Originally published April 7, 2006.
From the glossy ads of IBM’s new Innovation business area to the whack jobs on American Inventor, it seems like everyone wants to be an innovator (or wants to hire one). The emergence of Chief Innovation Officers and business school courses targeting innovation suggest that, in today’s tight market for large cap companies and healthy growth for small and mid-caps, innovation may be today’s killer app. To my mind, this makes sense conceptually: as markets mature, the potential to exploit market openings diminishes and the need to create revolutionary new products, processes, and especially business models becomes a necessity.
In social entrepreneurship, innovation is never an option. There are rarely opportunities to exploit; rather, whole new paradigms must be introduced, supported, and grown – often outside the realm of traditional business. (See The Economist’s article The hidden wealth of the poor (Nov 2005) in PDF.)
Its encouraging to see innovators finding successes in the realms of social entrepreneurship, such as the Washington Area Housing Partnership in Washington, DC, which is “re-branding” affordable housing initiatives as not just social support programs but prudent community development programs for working citizens. Check out their story in the Washington Post, A Regional Campaign for Affordable Housing.
This innovation is also being cultivated in the young and passionate minds of academia. As I head to The Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, I’m especially interested in the innovation occurring within the University’s Engineering and Architecture schools. I recently learned of an outstanding initiative in affordable housing at The University of Virginia’s School of Architecture: the ecoMOD program to prototype ecological modular housing. For a heart-warming insight into the ecoMOD program in Gulf Coast restoration efforts supported by Charlottesville’s most famous author (Mississippi native and UVA parent John Grisham), take a look at this Habitat for Humanity Press Release (PDF).
Further interesting information on ecoMOD and other innovative architectural systems can be found at the Charlottesville Community Design Center’s exhibition showcase and the Rural Studio, part of the Auburn University School of Architecture program of studies.
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