from the Stanford Social Innovation Review: Q & A: Judith Rodin Judith Rodin heads the Rockefeller Foundation, one of the world’s oldest, most influential, and innovative foundations. Many of the 20th century’s big breakthroughs - Social Security, the Green Revolution, the discovery of DNA, and family planning - can be traced to early funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. Today, Rodin is doing her best to keep the Rockefeller Foundation at the forefront of new and big ideas. The foundation continues to fund organizations tackling specific problems like poor health care and environmental degradation. But Rodin has taken a different tack by also funding organizations that are creating new innovation processes - like crowdsourcing and collaborative competitions - which can be … Continue Reading
The Next Great Jewish Idea
an opinion piece from the Jewish Daily Forward: Jewish Organizations Should Spare the Change Innovation, we are often told, is the great savior. It will remake Detroit, cleanse the atmosphere and educate every child. Years of steady drops in the membership rolls and donor bases of many American Jewish institutions, from national advocacy organizations to community federations, have led many to conclude that innovation is also the key to solving the problem of participation in American Jewish life. Money and support should be given to young, creative Jews, who will manage new programs free of the institutional baggage that prevents the engagement of their peers. ...But in order for Jewish institutions to offer something more to young people than the kind of superficiality for sale at … Continue Reading
Five Answers to Seth Cohen’s “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”
by Rabbi Yonatan Gordis: In his eloquent reflection on five key questions about innovation in the Jewish communal world, Seth Cohen offers us guidance for both discussion and action in the field. The following thoughts may move both areas forward. 1. What? First, we need to ask the tricky question of whether we are investing in true innovation that can have a sustainable impact on Jewish life, or are we investing in very niche areas of Jewish interest that are fashionable but not forward-thinking? Is there a difference? How we answer these questions may very well determine how well we can develop even greater amounts of investment in Jewish innovation in the coming years. It is important to remember that not all innovation is forward-thinking or need be. Not all innovators are planners. … Continue Reading
A Case for Interruption
“Knock knock!” “Who’s there?” “Interrupting cow.” “Interrupting Cow wh…” “MOO!” I always get a kick out of that one. My sister’s preferred variation is “interrupting starfish,” which ends with an open palm smooshed into one’s face. In his June 29th post “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow: Key Questions on Jewish Innovation, Interruption, and Sustainability,” Seth Cohen raises the question: “how do we ensure that…Jewish innovation isn’t interrupted?” But I wonder - what founder of an innovative nonprofit hasn’t looked up from her desk and been stopped in her tracks by an interruption, hand smooshed into face and all? Innovation, as defined by Felicia Herman, the Executive Director of the Natan Fund, in her recent article “Funding … Continue Reading
LA Innovators Seek a Community Who Works Together
Joshua Avedon and Shawn Landres writing in The Jewish Journal: Let's Bring Innovation Into the Fold Los Angeles is home to more than 25 startups launched in the past 10 years, part of a growing national wave of Jewish innovation... The shifting landscape of Los Angeles is a microcosm of the Jewish future. L.A.’s Jewish community is a diffuse, non-hierarchical and self-organizing patchwork of networks and communities, each serving the fluid and porous identities of their constituents. That makes it an ideal laboratory for the Jewish communal paradigm of the 21st century. … Continue Reading
Integrating Innovation Into The Jewish Ecosystem
When we talk about innovation, what do we mean? A groundswell is building around the importance of innovation in Jewish life, much as a consensus grew around the need for “change” in the course of 2008 U.S. presidential campaign. But “change” means different things to different people, and so does innovation. First, there’s the question of generations. As a practical matter, Jewish innovation is understood by a number of funders to mean the work of people under 40. Of course imagination and originality are not limited to any age group. So if the goal for the Jewish community were simply to come up with novel, paradigm-shifting solutions to our community’s problems, funders would be equally interested in innovative solutions across the board. When the support of innovation is limited … Continue Reading
New Teachings
by Haviv Rettig Gur I read Seth Cohen’s ruminations on innovation with great interest. I share many of his concerns and I was happy to be given the chance to respond. I cannot speak to the measurements of innovation or the business-modeling of sustainability, because I do not understand these issues. But I can offer a warning from the sidelines about a world of innovation that stands the risk of mistaking its structure for its content. My brother heads an R&D team in a successful high-tech company headquartered outside Tel Aviv. He loves it - the creativity, the wrestling with intractable knots of programming that suddenly come undone in a moment of inspiration, the competition with a worldwide community of clever programmers. But though he is enmeshed in one of the most innovative … Continue Reading
How Can the Organized Community Best Take Advantage of Social Innovation?
Over a century ago, the Jewish Publication Society was formed to "provide the children of Jewish immigrants to America with books about their heritage in the language of the New World." During it's long life-cycle, the JPS became the standard bearer for Jewish wisdom literature, its most popular item - and cash cow - being the JPS Tanakh, the Bible many if not most young Jews in America received when they were given the Good Book. Recently, however, the JPS realized that the printed book, even the Good one, was under siege - and with it the existence of the JPS itself. Seeing online content grow all around it, the JPS had two general choices: cut back, cut down and hope for the best offline, or develop new directions and revenue generating products that can live in the world beyond print. They … Continue Reading
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: Key Questions on Jewish Innovation, Interruption, and Sustainability
In preparing for a recent flight to New York for some meetings that included discussions regarding the state of Jewish social innovation, I compiled a stack of recent ‘want to read, but haven’t yet read’ materials on the topic. But much like the rest of life, my best-laid plans were interrupted when I stopped at a newsstand in the airport to pick up the day’s newspaper. There on the shelf was a BusinessWeek headline too hard to ignore: “Innovation, Interrupted: How America’s failure to capitalize on innovation hurt the economy - and what happens next.” How’s that for serendipity? So rather than methodically review the stack I compiled, I boarded the plane and dove right into the BusinessWeek article with fascination. It raises some key observations and questions regarding the … Continue Reading
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