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Highlights from book excerpts published by SSIR online this year on topics including mutualism, grassroots development, breakthrough ideas, racial injustice, and well-being.

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Use as a topical subdivision under topical headings for works on the effect of the item, activity, discipline, etc., and society on each other.

Social innovation is the process of developing and deploying effective solutions to challenging and often systemic social and environmental issues in support of social progress. Social innovation is not the prerogative or privilege of any organizational form or legal structure. Solutions often require the active collaboration of constituents across government, business, and the nonprofit world.

Stories of community resilience and rapid innovation have emerged during the global pandemic caused by COVID-19. As communities, organizations, and individuals have had to shift modalities during the pandemic, they have identified ways to sustain community well-being. Prior to COVID-19, colleges and universities were hailed as anchors of economic and social resilience and well-being for communities of place. In this light, this commentary highlights stories of rapid community innovation occurring at Hobart & William Smith Colleges in the Finger Lakes region of New York. A series of vignettes are presented showcasing lessons and on-going questions regarding rapid pivots, community values, and diversity and inclusion during (and after) the pandemic. Overall, these insights can inform future local collaborative development efforts post-COVID-19 between colleges/universities and their local community.

The coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) swiftly changed almost all aspects of our lives and society. In this paper, we depict course adjustments that we made to an undergraduate digital innovation course project, called Innovation Farm (IF), in response to the pandemic. Designed as an in-person course project, IF requires students to create AIpowered Android apps to address important social issues. As stay-at-home orders came into effect in March, 2020, we shifted the course to the online modality refocused its student topics to address social issues that COVID-19 has engendered. Accordingly, we also discuss three challenges that we faced and the strategies we employed to cope with them; namely, framing students' social innovation topics in the COVID-19 context, using virtual studios for online groupwork, and hosting a virtual pitch competition. Surprisingly, these strategies not only addressed the challenges but also created unintended benefits and opportunities. We hope to encourage educators to consider the possibilities in transforming challenges to opportunities during these unprecedented times.

The coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) swiftly changed almost all aspects of our lives and society. In this paper, we depict course adjustments that we made to an undergraduate digital innovation course project, called Innovation Farm (IF), in response to the pandemic. Designed as an in-person course project, IF requires students to create AIpowered Android apps to address important social issues. As stay-at-home orders came into effect in March, 2020, we shifted the course to the online modality refocused its student topics to address social issues that COVID-19 has engendered. Accordingly, we also discuss three challenges that we faced and the strategies we employed to cope with them; namely, framing students' social innovation topics in the COVID-19 context, using virtual studios for online groupwork, and hosting a virtual pitch competition. Surprisingly, these strategies not only addressed the challenges but also created unintended benefits and opportunities. We hope to encourage educators to consider the possibilities in transforming challenges to opportunities during these unprecedented times.

Stories of community resilience and rapid innovation have emerged during the global pandemic caused by COVID-19. As communities, organizations, and individuals have had to shift modalities during the pandemic, they have identified ways to sustain community well-being. Prior to COVID-19, colleges and universities were hailed as anchors of economic and social resilience and well-being for communities of place. In this light, this commentary highlights stories of rapid community innovation occurring at Hobart & William Smith Colleges in the Finger Lakes region of New York. A series of vignettes are presented showcasing lessons and on-going questions regarding rapid pivots, community values, and diversity and inclusion during (and after) the pandemic. Overall, these insights can inform future local collaborative development efforts post-COVID-19 between colleges/universities and their local community.

Ce document est une traduction de l’outil Organizational Learning Self-Assessment Tool – 18 questions to self-assess your organization’s learning culture and identify steps for action publié en 2019 par Taylor Newberry Consulting. Il a été traduit par Territoires innovants en économie sociale et solidaire (TIESS) avec La permission des auteurs. L’apprentissage organisationnel mène à l’innovation, à une meilleure planification et à une performance organisationnelle améliorée. Il prépare également le terrain pour une meilleure évaluation. Cependant, définir une culture d’apprentissage n’est pas toujours facile. Cet outil d’autoévaluation vise à aider les organisations à identifier et à évaluer l’état de l’apprentissage dans leur organisation.

Ce document est une traduction de l’outil Organizational Learning Self-Assessment Tool – 18 questions to self-assess your organization’s learning culture and identify steps for action publié en 2019 par Taylor Newberry Consulting. Il a été traduit par Territoires innovants en économie sociale et solidaire (TIESS) avec La permission des auteurs. L’apprentissage organisationnel mène à l’innovation, à une meilleure planification et à une performance organisationnelle améliorée. Il prépare également le terrain pour une meilleure évaluation. Cependant, définir une culture d’apprentissage n’est pas toujours facile. Cet outil d’autoévaluation vise à aider les organisations à identifier et à évaluer l’état de l’apprentissage dans leur organisation.

