The Social Innovation Imperative: Create Winning Products, Services, and Programs that Solve Society's Most Pressing Challenges

In recent years, business leaders have been investing unprecedented amounts of time and money pursuing innovation to drive profits and growth. Although far from perfected, the innovation best practices they follow are by now well established.

But when your expected ROI isn’t measured in dollars but in social good, the game is played very differently—which is where The Social Innovation Imperative comes in.

Sandra M. Bates has spent the last decade helping major corporations create new markets for technology, consumer goods, and services. Now, she turns her attention to the social sector. The Social Innovation Imperative begins by explaining why innovation in social sectors, such as health care, conservation, and education, is unique and then provides the framework and tools that create a best practice for driving innovative change that will impact our world.

Bates organizes the process into action-oriented steps you can follow to meet your goals effectively and in the most efficient manner possible. Learn how to:

Investigate the Needs—define the social challenge, determine unmet needs, and examine opportunities for achieving them
Innovate the Solution—devise a workable solution and develop a powerful social business model
Implement the Solution—ensure the solution creates shared value and discover techniques to make certain that it does not become an orphan innovation

In The Social Innovation Imperative, Bates combines everything she has learned as a high-level business consultant to offer a refreshing new approach for developing breakthrough products, programs, and services to meet society’s needs.

The Framework for Social Innovation outlined in this book removes the mystery from innovation success and provides a systematic approach anyone can adopt. The Social Innovation Imperative offers essential wisdom for innovators everywhere—whether nonprofits, NGOs, foundations, government agencies, or corporations—who wish to generate meaningful social value.