By Lorna Li If you want to discover what corporate responsibility really looks like, interview 100 of the top CEOs in the world and ask them what they’re doing about our planet’s social and environmental problems. That’s what Nikki Pava did as a marketing and communications professional for many years, working with corporations in Bangkok, [...]

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Launch is a one-of-a-kind public-private partnership between NASA, USAID, US State Department, and Nike to use the “power of prizes” to encourage startups to develop an innovative solution that addresses the needs of the developing world. Next up: waste issues.

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One by one, states are adopting new legislation that gives corporate directors legal protections for making decisions to maximize stakeholder value in addition to shareholder value. These new corporate structures are spawning an ecosystem of entrepreneurs and investors eager to build firms that simultaneously scale profits and social or environmental impact.

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Last month at the White House’s Science, Technology, and Innovation Summit for Global Development, UnderSecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property David Kappos launched a novel program created by the USPTO called the Patents for Humanity Challenge.

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Post ads to let Massachusetts citizens express their dismay about recent votes to gut the Clean Air Act. The importance of fundraising as an element of any social marketing campaign is a consideration that should not be overlooked. Many social marketing campaigns are developed by nonprofits and governmental organizations that recognize the value of the [...]

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The following post is part of the course work for “Live Exchange” the foundational course on communication for The MBA Design Strategy Program at California College of the Arts. The rest of the posts are presented here. By Sarah Anne White Why we should run screaming in the other direction from “Gala” or “Gift” Economics How many [...]

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Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo give social entrepreneurs a way to test product and service ideas, reach new audiences and generate marketing buzz with minimal risk and upfront investment.

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A strong case can be made for grubbing on bugs, but in the United States and Europe there’s a prevalent cultural bias against insects as a source of edible protein. Find out why entomophagy—the practice of eating insects—has recently started gaining traction as a viable alternative.

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Google has its staff masseuses. Airbnb has its in-office tree house.  Yelp provides employees unlimited beer on tap. Dropbox boasts a room dedicated to the game Dance Dance Revolution. Everywhere you look, tech startups from Seattle to San Diego are engaged in an arms race of employee perks.

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Last month I had the opportunity to visit Savannah Bee Company, a company that I have been following for a number of years– I was eager to check it out in person. Founded in 2002 by Ted Dennard, aka “Fearless Leader” amongst the team, Savannah Bee Company is so much more than just selling honey [...]

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The 2011 Pipeline Fund Fellowship Pitch Summit had eleven woman-owned, for-profit, socially responsible businesses presenting their business plans, hoping to raise money from a group of ten women learning to become angel investors.   During a break in the pitches, Nithya Das, an associate at the law firm Goodwin Procter presented the keynote.  She represents and [...]

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by Nancy Roberts From financial system meltdown to Arctic ice meltdown, the detritus of a capitalist system gone off the rails is all around us. On June 15, four panelists with differing levels of optimism gathered to speak to an engaged crowd in San Francisco about how, if, and when Capitalism might be redefined. California [...]

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When a big money entrepreneur criticizes Big Oil for its questionable approach to risk-taking, perhaps it’s time to pay serious attention. Billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla took Big Oil to the woodshed this week for taking on expensive and long-odds risks on deepwater drilling rather than embracing the future of biomass energy. Khosla, speaking Monday [...]

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The following post is part of the course work for “Live Exchange” the foundational course on communication for The MBA Design Strategy Program at California College of the Arts. The rest of the posts are presented here. By Lauren Nham “…You have to do everything you possibly can to take control and make your vision [...]

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This post is part of a blogging series by marketing students at the Presidio Graduate School’s MBA program. You can follow along here. By John Lehnert What does the future hold for the EPA? From what I’ve observed, it’s trying to build sustainability into its foundations—and to reflect that shift in its branding.  As I [...]

