http://www.volans.com The Business of Social Innovation Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:37:37 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en My first Fast Company blog, on the Clean & Cool Mission, appears here. http://www.volans.com/2010/03/can-cleantech-davids-learn-to-love-corporate-goliaths/ An interesting new website was launched at midnight yesterday (or is that today?), focusing on integrated reporting - also a key focus of our ongoing 'Transparent Economy' project with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). The website's blog kicks off with an entry I wrote over the weekend on the agenda ... http://www.volans.com/2010/03/are-cfos-ready-for-integrated-reporting/ Bill Gates recently committed $10 billion over the next decade to help develop and distribute vaccines to children in the developing world. So what would you have done with the money? I have been carrying a print-out of this Wall Street Journal online article by Ben Wright and Yasmine Chinwala ... http://www.volans.com/2010/03/how-would-you-spend-10-billion/ From the Singapore International Foundation's website: Singapore, 3 March 2010… The Singapore International Foundation (SIF), in partnership with Volans Asia, launches today the Young Social Entrepreneurs (YSE) 2010, a unique programme that will allow aspiring youths to pick up the basics of starting up a social enterprise. From 3 to 7 March, ... http://www.volans.com/2010/03/singapore-international-foundation-launches-first-of-its-kind-programme-for-young-social-entrepreneurs/ Last year I was involved in the design of the future scenarios 'Vision 2050: the New Agenda for Business', an effort by some of the world’s most influential companies to lay out a pathway for achieving a sustainable world by 2050. The report suggests that greater sustainability and resource-efficiency will, increasingly, ... http://www.volans.com/2010/03/vision2050/ Was sent a link to Bill Gates's latest TED talk, on climate and energy, and watched this evening between sessions. This time, instead of releasing mosquitoes into the audience to underscore the threat of mosquito-borne diseases, he opens a jar of fireflies.  They don't get very far, which I hope ... http://www.volans.com/2010/02/gates-switches-from-mosquitoes-to-fireflies/ David Metz, former Chief Scientist at the UK Department of Transport and one of the brains trust we are assembling for our project on ageing, entrepreneurship and sustainability, forwarded me a link to an interesting piece John Lloyd just did in the Financial Times. Far from pessimistic, Lloyd argues that ... http://www.volans.com/2010/02/how-the-boomers-will-pay-back/ One of the cleantech firms that everyone here in California is watching closely is Bloom Energy, with their enigmatic countdown. 60 Minutes just did an interesting piece on them. Hard not to be hooked. http://www.volans.com/2010/02/opening-the-bloom-box/ The Clean & Cool Mission to San Francisco is going very well, though I'm finding my frequent flights of recent days have hammered whatever it was that I got a week-and-a-half ago down into my lungs. Still, I managed not to collapse into paroxysms of coughing during the Green Cities ... http://www.volans.com/2010/02/green-cities-event-in-san-francisco/ The funding options for social innovators is diversifying as investors, from private foundations to venture capitalists, experiment with social impact investing. This area, appealingly re-branded 'patient capital', is developing fast, with networks like the Rockefeller Foundation-backed Global Impact Investing Network dedicated to scale the sector. Among a growing number of funds being ... http://www.volans.com/2010/02/allocating-patient-capital/