W01 Social Innovation

Week one of fourteen weeks of reflections on course BUS34 “Social Innovation”.

Day one of this blogging adventure.

deep sigh— and well, it took me two hours just to come up with a blog title. Yep. I wasted two hours trying to find a title that was not already taken or that, to be frank, suited me. Yep, two hours that I could have spent in a vast number of purposeful ways, but instead spent sitting at the computer, frustration mounting, just trying to get a blog started. The only aspect of it that I can even reflect positively on is that El & T came over, sat on the couch, and engaged in contributing hilarious and useless ideas. Why was picking a title was stressful for me?!?, --well for one, I feel  it’s a reflection of me, and two it’s going to be “out there’, forever, in the digital world.

I share this pathetic part of the journey because it is ironic and could not be further from the purpose of why I am blogging in the first place, which is to fulfil an assignment in a course I’m taking called Social Innovations. Defined by one of the course videos as "the result of the intentional work of people trying to make positive change happen by addressing these complex problems at the roots … a process, product, or program that profoundly changes a given system operates.” In short, I should have given way less time to a blog title (grin/wink).

A specific reading this week that sparked a deeper interest in this was “The Meaning of Social Entrepreneurship”, by J. Gregory Dees, original Oct. 1998, Reformatted and revised May 2001. Dees says that Social Entrepreneurship combines the passion of a social mission with an image of business-like innovation and that it implies a blurring of sector boundaries. I understood this to mean that businesses not only are there to put out a product or a service but should intentionally interconnected with improving in the world. An example this week was TOMS shoes, where for every pair of shoes purchased, a new pair was given to a child in need. It is right to say that entrepreneurships serve their function by starting new, profit-seeking business ventures, however starting a business is not the essence of entrepreneurship. An example given in Dees’ paper was that if a husband and wife open up a second restaurant to expand their business, that it is not entrepreneurship because it is neither innovative or change oriented.  Before reading Dees’ paper I had not considered before that entrepreneurship's create value. Joseph Schumpeter, and economist who is quoted in Dees’ paper, described entrepreneurships as the innovators who drive the "creative-destructive" process of capitalism … to reform or revolutionize the pattern of production.

Daily I am exposed to radio reports and media pictures of problems facing our world today –and it is truly overwhelming. This week I am seeing the impact that is being made through non-traditional forms of charity. In pondering why social innovation is more prevalent today I believe it is because education and technology which as provided so many of us with a wider view of the disparity of resources. For example, this university course brings greater light the rapidly growing field of social innovation.  

My major is Public Health with an emphasis in Health Ed and Promotion. My educational goal is to become a Recreational Therapist. My ambition is work with the elderly and those with special abilities. I am taking this course as a requirement towards my degree. For the first time I am thinking about how I can use this degree to create positive change. Dees’ paper noted that social entrepreneurships look for the most effective methods of serving their social missions. That is inspiring.

Oh, and why the blog title "Good Works and Almsdeeds", well, I have a personal tie to the scriptural name Tabitha (Bible, KJV, New Testament, Acts 9:36-42) --and that phrase was not being used, so thus the title of my blog.