Stanford Social Innovation Review Podcast

After being awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics, Carl Wieman was struck by the effectiveness of a number of physics simulations that he used to explain his concepts to students and faculty. Combining over half of his Nobel Prize winnings with other funding sources, he founded Physics Education Technology (PhET) at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2003. The site now has 115 active simulations in 65 different languages, totaling over 25 million downloads in 2011 alone. In this audio interview, Sheela Sethuraman speaks with Katherine Perkins, Director of PhET since 2008. They discuss what differentiates PhET from other physics simulations, and the range of students that have benefited from the program. As The Tech Awards 2011 Laureate and recipient of the Microsoft Education Award, PhET has continued to grow and adapt their simulations for a growing audience in recent years. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/teaching_with_interactive_simulations

There is immense potential in providing better quality of care and health access in low-resource settings through technological and social innovations. Michele Barry, Director of Global Health Programs in Medicine at Stanford leads a distinguished group of global health professionals who have created innovative programs to benefit their respective countries’ health services. Their work in the clinical and community level have given much headway to the eradication of infectious disease, the reduction of maternal mortality and the overall strengthening of health systems. Access to health care is the focus of this panel discussion, from the 2011 Global Health Series organized by the Stanford Global Health Center in partnership with the Stanford Graduate School of Business. By fostering and promoting innovation, and applying these solutions more broadly, we can find ways of bridging the health access gap. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/health_innovation_challenges_in_india_and_africa_panel_discussion

Healthcare enterprises are increasingly pressed to do more with less. In this university podcast, Jay Deady, CEO of Awarepoint Corporation, talks about how his company provides workflow automation and tracking solutions to the acute care hospital marketplace. Discussing the role of Real-time Location System (RTLS) solutions, he shows how the technology addresses needs throughout the hospital enterprise, rather than forcing hospitals to manage a multitude of vendor solutions. Deady spoke at the 2011 GSB Healthcare Summit, sponsored by the Stanford Graduate School of Business. His presentation was part of a panel called “Using technology to redesign the delivery of health care” held at the 2011 GSB Healthcare Summit, sponsored by the Stanford Graduate School of Business. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/technology_in_healthcare_delivery_redesign_2

Colleges and universities need an easy and flexible student administrative system so that may more effectively manage and use student data to enhance the educational experience. TopSchool fits the bill by offering a student lifecycle system that supports the business of higher education through the entire process of admissions, enrollment, academics, job placement, and alumni status. In this Stanford University podcast, president Matthew Schnittman discusses the organization’s model for service delivery, and where it’s headed. His talk was part of the Global Education Conference, held in partnership with Goldman Sachs and the Stanford School of Education. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/enhancing_educational_data_systems

How do you create a business opportunity and create value in the educational arena in China? In this Stanford university podcast, Justin Cahill talks about how his enterprise built a company called RISE, which now boasts 30,000 children learning English in more than 100 learning centers in one of the fastest-growing markets in world. Cahill talks about RISE’s curriculum, learning model, and financial metrics, and more broadly about doing business in China and investing in education in growing markets through partnership with local entrepreneurs. His talk was part of the Global Education Conference, held in partnership with Goldman Sachs and the Stanford School of Education. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/investing_in_education_in_china

The driving motivation for Peje Emilsson, current chair of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, is difference: catering to different students with different learning styles in different ways. That is the goal of Kunskapsskolan, a group of several dozen new schools developed in Sweden with the intention of providing an increasingly personalized and hands-on classroom experience to its students. After great success with its first 10,000 students in Sweden, Kunskapsskolan has expanded to 3,000 students in the UK, and is in the process of opening a school in Manhattan. How will the program preserve its brand as it expands and scales for different countries? Will cultural differences help or harm Kunskapsskolan’s progress abroad? A panel of experienced education investors presents questions like these and more, in a conference segment called “Case Studies in Real World Innovation.” https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/gs_su_global_education_conference_kunskapsskolan_case_study

Old standard “get-out-the-vote” phone call scripts made by volunteers simply asked people to participate in the election and reminded callers that voting was important. In this university podcast, Harvard professor Todd Rogers shares how political parties and other organizations are finding that subtle changes in language—even from a verb to a noun—can make a substantial difference in how many people cast ballots. He details approaches that work best, and significant results from recent elections. Rogers spoke at The Science of Getting People to Do Good, Prosocial Briefing held at Stanford. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/promoting_civic_engagement_and_voting

