Health Biotechnology Innovation for Social Sustainability -A Perspective from China

China is not only becoming a significant player in the production of high-tech products, but also an increasingly important contributor of ideas and influence in the global knowledge economy. This paper identifies the promises and the pathologies of the biotech innovation system from the perspective of social sustainability in China, looking at the governance of the system and beyond. Based on The STEPS Centre’s ‘Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto’, a ‘3D’ approach has been adopted, bringing together social, technological and policy dynamics, and focusing on the directions of biotechnological innovation, the distribution of its benefits, costs and risks and the diversity of innovations evolving within it and alongside it

Connecting the dots: information visualization and text analysis of the Searchlight Project newsletters

This report is the product of the Pardee Center’s work on the Searchlight:Visualization and Analysis of Trend Data project sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. Part of a larger effort to analyze and disseminate on-the-ground information about important societal trends as reported in a large number of regional newsletters developed in Asia, Africa and the Americas specifically for the Foundation, the Pardee Center developed sophisticated methods to systematically review, categorize, analyze, visualize, and draw conclusions from the information in the newsletters.The Rockefeller Foundatio

Delaware Public Benefit Corporations 90 Days Out: Who\u27s Opting In?

The Delaware legislature recently shocked the sustainable business and social enterprise sector. On August 1, 2013, amendments to the Delaware General Corporation Law became effective, allowing entities to incorporate as a public benefit corporation, a new hybrid corporate form that requires managers to balance shareholders’ financial interests with the besat interests of stakeholders materially affected by the corporation’s conduct, and produce a public benefit. For a state that has long ruled U.S. corporate law and whose judiciary has frequently invoked shareholder primacy, the adoption of the public benefit corporation form has been hailed as a victory by sustainable business and social enterprise proponents. And yet, the significance of this victory in Delaware is premature. Information about the number and types of companies opting into the public benefit corporation form has been preliminary and speculative. This article fills that gap. In this article, I present original descriptive research on the 53 public benefit corporations that incorporated or converted in Delaware within the first three months of the amended corporate statute’s effectiveness. Based on publicly available documents and information, I analyze these first public benefit corporations with respect to the following characteristics: (1) year of incorporation as a proxy for corporate age, (2) industry, (3) charitable activities, (4) identified specific public benefit, and (5) adoption of model legislation options not required by the Delaware statute. My analysis returns the following results: 75% of public benefit corporations are likely new corporations in their early stages of operation; 32% of public benefit corporations provide professional services (e.g., consulting, legal, financial, architectural design), the technology, healthcare, and education sectors each represent 11% of public benefit corporations, 10% of public benefit corporations produce consumer retail products; approximately 40% of public benefit corporations could have alternatively incorporated as a charitable nonprofit exempt from federal income taxes. This article discusses these and other findings to assist in understanding the public benefit corporation and how it has been employed within the first three months of its adoption

Chronicle of a Pandemic Foretold. CEPS Policy Insights No 2020-05 / March 2020

In just a few weeks, COVID-19 appeared in China and quickly spread to the rest of the world, including Europe and the United States. Many have rushed to describe the outbreak as a ‘black swan’ – an unpredictable event with extremely severe consequences. However, COVID-19 was not only predictable ex post: it was amply predicted ex ante. This allows us to draw some preliminary lessons: • First, economic policy will need to shift from its current focus on efficiency, towards a greater emphasis on resilience and sustainability. • Second, a more centralised governance to address health emergencies is needed. • Third, Europe should create a centre for the prevention of large-scale risks. • Fourth, digital technologies, if handled with care, can be an important part of both a mitigation and a response strategy. • Fifth, Europe should improve its science advice and communication functions. Finally, there are many ways to pursue enhanced resilience and responsiveness, but not all of them are compatible with sustainability and democratic values. The challenge is to find an adequate policy mix, which safeguards individual rights and liberties, protects the economy, and at the same time strengthens government preparedness for cases of epidemics and pandemics

Unleashing the Potential of US Foundation Endowments: Using Responsible Investment to Strengthen Endowment Oversight and Enhance Impact

A small but growing number of US foundations are investigating or pursuing sustainable and responsible investing approaches -- often employing such terms as mission-related investing or impact investing. They are embracing the notion that in addition to making grants, they can employ investment and shareowner strategies across their assets to help achieve positive societal outcomes and targeted financial returns. This report is designed for foundation staff and trustees who are interested in encouraging their institutions to align a broader portion of their assets under management with their programmatic goals or to factor environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues into their investment decisions to help fulfill fiduciary duties. Practitioners in the sustainable and responsible investment industry who serve foundations, including consultants, research providers, financial advisors, and investment managers, can also benefit from the information and resources in this paper.Using extensive data from primary and secondary resources, this paper presents the current range and state of involvement by foundations in sustainable and responsible investing (SRI) and profiles a number of foundations whose approaches to SRI have resulted in meaningful environmental, social or corporate governance outcomes. It demonstrates that it is feasible for foundations to invest their endowments in alignment with their mission and ESG issues of concern, while at the same time achieving their overall financial goals. This report also details a range of resources, including many that have emerged just in the past few years, available to foundations in their efforts to explore SRI. Last, the report offers recommendations and ideas for foundation officers and trustees to enable them to guide their institutions into this space

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

Commercialisation of innovations from the UK National Health Service

The potential opportunities offered by developing innovative ideas from staff within the UK National Health Service (NHS) was recognised in 2000 and this paper describes a regional organisation, Medipex, which was set up to undertake technology transfer and commercialisation of innovations from the NHS in Yorkshire. The approach adopted by Medipex has been shown to be a successful model for the commercialisation of IP, obtaining private sector investment and winning external recognition after its first three years trading. Analysis of the outputs demonstrates that though the majority of ideas emerge from service use, the innovations that have high-value commercial potential emerge from research undertaken in the hospitals

Ending Poverty in Our Generation: Save the Children's Vision for a Post-2015 Framework

The Millennium development Goals -- one of the most resonant and unifying agreements in political history -- reach a turning point in 2015, the deadline for their realisation. We must do everything in our power to achieve them. But we also need to find an agreed way forward on work that will remain to be accomplished. This report sets out save the Children's vision for a new development framework -- consisting of ten goals, plus targets and indicators -- that will support the creation of a world where all people everywhere realise their human rights within a generation.Recognising that the global consultation is ongoing, and many voices are still to be heard, we do not present this as a final position. Rather, it as an indicator of our priorities and -- we hope -- a contribution to the process of crystallising the eventual solution

Results Matter: Capacity Building Project

This edition of Results Matter reports findings of a focused evaluation of Healthcare Georgia Foundation's Capacity Building Project (CPB). The goals of the evaluation were: 1) to determine the impact of the project on organizational capacity; 2) to discover factors leading to success; 3) to understand participants' challenges; and 4) to identify where the CBP could be improved. Specific evaluation questions addressed the services provided and evolution of the model over time, resulting outcomes, success factors, challenges faced, and benefits to the Foundation. In addition to the findings, this report includes a summary of the evaluation methods used, lessons learned, and recommendations for the future of the program