(Third in an occasional series on the discipline of social innovation.)

From Our Portfolio:

It looked like a slam-dunk opportunity for social entrepreneurship: A nonprofit organization was given nearly $2 billion to replicate a model community center in some 30 communities. Yet this turned out to be a formula not for scaling up, but for trouble, conflict, and, five years later, mixed results.

The Herman Miller company has a global reputation as a sustainable business leader. Their recent presentation at the Chicago Sustainable Manufacturing Summit showed why. (I have to admit to a bit of prejudice here -- I got to know Herman Miller and many of their sustainability staff well through 15 years of work in the West Michigan region, which is their home base.) Some highlights of their strategy:

"High-speed broadband is green!" declares Graham Richard, former mayor of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, a nuPOLIS partner and tireless Johnny Appleseed when it comes to spreading the idea that swift Internet connectivity can help communities reduce their energy consumption and carbon footprint. "High-speed broadband networks can--and must--play a central role in achieving our energy-efficiency and environmental goals," Richard tells every mayor, county executive, and Obama administration official he meets. (Contact Richard at gr@grahamrichard.com.)

Recent front-page media headlines report an outpouring of education change ideas, practices, and experiments:

Cities are the “front lines” of climate change—and they are preparing extraordinary actions to reduce carbon production and adapt to the unavoidable effects of global warming, such as rising sea levels.

New designs of communities for energy efficiency and environmental performance is based on the innovation concept of location efficiency, as described by Peter Plastrik and Theodore Staton in this excerpt from Chapter 3 of their new book, "nuPOLIS: How Social Innovators are Transforming American Communities," which they are releasing on the nuPOLIS site.

The world now contains 17 "megacities," places with more than 10 million people each. In 1950, there was only one (New York). By 2030, it is projected, more than 2,000 urban regions, in every part of the world, will have populations of more than 1 million each. Most Americans live in city regions, notes Darren Walker, the Rockefeller Foundation vice president who dreamed up the Global Urban Summit that brought together urban leaders from six continents for four weeks of conferences and provided the fodder for "Century of the City." Beginning in 2008, for the first time in history a majority of the world's people lived in cities, and by 2050 that number is expected to reach 70 percent. No wonder "Century's" authors, Neal Peirce and Curtis Johnson, call the stretch ahead "an urban future for mankind."

socialinnovationexchange.org (SIX, for short) opens doors to and for global social innovators. Founded by, among others, the Young Foundation in the U.K., a nuPOLIS partner, SIX is evolving into a "go to" site for learning about social innovations around the world. Like nuPOLIS, SIX focuses on building the field of social innovation.

Car sharing is an innovation based on location efficiency--one of the big concepts driving change in American communities, report Peter Plastrik and Theodore Staton in this excerpt from Chapter 3, "Location Efficiency: Tapping the Power of Proximity," of the book they are releasing on the nuPOLIS site.

The U.S. financial and economic crises amplified fundamental challenges faced by the community development field and are ushering in a time for innovation. When three national CD heavyweights--LISC, Neighborhood Works America, and Enterprise--called for a summit in June, they described the field's problem this way:

A set of seven market assumptions can assist cities/regions in understanding the Sustainability Revolution, and to formulate the sustainable economic development strategies they need to embrace economic opportunities offered by building a sustainable economy.

Driving cross-country, listening to dozens of Dylan albums in chrono order. Love, death, protest, enigma... but is there anything in the Dylan Song Book about social innovation? Here's what our intrepid listeners found. Dylan never resorts to using the word "innovation" (rhymes with speculation and concentration), but obliquely and humorfully, he offers advice to social innovators.

The "glocal" economy is one of five major forces affecting community life in new ways, report Peter Plastrik and Theodore Staton in this excerpt from Chapter 2, "The Disruption of Community Life," of the book they are releasing on the nuPOLIS site.