her own pace with the support of the community. Most students are coming for practice 3-6 times per week. The third key element of this practice is the relationship between student and teacher. Because practitioners are coming for practice regularly, there’s an opportunity to cultivate deep relationship, and for that relationship to nourish both the student and the teacher. Aurora: What prompted you to start your own studio and how did you overcome the fear of starting your own business? Pranidhi: I was inspired to start my own shala because I felt I had the unique ability to create an environment for practice that was inclusive to all people, regardless of financial... posted on Apr 21 2017 (9,891 reads)

welcome! Scilla Elworthy: I'm delighted to be here with you. Aryae: You've been involved on many levels with peace initiatives in the world in many ways and in so many places. From the ones you're involved with today, what really has the most energy for you right now? Scilla:  When I look back on 45 years of working at the top level of nuclear weapons policy-making, as well as the grassroots locally-led peace initiatives, what has most energy for me right now is the business plan for peace. Nobody's ever done that before.  We all in the peace business know about how much it would cost to actually prevent war worldwide and that's what I wrote about in... posted on Feb 15 2019 (7,602 reads)

winner of the 2019 Barry & Marie Lipman Family Prize at the University of Pennsylvania is World Bicycle Relief, a nonprofit organization that mobilizes people in the developing world by building and distributing rugged bicycles in rural areas where walking is the primary mode of transportation. With help from its business partners, World Bicycle Relief has delivered more than 450,000 bicycles to people living in sub-Saharan Africa and other developing areas around the globe. Wharton management professor Michael Useem, who is also director for the school’s Center for Leadership and Change Management, spoke with Dave Neiswander, chief executive officer of World Bicycle ... posted on Aug 21 2019 (4,529 reads)

Chairperson - Society for Organizational Learning Dr. Peter M. Senge is the founding chairperson of SoL and a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Senge is the author of The Fifth Discipline: the Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. He has lectured extensively throughout the world, translating the abstract ideas of systems theory into tools for better understanding of economic and organizational change. He has worked with leaders in business, education, health care and government. The Journal of Business Strategy (September/October 1999) named Dr. Senge as one of the 24 people who had the greatest influence on business strategy o... posted on Aug 28 2011 (11,612 reads)

Korean shop owner and her wares. Photo: David Stanley. What do coffee growers in Ethiopia, hardware store owners in America, and Basque entrepreneurs have in common? For one thing, many of them belong to cooperatives. By pooling their money and resources, and voting democratically on how those resources will be used, they can compete in business and reinvest the benefits in their communities. The United Nations has named 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives, and indeed, co-ops seem poised to become a dominant business ... posted on May 30 2012 (9,597 reads)

almost incomprehensively ambitious vision unsupported by any sort of business plan may sound like a vision doomed to fail. Yet more than 35 years after the first Aravind Eye Clinic was set up in South India, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy’s (Dr. V) mission to eliminate curable blindness in the country is surpassing even the most optimistic expectations. This excerpt from Infinite Vision: How Aravind Became the World’s Greatest Business Case for Compassion describes how a precisely defined set of creative constraints, including never refusing to provide care, never compromising on quality, and never relying on outside funding for patient services, became t... posted on Jun 10 2013 (48,151 reads)

this is 1979: If you were reading this article back then, chances are you would have read it on paper — with a printed newspaper or magazine in your hands. Today, you are probably reading it on a desktop computer, a laptop (or as a printout from either of these), or perhaps even on your Blackberry or iPhone. The pace of innovation has been so hectic in recent years that it is hard to imagine which innovations have had the greatest impact on business and society. Is it possible to determine which 30 innovations have changed life most dramatically during the past 30 years? That is the question that Nightly Business Report, the Emmy Award-winning PBS business program, and Knowl... posted on Nov 17 2013 (35,953 reads)

and other world regions. The internet is awash with articles and websites that celebrate the vast potential of sharing human and physical assets, in everything from cars and bicycles to housing, workplaces, food, household items, and even time or expertise. According to most general definitions that are widely available online, the sharing economy leverages information technology to empower individuals or organisations to distribute, share and re-use excess capacity in goods and services. The business icons of the new sharing economy include the likes of Airbnb, Zipcar, Lyft, Taskrabbit and Poshmark, although hundreds of other for-profit as well as non-profit organisations are associated w... posted on Mar 2 2014 (11,531 reads)

Elisabet Sahtouris is an internationally known evolution biologist, futurist, professor, author and consultant on Living Systems Design. She shows the relevance of biological systems to organizational design in business, government and globalisation. She is a Fellow of the World Business Academy, an advisor to EthicalMarkets.com and the Masters in Business program at Schumacher College, also affiliated with the Bainbridge Graduate Institute's MBA program for sustainable business.  Dr. Sahtouris has convened two International Symposia on the Foundations of Science and written about integral cosmologies. Her books include A Walk Through Time: from Stardust to Us and... posted on Aug 11 2017 (11,366 reads)

