Center for Social Innovation

Operating a successful social enterprise requires providing meaningful economic value to people. In this audio lecture, Daniel Spitzer, founder of Mountain Hazelnuts, describes his experience creating supply chain value to develop a hazelnut farming social enterprise in Bhutan. Spitzer details how he enhances supply chains through corporate citizenship, and leverages data captured from Android phones. Spitzer describes why there is nothing is more important than people in operating a profitable business through corporate social responsibility.

Environmental sustainability is advanced in China by publishing pollution violations in an online open source database. In this audio lecture, Ma Jun, Director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, describes the positive results achieved through the China Water Pollution Map, which provides each supplier’s detailed pollution data. At the Stanford Global Supply Chain Management Forum, Jun describes how a group of NGOs made tangible gains toward environmental sustainability by motivating corporate social responsibility.

TCHO, a chocolate factory in San Francisco, uses chocolate production to encourage social entrepreneurship in developing countries. In this short audio lecture, John Kehoe, VP of Sourcing and Development at TCHO, discusses the company’s complex supply chain from grower to store. Through the company’s partnership program TCHOSource, TCHO utilizes technology and innovation to work with its sourcing cooperatives around the world. The goal is to improving the growers’ livelihoods and craft while increasing quality, productivity, and sustainability.

Slave labor is an abject evil that many in developing nations are working to eliminate. At the same time, even if you live far from enslaved workers, slave labor creates everyday moral challenges. Today nearly all of us use items that are tainted by slave labor. In this short audio lecture, Katrina Benjamin describes the degrading conditions of enslaved people, and outlines four specific examples where slavery is a an integral part of the consumer supply chain. Benjamin describes the environmental problems associated with slavery, and suggests ways that commercial and non-profit organizations can work to eliminate slavery through cooperative social responsibility.