Will blog for Brownie…and innovation.

Met for a coffee yesterday evening with John Craig, Director of the Innovation Exchange, the government-funded initiative to promote innovation in the third sector (particularly where it meets public services; see here for more). There’s the potential for some SSE Fellows to be brought into the process and conversations that John will be enabling, particularly at some ‘open space’ events coming up soon. I’ll also be blogging a bit for the InnovEx, hence the title of the post (if being at SSE has taught me something, it’s there’s no such thing as a free chocolate brownie). More news to follow in future posts.

As has been pointed out before, just when you were waiting for one innovation exchange to arrive, along comes another one. In this case, the Social Innovation Exchange (or SIX) which is driven by the Young Foundation and a group of core partners (including SSE). More fluid in remit, currently, it intends to draw together resources, build networks and collate case studies from across the globe. Differing, therefore, from its govt.-funded namesake by its global reach, and a much broader focus. SIX is taking a direct feed from this blog, featuring SSE case studies, and we look forward to collaborating with our global partners on a number of future initiatives. Congratulations to Sara for getting it all built and designed….

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Recent social enterprise podcasting….

Never thought I’d say this: am glad to be having a whole week in the office….but what all the travelling around has done, apart from confirm my thoughts that Rail Miles or Green Miles are a good idea, is allow me to keep listening to various podcasts. Here’s a brief run down of recent listening:

The Bottom Line with Evan Davis; this is really growing on me, actually: simple format (3 CEOs discuss their businesses, and another cross-cutting issue) and very accessible; gives a swift insight into their businesses, and the challenges these organisations face.

SmallBizPod‘s recent cast on Social Firms was interesting, not least because it interviewed Nigel Kershaw, CEO of Big Issue Invest / Chair of Big Issue. Nigel is a great and plain speaker on this stuff, on cutting through the financial mechanisms, and there are some understated Kershaw gems here, including "we are the Goldman Sachs of the sector" and "we’re going to change everything". SmallBizPod were apparently at Voice 08, but I missed them…..Sally Reynolds from Social Firms also features on the cast, and it was interesting to hear about their quality (star) mark for social firms, and her thoughts on the development of that part of the sector.

– If you’re interested in China or Russia, then Peter Day’s In Business podcast has been really interesting over the last couple of weeks.

– John Elkington, Chief Entrepreneur at Sustainability and co-author of the Power of Unreasonable People, featured on Harvard Business Review’s IdeaCast (also, read another review here). HBR also have a new "Green" area and conversation, although it is, as you would expect, at the corporate end of things….

– Other off-topic stuff has included Start the Week (though it is always ‘end the week’ for me) and the marvellous Mark Kermode / Simon Mayo on film (heartily recommended)

– Finally, worth mentioning that Jude Habib, SSE Fellow, who runs sounddelivery, had a piece in ThirdSector magazine about podcasting as part of their look at web 2.0 type stuff.

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