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Week one- lara bamberger

5/31/2021

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What Does Social Innovation Mean To You?

Social innovation is the process of creatively and specifically addressing social issues and developing and implementing solutions to improve society. I believe that social innovation relies on an in-depth understanding of the challenges presented, coupled with empathy and a desire to improve the world around us, not just for the issue or group at hand, but for society as a whole. While businesses create things to improve lives, social innovation is driven by a genuine passion to improve lives for the sake of improving lives and bettering our society. In many ways, I see social innovation as a way to align funds with personal values with the ultimate goal of creating new approaches to solve problems and strengthen society. 

Social innovation can happen in many ways, large and small, and can happen anywhere. At its core, social innovation addresses some of society’s most important and complex problems. On a small scale, I engaged in social innovation throughout my life through small initiatives with school clubs and organizations in my local community, seeing impacts first hand and in some instances immediately. I have also engaged with groups looking to make more wide-scale change. On a larger scale, social innovation relies on the collaboration of individuals, nonprofits, and the government. It’s citizens and systems coming together to passionately and creatively create mission driven solutions to some of our world’s most complex challenges and issues. 

Though there are many ways to define social innovation, and my own definition and how I engage with it has changed throughout my life, to me social innovation is a way to leave each community I engage with a little better than I found it, and that is why social innovation is so important to me.

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Week 1 - Sophie cartolano

5/31/2021

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​What does social innovation mean to you?
Social innovation can best be thought of as a set of ideas or solutions that seek to address societal issues. These innovations can take on a variety of forms, such as concepts, models, services, or technological products, and they aim to improve people’s lives in the most efficient manner possible. While this definition seems relatively simple, the process in which we develop such solutions is much more complex and difficult. It is this extensive process that is the most fascinating for me to unravel. 

No challenge in society can be or should be undertaken by the efforts of a single person with a single perspective. Therefore, social innovation and entrepreneurship often involves collaborative efforts and the creation of interpersonal relationships. A great starting point in social innovation is to attack a problem with empathy: the ability to understand and share other people’s feelings. In order to solve a problem, one needs to understand the perspective of those being affected by the problem. It is imperative to respect and acknowledge the ability of a client to express their own problems and potential solutions to those problems. Then, social entrepreneurs can build upon such perspectives in order to produce a solution that incorporates the point of view of the addressed community itself. This sense of collaboration and empathy is what I consider the most crucial aspect of generating an effective solution as social innovators. 

Social innovation has become more important now than ever as social problems continue to pile on. Even when considering solely the location of Detroit, there are a multitude of issues that require the input of creative minds to tackle, whether it is the city’s poverty rates, pervasive crime, subpar education system, and so on. Lastly, it is important to keep in mind that the process of social entrepreneurship is not one that follows an upward linear trend. One will face many obstacles and setbacks, and it is important to be open to learning and adapting the initial game plan.
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Week 1 - Evan Henley

5/31/2021

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What does social innovation mean to you?

In a middle school English class I saw a quote by Mary Oliver that read “I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world”. This idea changed my outlook and, unknowingly, it made social innovation an integral aspect of my life.

Social innovation, in my eyes, is the ability to create meaningful changes that are better than existing solutions. In general, this tends to be tied to entrepreneurial efforts that prioritize a certain community. Social innovation typically has a multitude of definitions though, which leads to different actions with varying goals. Undoubtedly, social innovation requires the collaboration of the government, citizens, and nonprofits and is thus the most rewarding yet challenging form of innovation. The required coercion of three parties with differing intentions and viewpoints constantly blockades meaningful change. This large flaw, in my eyes, results from the inability to develop pragmatic, implementable solutions. 

Social innovation, even with its challenges, allows for endless possibilities for impact. It can restore communities, give power to the powerless, and help bring about a more ideal world. Right now, I see social innovation as the main path forward to normalcy. Following the pandemic, stories of hurt are going to be pervasive. To heal, social innovation will be relied upon to help bring about more equity than we have been used to in a long time. 

Ultimately, social innovation is a convoluted term, but to me, it involves using creativity to fix systemic problems. It is the best path to leaving the world better than you found it.

