Partnerships2012 Conference to be held at CBS

To quote former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan: “In today’s world, we depend on each other“. In other words, partnerships are increasingly seen as a panacea for solving the world’s social, environmental and economic problems, whether we are talking about climate change, hunger, inequality, poverty and pollution. But how do we build effective partnerships between businesses and the social sector?

The Partnerships2012 conference will be organised by Copenhagen Business School, the CSR Foundation, ISOBRO (The Danish professional association for fundraisers), the Confederation of Danish Industries, and the European Fundraising Association. The conference takes place from 10-12 June 2012. Besides Kofi Annan, who visits the conference on its 2nd day, the keynote speakers are Peter Eigen from the Transparency International, Jon Duschinsky from Be The Change, Christian Friis Bach, Minister for Development Cooperation and a number of multinationals who will visit the conference together with partner NGOs such as Amnesty International, UNICEF and WWF.

The conference is a result of CBS' new strategy - Business in Society. CBS disseminates knowledge and new ideas to the future CEOs and society in general based on the recognition that companies and organisations play a part in shaping society, and that society plays a part in shaping the functions and processes of organisations and companies.

Read more: http://www.partnership2012.com/

When Goliath met David

Palgrave has just published a new book "Social Innovation - Blurring Boundaries to Reconfigure Markets" (2012) edited by Alex Nicholls and Alex Murdock. The book provides papers from the 2009 ISIRC conference in Oxford. Included is also a chapter by Rolf Wüstenhagen and myself "When David Meets Goliath: Sustainable Entrepreneurship and the Evolution of Markets".

The chapter is a slightly revised version of our 2010 paper "Greening Goliaths versus emerging Davids — Theorizing about the role of incumbents and new entrants in sustainable entrepreneurship" originally published in the Journal of Business Venturing.

Read more about the book here: http://us.macmillan.com/socialinnovation/AlexNicholls

A bee in the bonnet?

A group of Danish Social Entrepreneurs are putting the "B" back into the "Big City". Their goal is to improve the urban environment and unlock social and economic benefits by introducing beekeeping and honey production into Copenhagen's inner city. 

Together with Aktivitetscenter Sundholm, a municipal center for long term unemployed, homeless and people with alcohol and drug problems, Bybi has established Scandinavia’s first urban honey factory. Bybi's assistant beekeepers are recruited from Sundholms service users. They are involved in the day to day running of the factory, meeting of visitors and looking after 3 million bees. 

Bybi keeps its bee hives on rooftops, in gardens and in the grounds of businesses across Copenhagen thus countering the trend of diminishing natural habitats for bees due to pesticides, intensive agriculture and climate change in the countryside.

Read more: http://bybi.dk/?lang=en

This week in Copenhagen: DANSIC Students organize Social Entrepreneurship Conference

In order to raise awareness about social innovation a group of students has launched DANSIC, a voluntary, student-driven organization. On the 8th of March DANSIC will holds its inaugural conference on the Copenhagen Business School (CBS) campus. DANSIC wants to be a platform for anyone in Denmark interested in social innovation. The team behind DANSIC consists of 30 project directors and over 20 other volunteers who are dedicated to different responsibilities.

Read more: http://www.dansic.org/