This document discusses social innovation and corporate social responsibility (CSR). It argues that CSR should empower marginalized communities rather than just make donations. Businesses are part of the community and their activities affect it. The document outlines different approaches to CSR, from defensive CSR focused on shareholders to systemic CSR that tackles root causes of issues. It discusses how digital media and social media are pushing CSR 2.0, with more collaboration and stakeholder involvement. Examples are provided of companies leveraging expertise for CSR like providing audiobooks for the blind. The benefits of CSR include brand boost and risk management, while public pressure through social media is a key driver. CSR should be integrated into business practices rather than just donations.

1. Social Innovation
Do Good and Do Better
By Robin Low

2. Why Community?
• Marginalized communities are not helpless
communities.
• There is untapped human capacity.
• Communities are capable to solve their own
problems in the long run.
• People in similar communities can benefit
from their solutions.

3. Businesses are part of the Community
• Business are part of the community.
• Business activities affect the community, it
creates jobs, economy, but also contribute to
pollution and other problems.
• In today’s share economy, local businesses
should find ways to collaborate and reduce
operational costs while taking on bigger
competitors.

4. Old Way
Do Well then Do Good.

5. New Way
Do Good to Do Better!

6. Do well without increasing cost
There are many ways to do well without
increasing cost.
• Body shop – No Animal Testing
• Patagonia – Ethical and Sustainable
• …

7. Reasons to do good
• Sophisticated customers expect it.
• For differentiation, and not compete on
pricing.
• Helps branding.
• Regulations will catch up
• Technology will lower cost
• Easier for news to spread.

8. How to start? (5 steps)
1. Find out CSR tolerance level.
2. Brand CSR profile, honestly and find out how
it relates to customers.
3. Develop clear brand position, strategic intent,
vision, mission, category, brand values, value
proposition and enemy.
4. Brand Differentiation
5. Deliver Brand Promise to staff, management,
vendors, then measure impact.

9. Building Social Communities
• Helping marginalized communities is
continuous.
• Donations to marginalized communities have
one life, once used, more donations are
needed.
• Empowering communities that support
themselves will be a sustainable way to bring
more options to the community.

10. Positive Mindset
• Believe in yourself and the people you want to
engage. Nothing is impossible.
• Do not do it out of pity. Do it because your
inputs matter.
• Reframing questions from “can” to “how can”
• Accept it as a share responsibility.
• If you never try, you can never succeed.

11. Everyone can play a part
• Most people do not use most of what they
know in their jobs.
• In many jobs, employees are not allowed to
make decisions or innovate.
• Most people want to do good, but don’t know
how, instead of learning, they take the easy
way out – donate.
• Everyone has a unique skill or talent that they
use.

12. Take Action
• Instead of talking about it and spend a long
time planning, you can start immediately.
• It’s a shared project. Talk to the community
you want to be involved in and work on a
shared solution.
• You can start small, create a prototype and
test assumptions. Adapting to the situation is
more important than a good plan.

13. Change Paradigm
• Instead of donation – investment.
• Instead of teaching – learning.
• Instead of volunteering – partnering.
• Instead of problem – opportunity.
• Instead of pity – empathy.
• Instead of help – Engage, Empower, Enable &
Connect.

14. How to start?
• It is always to do things in a group, find others
in the community to share your idea.
• Examine problems in your community that
you feel strongly about. If it does not affect
you directly, talk directly to the people which
it affects.
• Try to meet up with more people which the
problem affects and brainstorm solution
together.

15. CSR – Corporate Sustainability and
Responsibility
We should judge the success of CSR by whether
our communities and ecosystems are getting
better or worse.
Most sustainability and corporate responsibility
programs are about being less bad rather than
good. They are about selective and
compartmentalized "programs" rather than
holistic and systemic change.

16. Types of CSR
Economic Age Stage of CSR Modus
Operandi
Key Enabler Stakeholder
Target
Greed Defensive Ad hoc
interventions
Investments Shareholders,
government &
employees
Philanthropy Charitable Charitable
programs
Projects Communities
Marketing Promotional Public relations Media General public
Management Strategic Management
systems
Codes Shareholders &
NGOs/CSOs
Responsibility Systemic Business
models
Products Regulators &
customers

17. Age of Greed
• Defensive CSR
– all corporate sustainability and responsibility
practices
– are undertaken only if it can be shown that
shareholder value will be protected as a result
– used to fend off regulation or avoid fines and
penalties

18. Age of Philanthropy
• Charitable CSR
– Company supports various social and
environmental causes through donations and
sponsorships, typically administered through a
Foundation, Trust or Chairman’s Fund and aimed
at empowering community groups or civil society
organizations.

