Having worked for Social Innovation Generation at the University of Waterloo for close to two years now, and immersing myself deeply into the emerging field of ‘social innovation’ and social change, I regularly come across many .pdf white papers, e-books, handbooks and reports on ‘how to change the world’, in a manner of speaking.
As you can imagine, these documents are piling up, currently tucked away in a folder labeled ‘Resource Documents’ on my laptop, and are calling out to be shared online. I didn’t have a way to share these documents in an effective manner, or at the very least, in an aesthetically pleasing manner – I suppose there is always Scribd or DocStoc, but both platforms still leave me with the feeling that I am reading a ‘document’ rather than a much more comfortable ‘book’.
In any case, I’ve come across this amazing online tool called issuu, that allows you to embed a .pdf document onto your blog/website – much like the Open Book of Social Innovation produced and published this month by NESTA in the UK, which I have embedded above – allowing readers to scroll through the document as they would a ‘regular’ book.
I suppose this is where an Apple iPad comes into play. I’ll be sharing the majority of the documents that I have accumulated over the past couple of years in the next little while, hopefully some of the documents and resources will prove useful to many of you who read my blog and follow me on Twitter.
As for the Open Book of Social Innovation produced by NESTA:
This volume – part of a series of methods and issues in social innovation – describes the hundreds of methods and tools for innovation being used across the world, as a first step to developing a knowledge base.
It is the result of a major collaboration between NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) and the Young Foundation – two organisations that are committed to the role that social innovation can play in addressing some of the most pressing issues of our time.
The Open Book presents a varied, vibrant picture of social innovation in practice and demonstrates the vitality of this rapidly emerging economy. It is fantastically rich, and demonstrates the diversity of initiatives being led by entrepreneurs and campaigners, organisations and movements worldwide.
Together with the other volumes in this Series, we hope that this work provides a stronger foundation for social innovation based on the different experiences and insights of its pioneers.
Like the social ventures it describes, we want this work to grow and develop. Your comments, thoughts and stories are welcome at the project website: www.socialinnovator.info
Dr Michael Harris, NESTA
