The Government's Role in Social Innovation

Last week's concluding discussion and this week's readings in part addressed the government's role in social innovation. From Britain's CICs to the Obama Administration's innovation plans, what's clear is that direct government involvement in fostering innovations is not necessarily a bad thing. We of course want nonprofits and for-profit social enterprises to take charge when it comes to innovation, but the government does have a duty to encourage progress and as such should have at the very least a limited role. For those of you who were here last year, I think back to Sonal Shah's lecture which in part discussed how current government innovation programs not only help with private entrepreneurship's growth, but also stimulate innovation in the classroom and at the community level. (For those who weren't here last year, Shah is the director of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation.) We often find faults with the tediousness of government bureaucracy, but it seems that having a broad (in this case, a federal) approach to stimulating innovation is a great complement to the more concentrated efforts that for/nonprofits undertake. After all, so many precedents -for anything- start at the federal level and serve as blueprints for further progressive efforts. Whatever you may think of the president, at least rhetorically it seems his social innovation agenda is in line with what many of us are trying to do: stimulate bottom of the pyramid growth and entrepreneurship. The article I've linked goes along with this theme, but also goes back to the overall theme of social entrepreneurship. It discusses Take A Shine, a New Orleans based organization that aims to help students at risk of skipping college get funding to attend via an online platform. This seems to be more stimulated by innovation efforts in Louisiana than at the national level, but it's interesting to see how more structured social innovation efforts have become in the last few years. On a side note, Tulane University has created a social entrepreneurship major. Considering my group's innovation for this class will have some role for Pittsburgh universities, what do you think the role is for higher education to promote social innovation? I'm fairly biased, going to a school whose buzz-slogan for the last four years has been "inspire innovation," but it seems like the Carnegie Mellons of the world have had such a crucial role in both social and "general" innovations given their proficiency on research. At the same time, can universities do more to encourage their surrounding communities to partake in the innovation? Definitely.