Funding Innovation: An Interview With a Funder
from the Stanford Social Innovation Review:
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 applied to solving all types of social problems.