In the United States, 60 million adults are obese and 9 million children and teens ages 6 to 19 are overweight. Being too heavy increases the risk of health conditions and diseases. In this university podcast, Harvard business professor Leslie John reports on studies providing financial and social incentives to get people to lose weight. Using lotteries and monetary deposits as collateral, researchers got people to lose an average of 14 pounds over several months. Leslie John spoke at The Science of Getting People to Do Good, a Prosocial Briefing held at Stanford. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/promoting_health_through_weight_loss

Most observers agree that human consumption is on a crash course with the environment. Although recycling programs have been implemented in many cities around the world, people do not participate as often as they could. In this university podcast, Canadian scholar Kate White shares research examining the effectiveness of messages that highlight the negative consequences of not recycling (loss frames) versus those that emphasize the positive consequences of recycling (gain frames) in influencing people’s behavior. The report finds that the effectiveness of one type of messaging over another depends on whether interventions activate concrete thinking, which focuses on behaviors (such as how one might go about recycling), or abstract thinking (such as why one might go about recycling). White spoke at The Science of Getting People to Do Good briefing held at Stanford University. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/the_science_of_getting_people_to_do_good_briefing

Inequalities between socially marginalized and non-marginalized groups have led to poorer school and health outcomes for African Americans, Latino Americans, and other non-Asian ethnic minorities. In this university podcast, Stanford assistant professor Greg Walton examines one psychological factor contributing to these inequalities: concern about social belonging — a sense of having positive relationships with others. He reports the significant academic and health-related consequences of a brief intervention aimed at buttressing college freshmen’s sense of social belonging in school. Walton spoke at The Science of Getting People to Do Good briefing held at Stanford. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/the_science_of_getting_people_to_do_good

Food, water, and energy: connection technologies can and must unite these three sectors for the sake of our planet’s future. Twenty-five percent of global land is now degraded, but these territories could become productive once again with the proper resources. Over the last 30 years alone we have increased our ability to produce food by 50% while using less land and less labor. What other developments are in our future, and how can these systems address our energy needs? In this audio lecture, Dr. Ann Bartuska of the U.S. Department of Agriculture shares her insight on the necessary steps to sustainably feed the nine billion people that will be living on our planet by 2050. Dr. Bartuska spoke as part of a panel called “Framing the Challenges: How Can Connection Technologies Support Sustainable Development?” at the USRio+2.0 Conference at Stanford University. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/food_water_and_energy

It’s called branchless banking: the ability to provide small, abundant access points and mobile solutions for the rural population living outside the range of most banking institutions. In this audio interview, Sheela Sethuraman speaks with one of branchless banking’s greatest proponents and the co-founder of Eko India Financial Services, Abhishek Sinha. Beginning in 2007, Abhishek and his brother Abhinav began conceptualizing ways in which small, local businesses could provide the brick-and-mortar storefronts for rural banking customers, while basic cell phones would meet all of the technological needs. Having now partnered with India’s two largest banks, Eko India provides customers with the ability to set up their own bank in less than 15 minutes. Creating simple methods to convert physical into electronic currency has streamlined rural remittance transactions, and is just one of many reasons that Abhishek and Abhinav Sinha have been named The Tech Awards 2011 laureates of the Flextronics Economic Developm

There is widespread consensus among educators, policymakers, and academics that youth volunteerism “makes citizens”—that people who engage in some form of youth service or activism are powerfully affected by the experience and go on to live more engaged lives. The reality, argues Doug McAdam, professor of sociology at Stanford University, is much more complicated. He believes the great majority of volunteer experiences have little impact. In this audio lecture, part of the Stanford Social Innovation Review’s Nonprofit Management Institute, McAdam reviews the results of two follow-up studies of youth activists—those who applied to the 1964 Freedom Summer project and all accepted applicants to Teach for America in years three through eight of that program—and assesses the experiences and their long-term effects on volunteers. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/the_civic_impact_of_youth_volunteerism

All over the world, reproductive health is suffering because of medical facilities with insufficient or unreliable power. Some mothers are turned away from as many as four or five facilities in a row because capacity is limited by issues like poor lighting and lack of blood storage. In this audio interview, Sheela Sethuraman talks with Laura Stachel and Hal Aronson, co-founders of WE CARE Solar, about their effort to combat this issue worldwide. WE CARE stands for Women’s Emergency Communication and Reliable Electricity. Starting with an initial prototype built of home solar panels and scrap wood, the two have advanced their distinctive “suitcase design” to a standalone, plug-and-play solar system that is already seeing use in medical facilities in Haiti and Africa. As The Tech Awards 2011 laureates of the Nokia Health Award, Stachel and Aronson discuss the iterative process that brought them to their current design and the challenges of creating a modular device that can see use in profoundly different conte

