Inside Social Innovation

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Improving Educational Achievement for Minorities Jul 18, 2012

Show notes

Inequalities between socially marginalized and non-marginalized groups have led to poorer school and health outcomes for African Americans, Latino Americans, and other non-Asian ethnic minorities. In this university podcast, Stanford assistant professor Greg Walton examines one psychological factor contributing to these inequalities: concern about social belonging — a sense of having positive relationships with others. He reports the significant academic and health-related consequences of a brief intervention aimed at buttressing college freshmen's sense of social belonging in school. Walton spoke at The Science of Getting People to Do Good briefing held at Stanford.

https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/the_science_of_getting_people_to_do_good

Food, Water, and Energy Jul 17, 2012

Show notes

Food, water, and energy: connection technologies can and must unite these three sectors for the sake of our planet's future. Twenty-five percent of global land is now degraded, but these territories could become productive once again with the proper resources. Over the last 30 years alone we have increased our ability to produce food by 50% while using less land and less labor. What other developments are in our future, and how can these systems address our energy needs? In this audio lecture, Dr. Ann Bartuska of the U.S. Department of Agriculture shares her insight on the necessary steps to sustainably feed the nine billion people that will be living on our planet by 2050. Dr. Bartuska spoke as part of a panel called "Framing the Challenges: How Can Connection Technologies Support Sustainable Development?" at the USRio+2.0 Conference at Stanford University.

https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/food_water_and_energy

Mobile and Branchless Banking Jun 27, 2012

Show notes

It's called branchless banking: the ability to provide small, abundant access points and mobile solutions for the rural population living outside the range of most banking institutions. In this audio interview, Sheela Sethuraman speaks with one of branchless banking's greatest proponents and the co-founder of Eko India Financial Services, Abhishek Sinha. Beginning in 2007, Abhishek and his brother Abhinav began conceptualizing ways in which small, local businesses could provide the brick-and-mortar storefronts for rural banking customers, while basic cell phones would meet all of the technological needs. Having now partnered with India's two largest banks, Eko India provides customers with the ability to set up their own bank in less than 15 minutes. Creating simple methods to convert physical into electronic currency has streamlined rural remittance transactions, and is just one of many reasons that Abhishek and Abhinav Sinha have been named The Tech Awards 2011 laureates of the Flextronics Economic Development Awards.

https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/mobile_and_branchless_banking

The Civic Impact of Youth Volunteerism Jun 04, 2012

Show notes

There is widespread consensus among educators, policymakers, and academics that youth volunteerism "makes citizens"—that people who engage in some form of youth service or activism are powerfully affected by the experience and go on to live more engaged lives. The reality, argues Doug McAdam, professor of sociology at Stanford University, is much more complicated. He believes the great majority of volunteer experiences have little impact. In this audio lecture, part of the Stanford Social Innovation Review's Nonprofit Management Institute, McAdam reviews the results of two follow-up studies of youth activists—those who applied to the 1964 Freedom Summer project and all accepted applicants to Teach for America in years three through eight of that program—and assesses the experiences and their long-term effects on volunteers.

https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/the_civic_impact_of_youth_volunteerism

Solar Power in a Suitcase Apr 18, 2012

Show notes

All over the world, reproductive health is suffering because of medical facilities with insufficient or unreliable power. Some mothers are turned away from as many as four or five facilities in a row because capacity is limited by issues like poor lighting and lack of blood storage. In this audio interview, Sheela Sethuraman talks with Laura Stachel and Hal Aronson, co-founders of WE CARE Solar, about their effort to combat this issue worldwide. WE CARE stands for Women's Emergency Communication and Reliable Electricity.

Starting with an initial prototype built of home solar panels and scrap wood, the two have advanced their distinctive "suitcase design" to a standalone, plug-and-play solar system that is already seeing use in medical facilities in Haiti and Africa. As The Tech Awards 2011 laureates of the Nokia Health Award, Stachel and Aronson discuss the iterative process that brought them to their current design and the challenges of creating a modular device that can see use in profoundly different contexts.

https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/solar_power_in_a_suitcase

