Creating Social Value Blog / Tag: Beyond CSR

MBA Course: Closing the Corporate Connection Gap

By Craig Bida, an Executive in Residence and Senior Fellow in Social Innovation at the Lewis Institute. Most companies, particularly big ones, have gotten the memo by now: they’re taking steps—in some cases big, in others small—to leverage their assets in support of important social and environmental issues that they, their employees, and other stakeholders…

An Open Letter to Fortune 500 Companies

As part of Emily and Cheryl’s Leading for Social Value course this spring, students were asked to write closing blogs with reflections from the seven weeks of the course. We’ll be sharing some of these posts periodically, starting with this open letter to Fortune 500 Companies from Evadne Cokeh, MBA’17. Dear Fortune 500 Companies, I…

The Growing Field of Corporate Social Innovation

Earlier this year, Senior Fellows in Social Innovation Bradley Googins and Philip Mirvis released a white paper for The Conference Board looking at the growing field of Corporate Social Innovation (CSI). This white paper, The New Business of Business: Innovating for a Better World, identifies three interlocking challenges businesses face today: “shareholder demands for growth,…

Sharing Insights on CSR

By Brenna Leary ’18. As a student who has been interested in sustainability and the environment since childhood, attending a business school doesn’t necessarily seem like the most comfortable fit. Oftentimes, business students and professors think, speak, and act in economic terms, and it seems as though social and environmental value gets lost in the…

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The Power of Relationships to Enhance Learning

The power of community and networks is something Cheryl and I talk and write about quite a bit. Both of us are “collectors of people and relationships” and are constantly working to connect dots for the greater good. These last few weeks, our students were able to benefit from our connections to learn directly from…

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Redefining the Purpose of Business from the Inside Out

What if the purpose of business was redefined?  Who would redefine it?  How would it happen? And who cares? Let’s start with “who cares.” With Gallup International Poll numbers still indicating that over 65% of all employees are disengaged; millennials not wanting to leave their purpose and values at the corporate door; and CEOs continuously challenged…

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Corporate Social Relevance in Action

At The Lewis Institute we talk about Corporate Social Responsibility differently and believe we take it one step further. We talk about Corporate Social Relevance because to us it directly leads to authentic and powerful social innovation inside companies and outside within our communities and society as a whole. To us this is more than…

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2014 Year in Review

By Cheryl Kiser, Executive Director of The Lewis Institute and Babson Social Innovation Lab The end of another year is in sight; a time to pause and reflect upon the work we’ve done here at The Lewis Institute and Babson Social Innovation Lab. The shifts we’ve seen in the broader business community around creating social…

Creating Social Value Where Opportunity Knocks

By Nisha Munshi, Babson MBA Student and Sr. Regulatory Nutrition Specialist for Dunkin’ Brands, Inc. “You’re a Registered Dietitian and you work for Dunkin’ Donuts?” A bit of an oxymoron, right? I thought so too until I took Babson’s Social Value Creation (SVC) Matters class. After three years of working as a regulatory nutrition specialist,…