Bricks, cement, PVC piping and gravel: the list of materials necessary to build a gravity-powered water treatment plant is impressively short. In this audio interview, Sheela Sethuraman talks to Daniel Smith, Project Coordinator for AguaClara, about strategies, innovations, and their recent recognition as the Tech Awards 2011 laureate of the Intel Environment Award. Starting in 2006, AguaClara partnered with Agua Para el Pueblo in Honduras to leverage gravity rather than costly and unreliable electricity to provide for the water treatment needs in small villages. The result was a community-scale innovation that can provide portable water at less that .01 cent/liter. With successful communication between neighboring communities, AguaClara has spread across Honduras, and hopes to cross into neighboring countries like Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador in the near future. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/sustainable_water_treatment

What happens when you leverage the power of internet volunteerism in much the same way as Wikipedia, but with the intention of translating and subtitling videos? This was the question that Dean Jansen wanted to answer when he co-founded Universal Subtitles (now Amara), a collaborative platform that allows for accessible and user-friendly subtitling of videos. Universal Subtitles replaces previously laborious tasks such as time-syncing with much easier tools, drawing inspiration from popular game interfaces. With over 40,000 videos already subtitled and key partnerships with PBS, Al Jazeera, and Khan Academy in place, there is no doubt that the model has a growing user base. In this audio interview, Sheela Sethuraman asks Dean Jansen about the organization’s first 18 months, winning the Tech Museum’s 2011 Catherine Swanson Equality Award, and the challenges of scalability and quality assurance moving forward. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/leveraging_online_collaboration

How can partnerships help the nonprofit sector navigate legislative hurdles, new leadership, and antiquated business models? In this audio lecture, recorded at the Stanford Social Innovation Review’s 2011 Nonprofit Management Institute, Tides CEO Melissa Bradley shares the opportunities she sees for increasing scale and impact through partnerships. Her lecture examines the current landscape of the social sector, and explores what the terms scale and impact should really mean. Citing a number of case studies, including collaborations between for-profits, nonprofits, foundations, and even unions, Bradley provides insight into what makes partnerships successful and offers up best practices for organizations looking to work together. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/partnering_for_scale_and_impact

Focusing on unmet needs, healthcare entrepreneurs provide their in-the-trenches perspectives on advancing medical technologies. Working to extend and enhance lives. Especially in global markets that demand high-impact growth products, innovators are challenged by securing funding through traditional ventures or alternative sources and developing cost-effective products in a changing landscape.  From the 2011 Global Health Series organized by the Stanford Global Health Center in partnership with the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Paul Yock, Professor of Medicine and Founding Co-Chair of Stanford’s Program in Biodesign, leads this interactive panel discussion.  Panelists include Uday Kumar of iRhythm, Darin Buxbaum of Hourglass Technologies, Mohit Kaushal of the West Wireless Health Institute, and Darren Hite of Aberdare Ventures, all of whom launched in their first years after Stanford. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/medical_device_innovation_panel_discussion

John Capek talks about ways we can improve not only the predictability but also the potential success for technologies in order to improve the overall delivery of healthcare over the next decade. He considers important industry trends, such as demographic and globalization, and presents key statistics on critical data points such as the demographic for healthcare spending, on Asia emerging as a market for the healthcare sector, and the role of diabetes treatment in healthcare systems. In talking about the evolution of the healthcare industry, he cites an example of the transition in modes of therapy in the field of Interventional Cardiology. In the first 25 years, the predominant mode of therapy in Interventional Cardiology was mechanical, whether that be with Balloon Angioplasty or atherectomy devices. Now, in the recent years, he continues, we are making the transition into molecular cardiology solutions using genetic modifiers, drug-eluting stents, protein deliverers and such genetic engineering approaches

The assertion that philanthropists historically decided to support nonprofit efforts with little critique of results may be met with some agitation but Mark Kramer also criticizes corporate industrialism, saying the environmental consequences of profit-focused businesses have been largely ignored by the business sector, causing social justice and nonprofit organizations to push back against those excesses. Impact investing, a business model where profit can still be earned while accomplishing worthwhile social goals, is one solution. Mark Kramer also contends that companies inclined to rethink their corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts should invest in the social sector and “shared value.” This could strengthen the overall competitive environment for business. As an example, he points to a medical device manufacturer which the FSG foundation convinced to assist with health care in India. The foundation notes that health care in India needed more government involvement and more training for health car