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The Inclusive Economy
Innovation Must-Read: Turning Risk Into Reward
By Sean Luechtefeld on 03/24/2010 @ 05:15 PM
Yesterday, a colleague forwarded me an interesting article from The Huffington Post that states perfectly the importance of social innovation. Mike Laracy, Public Policy Coordinator at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, featured some of the highlights from a new book by Stephen Goldsmith*, in his article which you can read here.
Goldsmith’s new book, The Power of Social Innovation: How Civic Entrepreneurs Ignite Community Networks for Good, argues well the link between social innovation and poverty alleviation. Goldsmith’s commentary in Monday’s Huffington Post article speaks directly to some of the difficulties of social innovation – namely, that it’s a concept we all hear quite often but rarely are we able to define what it means to be socially innovative. As the article rightly points out, social innovation requires “creativity, expertise and a relentless focus on results.”
Two compelling examples of social innovation are included in Laracy’s post. The first is the story of Greyston Bakery, a company in Yonkers, NY, which provides brownies for restaurants in New York City and for companies like Häagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s. About 80% of Greyston employees are illiterate, have been incarcerated or did not graduate high school, making many of them vulnerable to harsh economic conditions. To help maintain a strong workforce and give back to the community, Greyston aims to remove the barriers that typically prohibit employment in the first place. To do so, all employees start out as apprentices. Once they’ve proven a strong work ethic, they become part of the Greyston family, where struggling employees find help from Greyston in the form of assistance with child care, health care, housing and education. In this unique workplace, employees work together to overcome what would otherwise inhibit workers’ ability to contribute.
Goldsmith’s other example is the Fresh Food Financing Initiative (FFFI), a coalition funded by private capital and the State of Pennsylvania dedicated to providing access to healthy food for low-income families. As many low-income communities find their access to fresh produce minimal, FFFI works to create or refurbish stores (and therefore jobs) that provide greater access to fresh produce in low-income communities. As a result, healthy living increases, as does employment, while vulnerability to economic downturn decreases.
Ultimately, both of these examples underlie exactly what we attempt to do at innovation@cfed – identify innovative and creative approaches to addressing the challenges facing all Americans. As FFFI demonstrates, innovation doesn’t necessarily require reinventing the wheel. Indeed, the challenge for those Philadelphia communities wasn’t making food appear from nowhere – it was merely ensuring that people had equitable access to the fresh produce that many of us take for granted.
As Goldsmith sums up so succinctly, “for true transformation, communities must improve their capacity to identify, incubate, and grow innovations like those above.”
*Stephen Goldsmith is former mayor of Indianapolis, chair of the Corporation for National and Community Service under presidents Bush and Obama, and Daniel Paul Professor of Government at Harvard Kennedy School. He is author, with Gigi Georges and Tim Glynn Burke, of the book The Power of Social Innovation: How Civic Entrepreneurs Ignite Community Networks for Good.
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