The blender has been described various ways by various people. Popular definitions include: office space for student groups, place to try new things, a place to bring people together who wouldn’t otherwise meet, a place to incubate new service ideas, etc.
It seems that what we’re really trying to do is promote Social Entrepreneurship. There are some people reading this who no doubt know more about Social Entrepreneurship than I do, so I’d love to hear your take on it.
- Adopting a mission to create and sustain social value (not just private value),
- Recognizing and relentlessly pursuing new opportunities to serve that mission,
- Engaging in a process of continuous innovation, adaptation, and learning,
- Acting boldly without being limited by resources currently in hand, and
- Exhibiting a heightened sense of accountability to the constituencies served and for the outcomes created.
– Social Entrepreneurship Definition from the GSB.
Isn’t this precisely the description of the kinds of people and projects we want taking place in the blender? Maybe we should talk to the GSB some more about this. Do they provide incubation space?
Love to hear your thoughts on this.
I guess this is more along the lines of being “entrepreneured” than “entrepreneuring”, but Deborah Gordon is giving a talk at Stanford’s Breakfast Briefings called “Ants at Work: Organization Without Management”. Kind of along the lines of how we want our social entrepreneurship projects of the Blender and the E@S screens to just magically “organize” people.
Breakfast Briefing: Ants at Work