Mohit Patel MSE’20 believes engineers need to learn core management concepts in order to make a real difference in today’s business world.…Read More
Innovation Pathways: An Engineer Maps a Path to Entrepreneurship
social impact
Innovation Pathways: Finding Team Success Through Diversity of Experience
For our Innovation Pathways series, Jess Stokes WG’21 talks about pivots and trade-off decisions, design thinking, and commitment to social impact and sustainability.…Read More
Riskless Business: Decoupling Social Impact from Investing
The study uses a semi-structured interview strategy to examine how impact fund managers and impact advisors utilize impact data in investment strategy. …Read More
Yes, in My Backyard: Sharing Economy and Neighborhood Impact in New York City
Innovations in sharing economy have allowed platforms to directly connect with consumers, thus utilize goods and services in more efficient ways. The impact of sharing economy on local business conditions and economic landscape is an empirical question.…Read More
‘An Entrepreneurial Approach to Social Innovation’ in Education
Mehrdad Baghai, co-founder of High Resolves, shares how he combines his expertise on corporate strategy with his passion for social impact, particularly in education.…Read More
‘The Very Beginning’ of One Team’s Social Entrepreneurship Journey
The winners of the 2018 Hult Prize at Penn introduce PEER, their platform connecting underprivileged youth with mentors of similar backgrounds, and share what they learned along the way to the regional competition.…Read More
Doing Good for (Maybe) Nothing: Motive Inferences when Rewards are Uncertain
Consumers are often skeptical of social innovation (e.g., CSR), thinking that firms undertake such innovations to increase profit rather than to “do the right thing.” How can firms convey the social and monetary benefits of investing in social innovations to consumers and stakeholders to best improve their brand image?…Read More
Riskless Business: The Limits of Impact Measurement and Management in Investing
Gender lens investing (GLI) is part of the broader “ethical capitalism” movement, in which social ills are mitigated through markets, finance, and corporate activity. …Read More
‘Markets can Be an Egalitarian Force that Liberates People’
Glen Weyl, author of “Radical Markets,” advocates for an experimental “policy entrepreneurship” approach to fixing the complex social problems that reinforce inequality.…Read More
The Importance of Social Entrepreneurship in National Systems of Innovation — An Introduction
This special issue links “National Systems of Innovation” with “Social Entrepreneurship” to showcase how social entrepreneurship enables the diffusion of new technologies to make a social impact and engender “creative destruction” through the value generating activities of economic actors ranging from individuals, micro-enterprises to large organizations. …Read More
Creating the Innovation Ecosystem for Renewable Energy via Social Entrepreneurship: Insights from India
This paper examines how social entrepreneurship, at both the firm and institutional levels, fosters innovation and economic development. It draws on concepts from national innovation systems (NIS), complexity, ecosystems, and social entrepreneurship research to develop a framework for forming innovation ecosystems via social entrepreneurship. …Read More
Progressive Business: Where Turning a Profit and Saving the Planet Collide
If I had a nickel for every time I forgot to recycle, I would approach Richard Branson status. But even Branson himself, the billionaire founder of Virgin Group, has taken the initiative to promote more responsible behavior when it comes to our planet, a move that Wharton-sponsored research says could…Read More
Innovating Via Emergent Technology and Distributed Organization: A Case of Biofuel Production in India
This paper uses complex systems theory to develop a conceptual model that suggests how development can be catalyzed by leveraging innovation in both technology and social organization to solve socioeconomic problems for developing country populations.…Read More