Social Embeddedness

"Effective leaders are like sophisticated viruses: they fool the immune system and are able to inject new DNA without destroying the host." - Michael Watkins

ASU’s Social Embeddedness Network Monthly Brown Bag Lunch Series kicked off on Friday, September 21st on the Tempe campus. The topic of discussion was based on the work of Weerts and Sandmann (2010), “Community Engagement and Boundary Spanning Roles at Research Universities.”

My son, Benjamin is currently fifteen months old. He says over thirty words now, but I am proud to say that his first word was ‘mama’. While I did win the competition with my husband of whether he would say mama or dada first, the win was a little anticlimactic because Benjamin does not reserve the word ‘mama’ just for me. He uses the word as a request, and he will say it repeatedly to anyone until his need is met. For example, if he wants to be picked up by his dad he will tug on his dad’s legs and shout “mama, mama, mama”, or if he wants another bite of food he will say “mama?”.

In “Measuring Shared Value,” Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter issues a warning to companies across the country: “if companies do not rigorously track the interdependency between social and business results, they miss important opportunities for growth, innovation and social impact at scale.” Porter proposes a solution—shared value strategies. The idea of shared value goes beyond corporate social responsibility. Despite common corporate citizenship activities, the public often views for-profit companies as prospering at the expense of society.

Last October I had the honor of speaking at Campus Compact’s 2012 Presidents’ Leadership Summit. The Summit is the second such event for Campus Compact – a national network of 1,200 college and university presidents who are committed to fulfilling the civic purposes of higher education. The Summit brought together leading presidents from all over the nation to discuss key issues in higher education.

In one sense Arizona State University is huge–the university with the single highest student enrollment in the U.S.–but it’s also tiny in the vast urban landscape of the greater Phoenix area. It’s a position that comes with a lot of responsibility and some exciting opportunities. How do we reach all of the communities around us? How do we make this place relevant to K-12 students, to local non-profits, to planners and leaders of all kinds?

In my first post in this inspiration series I established the need for a networked approach to promoting and fostering student-driven social change. This post will explain the strategy utilized in the development of Changemaker Central, a one-stop-shop for students who want to make a positive impact on their local and global communities.

I finally surmounted the daunting task of resurrecting this blog plagued with figurative dust. Inspiration comes in threes, thanks to the renewed energy infusing our office from our newest cohort of University Innovation Fellows: Ed Finn, Hayfa Aboukier and Daniil Gunitskiy and three vignettes about inspiration.

Part One