We conjecture that adoption of agricultural biotech innovation imposes relationship-specific investments that exacerbate hold-up costs between biotech producers and farmers. Moreover, the increasing presence of biotech reduces biodiversity, which is a significant negative externality on food production across farms. As such, increasing biotech has the potential to exacerbate food insecurity. By contrast, certified organic operations have the potential to have the opposite effect. We examine 15 agrarian states in the U.S. and find evidence strongly consistent with these propositions. We discuss implications for policy, practice, and future research.

We conjecture that adoption of agricultural biotech innovation imposes relationship-specific investments that exacerbate hold-up costs between biotech producers and farmers. Moreover, the increasing presence of biotech reduces biodiversity, which is a significant negative externality on food production across farms. As such, increasing biotech has the potential to exacerbate food insecurity. By contrast, certified organic operations have the potential to have the opposite effect. We examine 15 agrarian states in the U.S. and find evidence strongly consistent with these propositions. We discuss implications for policy, practice, and future research.

Social responsibility is at the core of modern Information Systems (IS) education due to increased attention by society on the ethics, human factors, and social consequences of emerging technologies. With the acknowledgement that most IS education falls short along these areas, this paper sheds light on the application of Social Learning and Social Innovation-based Learning in socially responsible IS Education. The connectivism principles were used to develop a learning model based on social innovation that was then tested by the example of an upper-division course (Systems Analysis) at a state university. The case study results suggested that the proposed learning model can help students to not only see information systems as social systems but also consider themselves as catalysts for positive change enabled by these systems. The findings also confirmed the positive impact of the proposed intervention on students' social skills. This study contributes to the future of IS education by proposing social innovation-based learning as a practical education paradigm for the digital economy.

Social responsibility is at the core of modern Information Systems (IS) education due to increased attention by society on the ethics, human factors, and social consequences of emerging technologies. With the acknowledgement that most IS education falls short along these areas, this paper sheds light on the application of Social Learning and Social Innovation-based Learning in socially responsible IS Education. The connectivism principles were used to develop a learning model based on social innovation that was then tested by the example of an upper-division course (Systems Analysis) at a state university. The case study results suggested that the proposed learning model can help students to not only see information systems as social systems but also consider themselves as catalysts for positive change enabled by these systems. The findings also confirmed the positive impact of the proposed intervention on students' social skills. This study contributes to the future of IS education by proposing social innovation-based learning as a practical education paradigm for the digital economy.

Equity-Centered Community Design, created by Creative Reaction Lab, is a unique creative problem solving process based on equity, humility-building, integrating history and healing practices, addressing power dynamics, and co-creating with the community. This design process focuses on a community’s culture and needs so that they can gain tools to dismantle systemic oppression and create a future with equity for all. Creative Reaction Lab’s goal is to share equity-centered design to achieve sustained community health, economic opportunities, and social and cultural solidarity for all.

Equity-Centered Community Design, created by Creative Reaction Lab, is a unique creative problem solving process based on equity, humility-building, integrating history and healing practices, addressing power dynamics, and co-creating with the community. This design process focuses on a community’s culture and needs so that they can gain tools to dismantle systemic oppression and create a future with equity for all. Creative Reaction Lab’s goal is to share equity-centered design to achieve sustained community health, economic opportunities, and social and cultural solidarity for all.

Technology is the answer, but what was the question? Introduction Many firms, charities and governments are in favour of more innovation, and like to side with the new against the old. But should they? A moment's reflection shows that it's not altogether coherent (whether intellectually, ethically or in terms of policy) to simply be in favour of innovation, whether that innovation is a product, a service or a social idea. Some innovations are unambiguously good (like penicillin or the telephone). Others are unambiguously bad (like concentration camps or nerve gas). Many are ambiguous. Pesticides kill parasites but also pollute the water supply. New surveillance technologies may increase workplace productivity but leave workers more stressed and unhappy. Smart missiles may be good for the nations deploying them and terrible for the ones on the receiving end.In finance, Paul Volcker, former head of the US Federal Reserve, said that the only good financial innovation he could think of was the automated teller machine. That was an exaggeration. But there is no doubt that many financial innovations destroyed more value than they created, even as they enriched their providers, and that regulators and policy makers failed to distinguish the good from the bad, with very costly results. In technology, too, a similar scepticism had emerged by the late 2010s, with digital social media described as the ‘new tobacco’, associated with harm rather than good, with addiction rather than help. Or, to take another example: when the US Central Intelligence Agency's venture capital arm, In-QTel, invested heavily in firms like Palantir, which then became contractors for the intelligence and military (a prime example of the ‘entrepreneurial state’), it was far from obvious how much this was good or bad for the world.The traditional justification for a capitalist market economy is that the net effects of market-led innovation leave behind far more winners than losers, and that markets are better able to pick technologies than bureaucracies or committees. But even if, overall, the patterns of change generate more winners than losers, there are likely to be some, perhaps many, cases where the opposite happens. It would be useful to know.