What was the world thinking about Social Innovation this month? Read the highlights from the awesome recent features in just 8 minutes!

1. Banking On Social Innovation: An Interview With Caroline Anstey, Global Head Of UBS And Society

“Caroline Anstey, Global Head of UBS and Society and former Managing Director of the World Bank spoke to Adam Lent, Ashoka’s European Director of Research and Innovation, about a revolution in finance that currently is driving social change.” Caroline in her interview discusses the ‘democratisation of develoment’ highlighting the importance of collaborative efforts to solve social challenges. The most interesting insight I got from her interview was that she stressed on having an investment market for proven ideas that can be scaled, instead of hovering into a market for start-ups. Read more here!

2. When social innovation goes bad!

A brilliant article by Madeleine Gabriel, a researcher at Nesta criticising the unchallenged optimism about every social innovation that takes place in the society. She argues against generalising all social innovations since their ability to do good depends on “When and where you are” as she puts it. “But historical examples serve to remind us that actually, our ideas about what’s good and bad are not fixed…It’s well understood within innovation studies that innovations create value for some and destroy it for others. This is most apparent when you think of some of the financial and military innovations of the last century: the atom bomb, subprime loans, credit default swaps… Perhaps more ominously, social innovation might lull us into thinking that we’re solving a social challenge, when in fact we’re just administering a sticking plaster, leaving structures that produce these problems unaffected.” Read more here!

3. Empathy- a key element for Systems Change!

“Of course, empathy is not new to the toolkit of social change. Radical, transformative social change calls for collaborative action – which inherently requires empathy. Empathy as a tool has its own restrictions; it should not be our moral guide, but rather used to guide us towards respect and understanding. It enables us to engage one another with multiple truths, and move through our biases to combat complex issues together. The importance of empathy has been identified long ago and cultivating it has been a major endeavour – lead by the likes of Roots of Empathy Founder, Mary Gordon, and Ashoka.” In his article Neil Gangal emphasised on the importance of our role as a leader and follower in advocating change by bringing sense of attachment to a social problem. Read more here!

4. What are some innovative approaches to migrant integration?

“Europe has a long history of helping migrants integrate into communities – from migrant entrepreneurship, innovative approaches to housing, different models of employment – there is a wealth of brilliant top down and bottom up initiatives which could serve as model to be replicated over the coming years even as the immediate crisis subsides, and a set of longer term integration challenges take centre stage.” The Social Innovation Exchange highlights some latest innovations to the integration of migrants. Read more here!

5. The 12 most impressive social good innovations from June!

The list covers custom molded prosthetic to solar panel charging units for migrants, apps for the homeless to edible toothpaste pods and zero electricity air conditioners; my ABSOLUTE FAVOURITE ONE! Read more here!

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Masrura Oishi

Masrura Oishi is an over-thinker and procaffeinator. In her free time, she pretends to be a philosopher and does some development work for BRAC Social Innovation Lab. She invests her insulin pumped energy into reading, writing, traveling and living!