Breakthrough interactions powering social change

Founded in July 2010 with a generous gift from Alan and Harriet Lewis of Grand Circle Corporation, The Lewis Institute is the GPS for students, faculty, staff, foundations, and corporate partners seeking social innovation solutions. We employ Babson’s methodology of Entrepreneurial Thought and Action® as an accelerator for change. We create unexpected and fruitful collaborations between those who believe that business is a force for good and that societal dilemmas can lead to powerful market opportunities.

We are living in a world where the expectations on business have shifted and increasingly, the lines between business, government, and the social sectors are blurred. Each sector is now expected to address societal dilemmas in new and expanded ways, but it will take sophisticated combinations of each sector’s unique designs to produce common good outcomes.

While traditionally each of these sectors focus on breakthrough innovations, at The Lewis Institute we hyper focus on breakthrough interactions as the starting point that yields powerful new social innovations. What we do is intentionally introduce and reconfigure relationships in such a way that new and expanded social impacts and innovations come about.

Here at The Lewis Institute, we say that Social Innovation takes form when we are:

Promoting Unusual Partnerships

Steering Nonlinear Journeys

Cultivating Relationships

Activating Changemakers

Igniting Breakthrough Interactions

Fostering Social Value in Business

Building “teams of teams”