CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE

Very few Social innovation organizations do anything in America. Despite horrendous stats showing many rural areas, urban neighborhoods and Native American reservations having food, housing, education, safety, water, infant mortality and drug problems as bad as many of the worst areas in Africa and Asia, hardly any of the new Social Innovation organizations or the older philanthropic foundations operate on US soil. Project H does, in Bertie County, North Carolina.

Emily has been working there with local people for years and there is a new documentary out showing what is being done. Check it out

http://vimeo.com/61586321

The work isn’t glamorous. It isn’t exotic. It is important. 

http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=b359a93f0f55fe47d363e6fd8&id=5991844906&e=90a66115b0

I am so happy to be moderating a great panel on Social Innovation tonight at 6PM at Parsons. Finalists for the New Challenge contest will get their awards and I will have a great conversation with Cheryl Dorsey, President of Echoing Green, Sasha Dichter, Chief Innovation Officer of the Acumen Fund and Jeremy Heimans, co-founder of Purpose.

http://newchallenge.newschool.edu/projects/2013/winners-2013/

Social Innovation has moved from the periphery to the core of our conversations about economics, capitalism, social justice, design and doing good. Social Innovation is hot on the campuses of design and art schools as well as business schools. Now, how crazy is that? Something deep is happening. 

I have two great examples of Social Innovation in Creative Intelligence, both in India. One story is about Paul Polak and his drive to bring clean drinking water to Orissa villages. He used what I call Donut Thinking–see what is NOT there– to solve the problem (hint, its not the scarcity of water but of “clean.”

Paul worked with IDIOM, the top innovation consultancy in India, to design the project and Acumen invested in the new company, Spring Health. Paul hopes it will grow to a $1 billion company, employing thousands of people in India, most of them in their own villages.

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