iDEAS
I am fascinated in exploring how PAR might be applied within organizations and outside its traditional domains of development, education and health. What does PAR look like within, for example, a business? One example is seen in the work of Chris Street and Darren Meister * who used PAR in helping a small business manage change.
PAR in Organizations: A Small Business study « Participatory Action Research & Organizational Change
Participatory design
Participatory design (known before as 'Cooperative Design') is an approach to design attempting to actively involve all stakeholders (e.g. employees, partners, customers, citizens, end users) in the design process in order to help ensure the product designed meets their needs and is usable . The term is used in a variety of fields e.g. software design , urban design , architecture , landscape architecture , product design , sustainability , graphic design , planning or even medicine as a way of creating environments that are more responsive and appropriate to their inhabitants' and users' cultural, emotional, spiritual and practical needs. It is one approach to placemaking .
Small enterprises in the agriculture, trade and services sectors are most susceptible to changes towards financial sector liberalization. The asset bases of small businesses often fail to meet the stricter collateral requirements of the new market driven financial system. The individual loan requirements in these enterprises also routinely fall short of the revised minimum prescribed. Keeping the interests of small borrowers in mind should be an overriding aspect of a successful financial sector reform agenda.
participatory credit project - creditwatch
Since last year, I have been paying special attention to existing business models within the creative & cultural industries as I joined A+C+C CoCreación. I was especially interested in business models related to crowdsourcing / open innovation because they lean on “participation”, which is the focus of our investigation. I would like to sum up in this post the existing business models that use crowdsourcing and draw a parallel with the level of participation. I will refer then to the different levels of participation detailed in a previous post . Donation-based business model enables users to donate money to help sustain a project or enterprise, like Wikipedia or Radiohead. The key to make it a sustainable business model is the community: having a strong community of fans is necessary to live only thank to its donations.
Participatory Business Models « co-creatingcultures
Social Business – *The* Ecosystem
As I am about to finish off my last round of business trips that I started by mid-May, and which I am completing beginning of next week till after the summer, having taken me to some wonderful cities like Rotterdam, Seville, Barcelona, London, Milan, Boston, Madrid and Seville again, I just couldn’t help reflecting on a relatively recent blog post put together by the always inspiring David Armano that I can surely summarise it as perhaps one of the best reads you will do this year around the topic of Social Business. Yes, that powerful. Why? Well, more than anything else, because it’s probably one of the best, most comprehensive reads you will do to find out where Social Business comes from, where we are nowadays and what lies ahead as our next challenge.
It's 8:30 a.m. in Silicon Valley, and Neal Gorenflo is already busy sharing. Inside his Mountain View town house, just a few short blocks from the Caltrain station where commuters pour out each morning on their way to Google, Gorenflo hands over his 15-month-old son, Jake, to a nanny he shares with his neighbor. At a local coffee shop, he logs on to a peer-to-peer banking site called Lending Club to make a series of small loans to someone planning a wedding, another starting a pet business, and a guy named Pat who wants to move. After biking down to the station, he drags his ancient Peugeot onto the train to San Francisco, where he hops into a Prius he's reserved for a few hours from City CarShare, a not-for-profit version of Zipcar. After driving out to Berkeley for a tour of a cohousing community, he finally lands at a shared office space in SoMa, from which he works once a week.
The Sharing Economy
Yelp or the Better Business Bureau. The Future of Business Ratings.
What ratings do people trust? Where do consumers go when it’s time to review a local business? As more and more consumers become socially savvy, more and more of them will consult services like Yelp versus the Better Business Bureau . Of course, this is not a knock on the BBB, but things have been going this way for a while now. As people, we tend to trust our peers more than organizations. We read product reviews written by consumers just like us and place more value on those ratings than those provided by organizations and publications.Global Ethical Brokerage is a British-based Foreign Exchange specialist that adds value to business ventures while also fulfilling an ethical criteria. Operating out of Kent in South East England, the brokerage offers immediate currency exchange at fixed exchange rates to allow companies that regularly make payments overseas the ability to do so at an affordable price. Furthermore, a portion of the company's profits are reinvested into local, regional and national charitable causes to allow its clients to contribute to their Corporate Social Responsibility programs. Opening an account with the Foreign Exchange brokerage ensures that the client not only is afforded with competitive rates to conduct monetary business transactions abroad but also is able to contribute to ethical causes that are making a difference. <p style="text-align:right;color:#A8A8A8"></p>
Good Cause Currency Services - Global Ethical Brokerage is a Charitable Foreign Exchange Company
There is a movement across the globe today that says solutions to society's most pressing social issues cannot be left up to the government to determine. Social entrepreneurs are business owners that decide to take on the work of engaging with social problems implementing systems that offer broad-scale change. Social Entrepreneurs That Change the World A social entrepreneur uses the principles of entrepreneurialism to develop a business venture that brings about social changes. The performance of a business is normally measured by profit and return on investment.
4 Social Entrepreneurs that Are Changing the World
Engage! Dr. James Canton is a wonderful author, and brings together his many brilliant ideas in his book, "The Extreme Future".
The Top Trends that Will Reshape the World
Better business: acts of kindness | Money
When Paul Warner saw a stranger's comment on Facebook lamenting her nine-year-old daughter's birthday present being lost in the post, he couldn't help but take note. As the owner of traditional children's toy company wheniwasakid.co.uk , he decided to track down the woman and send her daughter a toy, free. Warner says: "I sent her a bunny with a note saying: 'Sorry Royal Mail let you down, hopefully this will put a smile on your little girl's face.' She was completely bowled over." It's not the first time Warner has surprised customers, or potential customers, with an unexpected act of kindness.Business Will Change: How collective intelligence will change the way we do business
I wrote this book for every business person struggling to make sense of the changes that are sweeping through our world today. Business is changing. An unstoppable transformation is underway. Everything about how we work -- how products are developed, marketed, sold, and supported -- will change.15 companies that will change the world - Virgin Charter (6) - Business 2.0
CEO: Scott Duffy Disruption: Online reservations for the budding air-taxi business Disrupted: Commercial airlines Air taxis - tiny, short-hop planes that are so affordable that business fliers can charter them whenever they want - are taking off. Virgin Charter, majority-owned by Richard Branson, aims to be the Expedia for this new market. By creating a portal that connects travelers to charter operators, most of whom are mom-and-pop shops, the company plans to bring more revenue into the industry, reduce the cost of operating air charter services, and waste less jet fuel. <p style="text-align:right;color:#A8A8A8"></p>Social Entrepreneurs 2011: How a Business Can Change the World
Inc. staff From the May 2011 issue of Inc. magazine A special report on the innovative business models social entrepreneurs are inventing Andy Ryan 1,116 in ShareIf you are bored or intimidated by “Project Management”, if the thought of it makes you go “waaaaaaahhhh”, why not think about your project as a Big Adventure … Think about your project as a Big Adventure. You are trying to find a treasure. You are going to retrieve a stolen secret document. You are going to set the princess free.