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WEEK 1— PATRICK WACHIRA

5/31/2021

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What does social innovation mean to you?
Thinking about social innovation reminds me of the definition of Pareto optimality in assessment of social welfare and resource allocation in economics. An allocation is considered Pareto optimal if no alternative allocation could make someone better off without making someone else worse off. I believe social innovation has this principle at its core in some shape or form— it works towards optimizing social welfare, capitalizing on individual commitments to improve society’s overall well-being. I emphasize individual commitment because I believe it is key to the social mission-- it narrows the decision to improve social welfare down to individual choice.

Social innovation hinges on the pursuit of success defined by creation of social change— it goes beyond economic value created for stakeholders, or consumption value for customers. It involves recognizing social problems, and innovatively creating opportunities to overcome them, thus increasing value to society as a whole. It follows, however, that success in creating social value is hard to quantify in consistent ways. In addition to that, “social value” is open to interpretation. Thus, I believe a way to assess the social mission is to look at how decisions are made, even at the individual level.  

This is what makes organizations like TechTown stand out to me as champions of social innovation, particularly in one of my areas of interest— investing. Such organizations employ innovative ways to enable individuals invest their time and resources into startups that matter to them, enabled by the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act of 2012. This enables even less privileged people to tap into a market that was for a long time a preserve of wealthy institutions and individuals, as they invest their resources in businesses they believe in, and rejuvenate their economy.  

Such a model to me represents social innovation— overall social welfare is improved in an innovative, entrepreneurial way that harnesses individual commitment.



  • https://www.sec.gov/smallbusiness/exemptofferings/faq?auHash=rh5WfJi9h3wRzP6X2anOmgYLdhPHNuo-3Vw0YNZyR_M#faq2
  • https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-1-4020-9160-5_341


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Week 1 - Donovaughn tulloch

5/30/2021

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What does social innovation mean to you?

Social innovation involves the creation of unique solutions to pressing societal issues. These solutions and problems are best determined through a process of observation, questioning, experimentation, and networking with key community members and stakeholders. The primary goal of social innovation should be to create long-term social value for underserved populations sustainably and efficiently. Therefore, a person’s motive behind developing a social innovation should not solely be to create a profit (unless most of the funds will be invested back into the innovation and/or community). 

Previously, when I thought about different social innovations, the first thing that came to mind was usually advancements in mechanical/technological products. However, over time I have come to realize that social innovations can also include improvements to services, processes, or business concepts. As long as the idea is challenging the status quo in efforts to positively impact the lives of local community members, then the solution can be considered a social innovation.

Social innovations are often developed by individuals or organizations that want to contribute to addressing a social problem that is deeply personal to them. Therefore, there are no restrictions on who is most qualified or worthy to create a groundbreaking idea. If an individual/organization has enough passion, resources, and partnerships to drive the process of developing the innovation, then everything else will eventually fall into place.
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Successful social innovations require a focus on the Human-Centered Design framework (HCD), where adequate cooperation from target community members is essential to every step.
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Week 1 - Neal dalal

5/30/2021

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What does social innovation mean to you?
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Social innovation is the process of creatively working towards addressing a social need. I view social needs as those required for our quality of life. Beyond the necessary items like food and water, we as a society require strong communal support systems, accessible healthcare, a sense of security, and the freedom to live our lives the way we see fit. In modern society, there are numerous obstacles that prevent people from actualizing these needs ranging from systematic racial prejudices to corporate greed and it is the social innovator’s responsibility to develop products and/or services that address these obstacles.


For me, a caveat of social innovation is the intention with which it is carried out. I firmly believe that to identify oneself as a social innovator the individual or group must have the predominate goal of increasing societal welfare. This separates social innovators from big businesses like Google who create products of tremendous societal value but with the primary goals of profit. This is not to say that individuals and groups within companies like Google are not social innovators. 

Social innovation can pop up anywhere. It can range from small local initiatives to a multinational effort involving the private, not-for-profit, and governmental sectors. All it requires is identifying a problem, some creativity, the right intentions, and a great deal of effort.  

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