19. Age of Marketing
• Promotional CSR
– corporate sustainability and responsibility is seen
mainly as a public relations opportunity to
enhance the brand, image and reputation of the
company.
– promotional CSR may draw on the practices of
Charitable and Strategic CSR and turn them into
PR spin, which is often characterised as
‘greenwash’.

20. Age of Management
• Strategic CSR
– CSR activities to the company’s core business,
often through adherence to CSR codes and
implementation of social and environmental
management systems
– typically involve cycles of CSR policy development,
goal and target setting, program implementation,
auditing and reporting.

21. Age of Responsibility
• Systemic CSR
– focuses its activities on identifying and tackling
the root causes of our present unsustainability
and irresponsibility
– typically through innovating business models,
revolutionizing their processes, products and
services and lobbying for progressive national and
international policies

22. CSR 1.0 FAIL
Failures Nature of the Failing
Peripheral CSR CSR has remained largely restricted to the largest companies, and
mostly confined to PR, or other departments, rather than being
integrated across the business
Incremental CSR CSR has adopted the quality management model, which results in
incremental improvements that do not match the scale and
urgency of the problems
Uneconomic CSR CSR does not always make economic sense, as the short-term
markets still reward companies that externalise their costs to
society

23. CSR 2.0
• Digital Media pushed for CSR 2.0
Web 2.0 CSR 2.0
Being defined by watchwords like
‘collective intelligence’, ‘collaborative
networks’ and ‘user participation’.
Being defined by ‘global commons’,
‘innovative partnerships’ and ‘stakeholder
involvement’.
Tools include social media,
knowledge syndication and beta
testing.
Mechanisms include diverse stakeholder
panels, real-time transparent reporting and
new-wave social entrepreneurship.
Is as much a state of being as a
technical advance - it is a new
philosophy or way of seeing the
world differently.
Is recognising a shift in power from
centralised to decentralised; a change in
scale from few and big to many and small;
and a change in application from single and
exclusive to multiple and shared.

24. The convergence of CSR and Digital
Communications - CSR 2.0
Social Media can also become more "social" in a
certain meaning of the word. Meeting several
communications expert, CSR practitioners, and
digital communication managers, they all agree
that CSR and Social Media are indeed
converging.

25. Buick - Human Traffic Signs (CSR) on
road safety

26. Voice of China
• The Voice of China, a popular TV program
crowdsourced viewers and used their voices
to read popular Chinese novels, so that the
blind and the illiterate can listen to the novels.
• There are various other cases where big
organizations do CSR without "donating" but
leveraging on their expertise to create
sustainable change.

27. Using Fear to Create Sales?
A swim coach used this message after a boating
disaster in China. "Learn to swim to survive." It did
get him more sales and created more visibility to
the problem of people not able to swim, however,
many people strongly agree that the message was
not in good taste, and purely for profits. But taking
a step back, I do feel that it is a communications
issue and if the message was "Learn to swim, to
save lives" It could also promote the importance of
swimming, and people should learn it to save the
lives of others.

28. CSR Benefits
• CSR boosts a company’s brand, manages risk,
and just plain saves money. But perhaps most
importantly the general public is clamoring for
companies to enact good, fair business
practices — and most of that public pressure
comes through social media.

29. There are many examples of businesses moved
into more sustainable practices by a social
media backlash, so is CSR done dues to public
feedback or social media? Or does a company
need to do CSR because of public feedback?

30. Feedback through social media is immediate,
permanent, and extremely public. When
individuals feel strongly about a company’s
performance on social or environmental issues,
one small voice can quickly become a swarm,
difficult for even the most shielded executive to
ignore. For this reason, social has become a
driving force in many companies’ CSR agendas.

31. CSR should not be just donations for
sustainability. CSR leadership development
creates a cool company to work, and improves
employee retention. In many forward thinking
organizations, CSR is so in line with business that
the word social does not even need to be uttered
and business practices will consider many social
end environmental aspects before
implementing.

32. CSR can also be co-created by NGO and
Corporation and this collaborative engagement
is key. Much empathy is needed and it can
create a Win-Win situation for both parties.
However, the corporate skills and NGO needs
must match. It should not be done at the
convenience of the corporation, but rather, done
together as equals.