Discovering CSR

A lot of this week in ISM consisted of me reaching out to professionals not just in the social entrepreneurship space but in the related social innovation and corporate social responsibility (CSR) branches. I discovered that so many major companies out there have a corporate social responsibility group dedicated to supporting, promoting, and facilitating ethically-orientated practices, volunteerism, philanthropy, positive activism, and other charitable causes. This branch also seeks to innovate the workplace emphasizing the good in diversity and employee inclusion. It was interesting to me to see how many businesses are actively taking part to contribute to social good. A lot more companies than I thought carry some sort of a social impact. I tried emailing and connecting with many CSR professionals hoping to secure primary research interviews. Although it is not directly the field that I am studying in ISM, these CSR professionals are still innovators, promoting ideas and solutions for good, similar to what social entrepreneurs do. I still feel that I would be able to gain new information and a valuable perspective into the field by speaking with them. Along with connecting with professionals, I started working on my research speech. The research speech is definitely not an easy task as I need to create and present an effective 8-10 minute multimedia presentation in front of my peers. Although I am a little nervous for Friday’s presentation, I feel that with the right preparation I will be able to do well and hopefully see a visible improvement from our first introductory speech.