Friday Links: Posts and Resources on Social Enterprise

Every Friday we connect you with some of our recent favourite links. This week:

Posts and resources from the social enterprise movement

The Future of Social Enterprise in 2015 – Fast Company

The social enterprise space has definitely come of age in recent years, growing by leaps and bounds and gaining momentum even as you read this. But there’s no denying that it gets harder from here… I am wresting with how we more clearly define the space without creating a silo for social enterprise and losing sight of the real victory: a time when every business is mission-based with social impact and environmental protection at its core.

Three Ways Businesses Can Boost Sustainable Development – Business Fights Poverty

One of the best ways for businesses to help reduce poverty is to integrate local producers into their supply chains. But how do you coordinate deliveries, contracts, payments or extension services with thousands of small suppliers over hundreds of miles, with bad roads and patchy internet access?

Never Mind Corporate Responsibility, Companies Can Solve Actual Social Problems – Fast Company

“The ultimate impact businesses can have is through the business itself,” Michael Porter says in an interview. “There are huge unmet needs in the world today. The question now is how to get capitalism to operate at its best because capitalism is fundamentally the best way to meet needs. If you can meet needs at a profit, you can scale.”

The Truth about CSR – Harvard Business Review

Despite the widely accepted ideal of pursuing “shared value”—creating economic value in ways that also create value for society—our research suggests that this is not the norm. Rather, most companies practice a multifaceted version of CSR that runs the gamut from pure philanthropy to environmental sustainability to the active pursuit of shared value.

Image via Business Fights Poverty