Social Innovation Conferences in 2010

Happy New Year readers!

Here's to a year full of energy, innovative ideas and successful ventures!

To help us all keep the innovation "juices" flowing, after our March event, I have listed a few conferences scheduled for this spring that may be of interest:


Tech4Society - February 11-13 in Hyderabad, India

Social Venture Capital/Social Enterprise Conference - March 16-18 in Miami

Social Media for Stakeholder Engagement - March 19 in London

Skoll World Forum - April 14-16 in Oxford, UK

Global Philanthropy Forum - April 18-21 in Redwood City, CA

SOCAP International 2010 Symposium - April 25-28 in Atlanta

Milken Global Forum - April 26-28 in Los Angeles

Social Enterprise Alliance World Summit - April 28-30 in San Francisco

The New Entrepreneur Conference 2010 - May 13-14 in Dusseldorf, Germany

Women Deliver Global Conference - June 7-9 in Washington, DC

Personal Democracy Forum - June 21-22 in New York City

iSociety International Conference - June 28-30 in London


Thank you to Justmeans.com for tracking and sharing these conferences.


Happy Innovating, friends.

Sustainable Tourism in Wadi Rum

In the village of Al Dieseh in Jordan, nine young Bedouin women are unleashing their creative skills and earning an income. They are members of the Al Dieseh Cooperative, which is producing ceramics to sell to locals and tourists who come to see the famous desert landscape of Jordan's Wadi Rum protected area.

The project, also known as Siyaha, is working with the Jordanian government, local communities, NGOs, and tourism-related groups such as the cooperative, to develop a dynamic and competitive tourism industry.

Could this type of model be applied to Saudi Arabia? Even though international tourism is not common in the Kingdom, could domestic tourism benefit from this type of venture?

Nurturing Innovation

I came across a great article on innovation in the McKinsey Quarterly, and have included an excerpt below:

In the early 1990s, a seasoned executive shared a metaphor that has stayed with me ever since: he said that innovation is like a coral reef. Marine biologists don’t fully understand what causes reefs to form, he said, but we do know that human actions can nurture or harm the process. The same is true for innovation—a natural, chaotic, unpredictable process that is hard, perhaps even impossible, for well-meaning outsiders to foster. If we try to control or micromanage innovation, we risk squeezing out the very life forces that give rise to successful new ideas. Instead, we must focus on finding ways to nurture and accelerate the natural processes of innovation once they’ve begun organically...

... Most... default to linear thinking with formal structures to define and control innovation. What we need instead is to turn the forces of innovation loose—to create the right conditions for that reef ecosystem to grow on its own and take hold...

... innovators like these are often disconnected, operating in silos, without the financial resources and strategic support they need to bring their ideas to fruition. They do not swim in a teeming, healthy reef ecosystem...

Read the WHOLE ARTICLE