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By Alison I. Somilleda Feelgoodz™, an environmentally and socially conscious flip-flop company based in New Orleans, LA, is redefining the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR). From materials, production and distribution to giving back to the community on a global scale, Feelgoodz™ has created a business model that paves the way for a future of [...]

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Small businesses, those with fewer than 500 work associates, are the economic lifeblood of the U.S. economy accounting for over 50% of U.S. employment. From examples like Apple to Clif Bar to Walmart, the American Dream continues to inspire our economy’s entrepreneurs to start a business and grow it to an international scale supplying the [...]

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Ladies, let’s face it. Many of us have bras in our drawer that just simply don’t fit correctly, that we’ve hardly worn, or that we just plain don’t like anymore. We can’t throw them away because they were so darn expensive, so they just sit in our drawer taking up room. So why not clean [...]

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By Hajera Blagg Big-name entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett donate billions of dollars a year to charitable causes. While their contributions are certainly noble, a young budding entrepreneur from humble beginnings in India is bent on changing the world—through rice husks. New York Times blog “Fixes”, which produces a series of articles that [...]

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By Danielle Zimmerman Building upon comfort with sharing content and information online on sites like Flickr and Wikipedia we are recognizing the potential of sharing more than the digital –the tangible, our possessions. New options are emerging where the 20th-century mindset of buy-use-dispose is being replaced by systems where access trumps ownership and individuals take [...]

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By Jonathan Kalan Four billion people on this planet live in relative poverty. While each of their situations are unique, most of these 4 billion people share a similar set of economic constraints, collectively placing them at the Base of the Economic Pyramid (BoP). Among their daily struggles, they face significant unmet needs, a dependence [...]

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At 200 miles-per-gallon, the Urbee hybrid-electric car is touted by some as the “greenest car in the world.” But what might truly set the Urbee apart is that instead of building a prototype the “old-fashioned” way, Canadian design firm KOR EcoLogic printed one from a computer. The Urbee is the first car produced from a [...]

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Do you love to travel and experience new cultures? Better yet, do you have exotic travel plans for this holiday season? If either answer is yes, Zuvy is a start-up you need to know about. Zuvy matches travelers like you with hand-selected and meaningful in-country service experiences at organizations working to change the world. If [...]

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The need for green workforce development is clear. It is also clear that the majority of new jobs are created by small business, roughly 60%, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. So how do we help get a lot of startups to lift us out of this recession and dramatically shift the makeup of [...]

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You might have read about the Pope’s recent (slight) revision of the Catholic Church’s stance on condom-use — a stance with far greater impact in the developing world than elsewhere. In a case of near-perfect timing, Sir Richard’s Condom Company has entered the market, promising to donate one condom to the developing world for every [...]

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Something huge quietly happened on October 1st, 2010. Something that is the start of a powerful, powerfully beneficial way to do business: Global Contribution Corporation became one of the first Benefit Corporations in the world. Hang on. Hasn’t B Lab‘s B Corp status been in existence since 2006, and there’s now hundreds of companies that [...]

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Do you enjoy serving people? Are you into community? Do you like rainforests? If so, then going into business as a green coffee shop owner might be your ticket to ride.  You might be wondering about how much you can possibly make from people who bring their laptop into your cafe, order a $3.25 latte, [...]

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Consumers shopping in their local grocery stores are finding an ever expanding selection of “green” cleaning products, which is welcome by many looking for greener alternatives. But the choices are not all better and there could in fact be too much information out there, making it confusing for the consumer to know what to believe [...]

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Start ups bring something to the market that usually has never been successfully done before.  With such uncertainty, start ups bear higher risk than a tried and true company.  But what of green start ups?  The risk factor is still there, perhaps even greater. As green start ups come to market, one must ask, what [...]

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Rishi Tea, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is one of the first tea companies to embrace fair trade. Its founder, Joshua Kaiser, figured that the same aficionado who enjoyed good wines and had a discerning palate for coffee would enjoy unique varieties of teas available around the world.

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