Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SIE) Program

The Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SIE) Program brings together faculty, undergraduate, and graduate students from across Stanford to develop innovative, technology-based solutions with a potential for social benefit. An SIE project begins with a promising idea, such as using new LED technology to develop solar-powered lights for the poor without electricity in the developing world, or using new chip technology to develop affordable hearing devices for the poor with hearing loss. The project then partners with one or more social entrepreneurs with experience in the problem domain. The goal of the project is to help a promising idea become a successful solution, and an early-stage social venture become a successful enterprise.

The students on SIE teams learn the Stanford methodology of innovation and the art of social entrepreneurship. The teams first seek a deep understanding of those they would be serving. The teams then use prototypes of possible products, experiences, and business models to test assumptions with users and to iteratively improve possible solutions. Along the way, the teams receive frequent feedback and coaching from domain experts and successful social entrepreneurs. The program seeks to match excellent teams of students with outstanding groups of mentors, and to develop the skills the teams will need to succeed.

Two examples of the activity developed by the SIE Program are:

Continuing Projects
Saving Lives in the Next Pandemic: In 1918, a flu pandemic swept the world and killed an estimated 50 - 100 million people -- at a time when the global population was less than one third of what it is today. This pandemic occurred when an avian flu virus, to which humans had no immunity, acquired the ability for efficient human-to-human transmission. Today the avian flu H5N1 virus is spreading across the world, and evidence from its human cases suggests that it has the potential to cause a pandemic as severe as that of 1918. In the event of such a pandemic, the health care system will be overwhelmed. Even with emergency measures, hospitals and health professionals will not have the capacity to treat more than a very small portion of those who become infected by the virus. Coping with such a widespread disaster and reducing the loss of life and will require individuals and neighbours to inform and organize themselves, and one of the largest challenges of pandemic preparedness is how to do this effectively. This project is developing innovative solutions for informing and organizing individuals and neighbours to create resilient communities in the event of a pandemic. The team is working with domain experts, technologists, and organizations seeking innovative solutions to this challenge. They are working together to bring to reality solutions with the potential for saving many lives.

Past projects

The Light Brigade: An illuminating project could aid developing countries: Like so many wonders electricity has wrought in the past century, home lighting is usually taken for granted. Yet 1.6 billion people around the world have no electricity in their homes. For many of them, darkness is a relentless form of deprivation. In India alone, more than 110 million people rely on kerosene lamps for light. The open-flame canisters are fire hazards and produce blackening, toxic smoke. Health experts say respiratory problems caused by fuel-based lighting contribute to the high rates of death among children in the developing world. Moreover, a kerosene lamp doesn’t provide much light.
For this reason, a group of Stanford students and faculty worked to defeat the dark. Social Entrepreneurship Startup (SES), a two-quarter seminar aimed at incubating problem-solving businesses, created a home lighting system appropriate for the developing world. Headed by engineering professor Bill Behrman and business professor Jim Patell, SES also featured mechanical engineering professor David Kelley, MS ’78, 11 product designers from Kelley’s IDEO firm and a roster of experts ranging from anthropologists to plastics manufacturers. The idea was to harness the intellectual energy and expertise of Stanford and Silicon Valley and apply them to the social arena. They wanted to see if Stanford could be as good a catalyst for social innovation as it has been for commercial innovation.

The answer appeared to be yes. In less than six months, students developed a plan to build, sell and service an affordable household light that requires no electricity and no fuel, and prepared to introduce it in India. The product, a rechargeable, portable lamp with an embedded solar panel, relies on the simplicity and efficiency of light-emitting diodes, or LEDs. LEDs use as little as one-tenth of a watt—5 percent of the energy of a traditional incandescent bulb—and last 10 times longer, making them ideal for areas where power generation is a concern. According to Behram, LEDs change the economics significantly by making possible mass-produced lighting that is affordable for people who live on pennies a day.

Light Up The World, a Canadian foundation, introduced a hand-built LED light into several hundred homes in Nepal and Sri Lanka in recent years, proving that the technology is a viable alternative for families lacking electricity, stated Behrman. In partnership with Light Up The World, the SIE Program wanted to take their idea and scale it for millions rather than thousands.

However, they were not seeking a charity model. By contrary, from the outset they wanted a model that would generate enough profit all along the supply chain to make it self-sustaining. But thay had to be sure that whatever they did would be affordable to the people who needed it.

Calling on a vast network of non-governmental organizations, on-the-ground contacts in various countries and experienced international development experts, the students participating identified China, India and Mexico as the best markets for the LED lights. They also had the opportunity to chat with India’s minister of nontraditional energy who had heard about the project and went to campus to meet with students.

The undergraduates distilled their findings into a briefing book that became the starting point in the spring quarter for GSB and engineering graduate students, who were divided into three teams. Their job: design and build a prototype lighting system for one of the three countries, write a business plan and make the whole thing doable in the real world. They had 70 days.

The technological challenges were vexing: the lights had to be versatile, durable, easy-to-use, rechargeable and, above all, cheap. Families in India that used kerosene lamps could not be expected to pay significantly more for a newfangled light than they paid for kerosene, roughly $12.50 per year. For this reason, while engineering students experimented with a dozen or so designs, business students wrestled with the complexities of building a microeconomy for regions with desperately low incomes. The team eventually settled on a battery-powered light with a built-in solar panel that could be manufactured for about $12. (A smaller, flashlight-style product designed for the very poorest consumers could be made for as little as $5.25.)

In a crowded room at the Faculty Club in late May, students presented their plans to a group of venture capitalists, manufacturing representatives and engineers, as well as David Halliday, founder of Light Up The World. A Light Up The World initiative that recently placed LED lamps in 410 homes in Afghanistan had been requested to introduce 100.000 more lamps.

ongoing