre Curie, to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak - Joshua Wolf Shenk identifies the core qualities of that dizzying experience we call "chemistry". Revealing the six essential stages through which creative intimacy unfolds, Shenk draws on new scientific research and builds an argument for the social foundations of creativity - and the pair as its primary embodiment.