SOCAP Soul in San Francisco

At Socap Soul here in San Francisco today we explore where the impact investment community is today globally and where social entrepreneurship is heading. I have had really interesting conversations with Skoll Foundation that concludes that we are past the definition phase of social entrepreneurship and moving to new areas of focus, such as clean water, deforestation, health etc. This is exactly the kind of conversations we are currently having with Per Olsson, themeleader at Stockholm Resilience Center, the need to focus on "problem domains" to solve complex problems on a systemic level. To be able to solve the complex problems we need a new mix of participants which consists of governments, impact investors and entrepreneurs.

White space mapping & the ocean

Just read an interesting piece on white space mapping in the hardcopy of Innovationmanagement.

One of the whitespace project Islanders is involved in right now together with Albaeco is Happy sea. One way to look at it is that we used to travel to the moon and then continue to space, into the unknown, the future. And while we were aiming at that goal, a lot of new technologies were invented along the way.

Now we will travel just outside our doorstep into the depth of the sea. This is an area which very few people have explored unless you are trained as a marine biologist, marine archeologist or a diver. At the WWF annual Baltic Sea Seminar The King Carl XVI Gustaf honored Axel Wennblad for his work writing the recommendation for Marine Spacial Planning in Sweden. One of the things Axel said was "when the Norwegians began to explore marine spacial planning they realized they knew more about the moon than Barents sea outside their doorstep"

Tjärö

Had a nice ride to Tjärö in the archipelago of Karlshamn, Sweden, this evening, which is the home for the Swedish social media web camp, SSWC. Great crowd of people that have joined in spite of rain. This is the beginning of three days of conversations about social media and the future. Just had a conversation with Richard Gatarski about Burning Man which is very much non profit camp for a few days in the desert in California. Tjärö is filled with geeks and bloggers but is not really non-profit. The question is whether this crowd knows not only how to make money but also to save the world. In a few minutes it will begin...

Betahaus -the new office

At Prinzessinenstrasse 19-20 in Kreuzberg, Berlin, there is a house that doesn't look like a castle, rather like an old factory. It might however be the place where new princes and princesses are born and by all means some great entrepreneurs are hanging out. I met with Joakim Barneus who is running a couple of companies from Betahaus. Betahaus is a creative meltingpot with an great café on the ground floor, meetingspaces and desk upstairs. It feels a bit like the offices of Wired in South park, San Francisco around 1995 when it was all about to happen. That is where Berlin is today.

Pollination/eco-system services August 23rd

As part of the Stockholm Seminars professor Clarie Kremen, University of California, Berkley, is visiting and giving a lecture on pollination and ecosystem services. She will talk about "how large-scale agriculture has come to rely on importing large numbers of honey bees, sometimes for thousands of kilometers, to farm fields of pollination" .

The Linné Hall, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm University 14.00-15.00

Walmart is labeling green products

Just came across this article in NY-times where Walmart is planning a 5 year project to go though all their products and suppliers to develop a new standard for sustainable products. An ambitious project that will change the industry.