A New Role for Government?

This event is something of a collaboration between Social Edge and Root Cause/Public Innovators, with Andrew Wolk and Colleen Ebinger joining Charles "Hipbone" Cameron in welcoming you to a discussion of hope -- and change -- that couldn't be more timely.

Government’s long-standing support for business entrepreneurship provides a model for the ways government leaders might address some of the world’s biggest social challenges. In the US, the federal government has encouraged a flood of innovation and entrepreneurship that has produced some of the world’s greatest companies, in turn creating thousands of jobs and at times spawning entire new industries -- as did Ford Motors with the automobile industry and Microsoft with the software industry.

What if governments around the world now took the same approach to supporting social innovation and social entrepreneurship? The Public Innovators initiative at Root Cause has been working closely with several state- and city-based examples launched by public innovators - government officials who open the door to greater innovation and entrepreneurship in social problem solving:

•    Lt. Governor Landrieu through Louisiana’s Office of Social Entrepreneurship
•    Governor Perry via the OneStar Foundation: Texas Center for Social Impact
•    In Virginia through the Phoenix Project
•    Governor Beshear and the Kentucky Commission on Philanthropy, and
•    Mayor Hickenlooper with the Denver Office of Strategic Partnerships.

At the US federal level, President Obama has pledged to create a Social Entrepreneurship Agency and a Social Investment Fund Network. Meanwhile, the America Forward coalition is advancing a policy agenda that creates infrastructure for social entrepreneurs and government to work together.

On the global stage, the UK has a Minister for the Third Sector. The Acumen Fund is investigating entrepreneurial ways to influence governments, corporations, and international agencies to work between the markets and philanthropy. And at the upcoming World Economic Forum in Davos, social entrepreneurs will gather with world political and business leaders to address the global financial crisis.  

We're at a tipping point for change.

•    What opportunities for partnering social innovation and government do the current crises bring us?
•    How can we work most productively together?
•    What lessons are we already learning from these initiatives?
•    What other efforts are in place?
•    How can we ensure we don’t miss this window of opportunity for larger scale change?

Join Andrew Wolk, Colleen Gross Ebinger and Charles "Hipbone" Cameron in the conversation.