Center for Social Innovation

Faculty: Jennifer Aaker

In the past year, a dizzying number of people have written about (and blogged about, tweeted about…) the mechanics of using Facebook, Twitter, email and YouTube, yet few address how to leverage the incredible power of new social technology to effectively create social good.

“What is social good?” Some believe it’s a good or service that benefits the largest number of people in the largest possible way. Classic domains for social goods are often seen in education, environment, health, arts and culture. However, the concept of social good used in PoST is broader– including building trust, happiness, and self esteem- to touch industries you’re familiar with. We’ll work together to refine your own definition of social good through different lenses of transparency that align with your profit making goals (if any).

Thus the goal of the class is simple: to help you harness social technology in support of a clear single, focused goal to cultivate social good. To do so, we’ll travel with the Obama campaign as they use social technology to create political change, with Kiva as they foster economic justice by making micro-loans easily available, and with for-profits like eBay and Nike as they enable social good creation and profit-making to go hand in hand. We’ll gain insight from leaders from Facebook, Twitter, and Google, while testing the dragonfly effect model to structure your thinking and actions.

One of our collective outcomes is an up-to-date PoST Toolkit that will showcase insights about social technology applications. Ultimately, this course will demonstrate that you don’t need money or power to ignite seismic social change. We’ll show you how with energy, focus, and a good wireless connection, anything is possible.

Jennifer Aaker is the General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. As a social psychologist, Professor Aaker studies time, money, happiness and brands.

This elective course is offered to all Stanford GSB and Sloan students. Current students, please check MyGSB for more information.

Resources

• The concepts taught in this class are described in a book titled The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change by Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith.
• The Dragonfly Effect blog: latest research by the authors
• Engineering Virality Bootcamp: Andy Smith presents the dragonfly model (video)
• The Dragonfly Effect on Facebook: a conversation about ripple effects
• Social media for social change podcast series by Social Innovation Conversations
• Design for the Ripple Effect: How a Small Act Leads to Big Change (video)
• PoST class blog: a class discovery journey day by day
• Papers: the class underlying research
• Cases and other course materials

 

Examples of videos created during PoST class:

Project Baby Warmth: Power of Social Technology

Always a Bridesmaid: Power of Social Technology

The Bubbles Project: Power of Social Technology

Charrette Designs: Power of Social Technology

Classroom TV: Power of Social Technology

CoNext: Power of Social Technology

EnhancEducation: Power of Social Technology

My Haiti Story: Power of Social Technology

Heard Great Things: Power of Social Technology

The New Graduate Network: Power of Social Technology

Our Unnamed Company: Power of Social Technology

Piazzza: Power of Social Technology

Wanted Change: Power of Social Technology