Get to Know the Stanford Social Innovation Review Blog: 5 Things

1. Over 800 posts

With its inaugural post published in January 2004, the SSIR blog started out as a way to talk about social innovation news. With posts of just a paragraph or so, it was the thoughtful, thorough comments to the initial posts that brought unique value to the blog then. Fast forward nearly 8 years and over 800 posts and you see an 2.0 SSIR blog.

Here the articles and authors tell engaging stories. Personal and revealing or abstract and questioning—the posts present well-articulated views of issues, developments, and experiences in the social innovation space.

2. Who Writes

There is no single profile of the SSIR blog authors. They come from academia, research, practice, fieldwork, entrepreneurship, non-profit, consulting, foundations, organizational leadership, and government…among others. Social innovation cannot exist in a vacuum, and the broad range of authors contributing to the blog shows that SSIR recognizes the blog as a unique tool to engage, draw in, and create community.

3. Who Reads

Just as there is no “cookie-cutter” profile of a contributor, neither is there one for an SSIR blog reader. And whether you are a student debating whether to pursue a path in social innovation, a practitioner looking learn from other vantage points, or a policy-maker looking to glean from the experience of others—the SSIR blog is an easy way to tap into to the theory of the field and the experiences of those knee-deep in it.

4. Posts to Read

Here is a sampling of a few posts of interest:

• Apps and Other Innovations Steve Jobs Gave to Nonprofits (Oct 7 2011)
• Philanthropy’s Buzzwords of the Decade (Jan 05 2011)
• It’s Not About The Tea (Apr 26 2011)
• Social Enterprise: A Gated Community? (Oct 10 2009)
• Let’s Be Unrealistic (Dec 6 2007)