Scott Anderson

Check out a Replay of Latest Google+ Hangout : Our guests: Kayser, Budinich authors of ‘Scaling Up Business Solutions to Social Problems’

Olivier Kayser and Valeria Budinich start their book “Scaling Up Business Solutions to Social Problems,” with critiques of the commonplace terms “for profit” and “not for profit.”

Both are flawed and antiquated in their own way, especially given how we think about business and social responsibility in the 21st century. Short-term profit motivations result in billions of fines every year for businesses, or worse, global financial crises. Not for profits often target problems that market solutions could easily mediate (if only those companies would).

But you’d be wrong to think their new book is a meditation on this institutional tension in a world where institutional definitions seem to matter less and less. It’s not. Ideology is left to the side – which is a bit of a relief. Instead, these business and social business practitioners and advisers say they’re writing a book they themselves would want to read. That is, one that not only assesses “why is the lab for social innovation full but its globalization plant so empty?” but provides realistic remedies to turn around vexing problem of scale. As they write in the introduction:

“The obstacles that prevent these solutions from reaching scale are indeed remarkably common. But all the players in our ecosystem (companies, citizen sector organizations, philanthropists, investors and social entrepreneurs themselves) who are somehow part of the problem can also be part of the solution. This book goes beyond these obstacles to scale and suggests strategies to overcome them, inspired by the actions of hundreds who, within corporations, governments or foundations, are testing the limits of what can be done ‘within the system.’”

Interesting stuff, right? That’s why we’ve invited these social enterprise veterans to join us for our next live Google+ Hangout, set for 1 p.m. Eastern US Wednesday, March 25. As always, we will embed the real-time video discussion in this post, so please bookmark it. And the chat will be automatically converted to a YouTube video for replay. We welcome your questions and comments in advance, so please leave them here or Tweet them at us @NextBillion.

In the meantime, you can order your copy of the book by going here. And below is a bit more background on the authors.

Kayser is the founder and managing director of Hystra, a global consulting firm specializing in advising corporations, social entrepreneurs, foundations and the public sector. He was president of Ashoka from 2003 to 2008 and is the founder of the Ashoka Support Network.

Budinich is a social entrepreneur with 25 years experience and member of Ashoka Leadership Group, where she works with corporations, citizen sector organizations, consulting firms, business schools and media. She also serves in the advisory boards of the Lemelson Foundation and Leapfrog Investments.

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