Jason Saul is the founder and CEO of Mission Measurement, a strategy consulting firm that helps its clients create value through social change. Here he writes about five takeaways from the 2012 Skoll World Forum:
The Skoll World Forum—an amazing alchemy of the world’s greatest social entrepreneurs, big thinkers, financiers, philanthropists, and academics—is often a zeitgeist of the latest thinking in the social sector, and this year didn’t disappoint. While the officially programmed theme of the conference was “flux,†the real themes played out in informal hallway chatter, over drinks with colleagues at the Oxford Retreat pub, and in the Twittersphere.
Having participated in a number of these informal “sessionsâ€â€”in addition to moderating a formal one—I sat down to consider what I heard. Here are my five main takeaways:
1. It’s OK to make an economic return from solving social problems.
2. Measurement is no longer optional.
3. We’re in an age of social entrepreneurship 2.0.
4. It’s cool to be corporate.
5. People want to move the needle.
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