Sustainable Water Treatment Mar 23, 2012

Show notes

Bricks, cement, PVC piping and gravel: the list of materials necessary to build a gravity-powered water treatment plant is impressively short. In this audio interview, Sheela Sethuraman talks to Daniel Smith, Project Coordinator for AguaClara, about strategies, innovations, and their recent recognition as the Tech Awards 2011 laureate of the Intel Environment Award. Starting in 2006, AguaClara partnered with Agua Para el Pueblo in Honduras to leverage gravity rather than costly and unreliable electricity to provide for the water treatment needs in small villages. The result was a community-scale innovation that can provide portable water at less that .01 cent/liter. With successful communication between neighboring communities, AguaClara has spread across Honduras, and hopes to cross into neighboring countries like Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador in the near future.

https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/sustainable_water_treatment

Leveraging Online Collaboration Mar 14, 2012

Show notes

What happens when you leverage the power of internet volunteerism in much the same way as Wikipedia, but with the intention of translating and subtitling videos? This was the question that Dean Jansen wanted to answer when he co-founded Universal Subtitles (now Amara), a collaborative platform that allows for accessible and user-friendly subtitling of videos. Universal Subtitles replaces previously laborious tasks such as time-syncing with much easier tools, drawing inspiration from popular game interfaces. With over 40,000 videos already subtitled and key partnerships with PBS, Al Jazeera, and Khan Academy in place, there is no doubt that the model has a growing user base. In this audio interview, Sheela Sethuraman asks Dean Jansen about the organization's first 18 months, winning the Tech Museum's 2011 Catherine Swanson Equality Award, and the challenges of scalability and quality assurance moving forward.

https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/leveraging_online_collaboration

Partnering for Scale and Impact Mar 13, 2012

Show notes

How can partnerships help the nonprofit sector navigate legislative hurdles, new leadership, and antiquated business models? In this audio lecture, recorded at the Stanford Social Innovation Review's 2011 Nonprofit Management Institute, Tides CEO Melissa Bradley shares the opportunities she sees for increasing scale and impact through partnerships. Her lecture examines the current landscape of the social sector, and explores what the terms scale and impact should really mean. Citing a number of case studies, including collaborations between for-profits, nonprofits, foundations, and even unions, Bradley provides insight into what makes partnerships successful and offers up best practices for organizations looking to work together.

https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/partnering_for_scale_and_impact

Medical Device Innovation: Panel Discussion Feb 14, 2012

Show notes

Focusing on unmet needs, healthcare entrepreneurs provide their in-the-trenches perspectives on advancing medical technologies. Working to extend and enhance lives. Especially in global markets that demand high-impact growth products, innovators are challenged by securing funding through traditional ventures or alternative sources and developing cost-effective products in a changing landscape. From the 2011 Global Health Series organized by the Stanford Global Health Center in partnership with the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Paul Yock, Professor of Medicine and Founding Co-Chair of Stanford's Program in Biodesign, leads this interactive panel discussion. Panelists include Uday Kumar of iRhythm, Darin Buxbaum of Hourglass Technologies, Mohit Kaushal of the West Wireless Health Institute, and Darren Hite of Aberdare Ventures, all of whom launched in their first years after Stanford.

https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/medical_device_innovation_panel_discussion

GSB 2011 Healthcare Summit: Future of the Healthcare Sector Jan 09, 2012

Show notes

John Capek talks about ways we can improve not only the predictability but also the potential success for technologies in order to improve the overall delivery of healthcare over the next decade.

He considers important industry trends, such as demographic and globalization, and presents key statistics on critical data points such as the demographic for healthcare spending, on Asia emerging as a market for the healthcare sector, and the role of diabetes treatment in healthcare systems.

In talking about the evolution of the healthcare industry, he cites an example of the transition in modes of therapy in the field of Interventional Cardiology. In the first 25 years, the predominant mode of therapy in Interventional Cardiology was mechanical, whether that be with Balloon Angioplasty or atherectomy devices. Now, in the recent years, he continues, we are making the transition into molecular cardiology solutions using genetic modifiers, drug-eluting stents, protein deliverers and such genetic engineering approaches. This is having a significant impact on the market place.

He argues that a strong driver for growth in the medical devices segment is the integration of four major categories of technologies: IT/Health Services, Pharma, Genetics, and devices.

The Executive Vice President of Medical Devices puts into context the impact of healthcare reform on the delivery of technologies.

https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/gsb_2011_healthcare_summit_future_of_the_healthcare_sector

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