by Professor Dennis Shaughnessy When we hear about the latest use of “drone technology”, it often takes us to the worlds of warfare (searching out ISIS operations, for example) or commerce (Amazon delivering packages for the holidays). Here’s a start-up that offers us a new and perhaps different way to Read more…
by Bekah Davis For an interview for a social enterprise position, I was told not to say “Toms” in response to “what is your favorite social enterprise?” Many people in the industry look down upon Toms, whose “buy one give one” model has made them hundreds of millions of dollars Read more…
Along comes Ron Shaich, founder and co-CEO of Panera Bread, and most recently the creator of Panera Cares cafés. Panera Bread is among the most valuable publicly traded restaurant companies, with more than 1,600 restaurants and a market capitalization of more than $5 billion. Panera Cares looks and feels a lot like Dr. V’s Indian eye care hospitals, adding an innovative new twist to the idea of corporate social responsibility.
If you are one of the millions of people who drink coffee every morning, consider drinking Green Mountain Coffee, or using one of their Keurig machines. Here’s one reason why.
I was walking up a steep hill in 100 degree heat in Northern Nicaragua earlier this month, with 25 of our social enterprise students, as part of our senior capstone class. We were in the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and in one of its poorest regions, when we came upon a sign saying that Green Mountain Coffee, through its corporate social responsibility program, had supported a poor smallholder farmer cooperative with community investments.
“The Valley of Death is the chasm between a new social innovation and the market that could greatly benefit from that innovation.” – Professor Gordon Adomdza “The Valley of Death is where all good products go when you don’t have the right business model to carry them across the valley Read more…
For students seeking co-operative education opportunities in the social enterprise space, just across the river an organization called Root Cause, a leading research and consulting firm for nonprofits in Cambridge, has embraced Northeastern students like Justin Bergeron through it’s co-op program with the Sociology Department. Bergeron, a Political Science major Read more…