Stanford Hosts Silicon Valley Roundtable for White House Office of Social Innovation

Among today’s experts were James E. Canales, president and CEO of the James Irvine Foundation; Debra Dunn, an advisor to social ventures around the world and former Hewlett Packard senior vice president of Corporate Affairs and Global Citizenship; Gib Meyers, cofounder and Emeritus partner of Mayfield, a private venture capital partnership located in Menlo Park, Calif.; and Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, the founder and chairman of Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund (SV2).

“The scarcity is not in the ideas,” said Garth Saloner, who is director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and who will become dean of the Business School September 1, “the scarcity is in the organizational capacity to help grow these ideas.” Discussions explored, in particular, how the White House could help alleviate some of the obstacles nonprofits are facing when trying to raise capital to scale their programs. Participants also had a lot of suggestions for the White House to foster effective cross-sector partnerships that support social change.

The roundtable was convened by the Center for Social Innovation, a center of teaching and activity at the Stanford Graduate School of Business that is focused on developing leaders who can solve the world’s toughest problems.

For more information about the Center for Social Innovation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business: http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/csi/about/index.html