Orians is a staff attorney at The First 72 Plus, a New Orleans nonprofit founded by six formerly incarcerated people to help other formerly incarcerated men and women navigate the first 72 hours of their release. She is also the co-founder of Rising Foundations, a partner nonprofit that provides pathways to self-sufficiency for formerly incarcerated people, with an aim to stop the cycle of incarceration in low-income communities through small business development and home ownership.   Even as a high school student growing up in Castle Rock, Colorado, and then as an undergraduate at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Orians was attuned to the failure... posted on Jul 16 2018 (7,560 reads)

to do something to help the world’s more than 25 million refugees? Any business — no matter its size — can give them a boost, says Melissa Fleming, chief spokesperson for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. On Saturday, June 9, I had the honor of co-hosting the first-ever TEDx event held at a refugee camp — it took place at Kenya’s Kakuma Camp, home to more than 186,000 people from 19 different countries. The 15 speakers and artists were a mix of current and former refugees as well as experts who study how the public and economies respond to them, and you’ll be able to watch their talks and performances online in the months to come. Whi... posted on Jul 31 2018 (9,154 reads)

recalled. “But along with that pleasure and smoothness was a dark zone in my head.” He began meditating — and he realized that he felt compelled to return home and use his knowledge to bring light to Bihar. Back in India, he and his friend Yadav, an entrepreneur, spent the next few years experimenting. They explored the possibility of producing organic solar cells. They tried growing a plant called jatropha, whose seeds can be used for biodiesel. Both proved impractical as businesses. They tested out solar lamps, but found their application limited. “In the back of my mind, I always thought there would be some high tech solution that would solve the problem,&rdquo... posted on Nov 8 2014 (14,658 reads)

spread his message. But how did this middle-class former accounting student from Cottesloe Western Australia become a force for social change? What drives him to risk public scorn to get his messages across? And what impact is he having? His acts challenge us to face our fears, dare to be vulnerable and enjoy the resultant connection with others. Giving value Pete first had an inkling that life could offer more than he’d dreamed while studying international business, accounting and entrepreneurship in the Netherlands. Away from his family, his friends and the life he’d always known, he found himself free of the expectations that had shaped his life... posted on Jun 3 2015 (24,017 reads)

people who know me best know that at heart I am just a quiet gardener. My garden has probably taught me the most about how things grow - and thrive in a vibrant and sustainable manner. These lessons have shaped my approach to encouraging responsible growth in business and to the ways I apply my intention, attention and energy. A gardener sees the world as a system of interdependent parts - where healthy, sustaining relationships are essential to the vitality of the whole. "A real gardener is not a person who cultivates flowers, but a person who cultivates the soil." In business this has translated for me into the importance of developing agreements and partnerships whe... posted on Apr 26 2017 (12,103 reads)

Bite a string of sandwich shops in Edinburgh and Glasgow operating a suspended payment system where customers can buy a coffee or meal to be collected by a homeless person in the future. The scheme is so successful that there are already tens of thousands of free meals in the pot. “We can now feed people for an entire year,”says Social Bite co-founder, Josh Little John.“Any homeless person who comes into the shop is simply never turned away.” Social Bite is a social business – a commercial enterprise which gives all its profits to good causes. In Social Bite’s case these include an eye care hospital in Bangladesh; a foundation providing small business... posted on Dec 10 2017 (12,518 reads)

he told them. When Paul was a young man, the world had other problems, many of which persist today: the war in Vietnam, civil rights abuses, racism. At just 18, he became Martin Luther King Jr.’s press co-ordinator, helping to organise the historic March on Montgomery. He photographed voter registration drives in Bogalusa, Louisiana and Florida. Later, in Mississippi, he captured images of the Ku Klux Klan—the group kidnapped Paul and held him prisoner. At 20, Paul moved into business, opening one of America’s first natural food stores, Erewhon. With every step he’s taken since that time—whether as an author, entrepreneur or businessperson—protectin... posted on Apr 13 2018 (13,592 reads)

Worline is Executive Director of the CompassionLab at the University of Michigan, a research scientist at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University, and co-author of Awakening Compassion at Work, forthcoming in February 2017 from Berrett-Koehler. She sat down with author and entrepreneur Nir Eyal to discuss why empathetic teams make better business deals, how more caring leaders can help prevent corporate scandals, and the steps for cultivating compassion at work. This conversation originally appeared in Heleo: In-Depth Conversations with the World’s Leading Thinkers. Nir Eyal: What is the business case for c... posted on Sep 13 2018 (7,519 reads)

residents from debris while everyday citizens rallied together toys for the holidays. When floods in Malaysia displaced thousands and set a hundred-year record, people stepped up in all corners to provide relief, including a newlywed couple who offered up the feast of their canceled wedding banquet to flood victims.   Business and Work Goes Beyond the Bottom Line 2021 was witness to an array of changes in the landscape of how we work and do business. Alongside inflation and waves of "Great Resignation", we witnessed multiple corporations and U.S. states boosting their minimum wage in spades: from Unilever ... posted on Jan 4 2022 (14,812 reads)

do things, makes quick assumptions about perceptions based on its previous knowledge.  And often these assumptions are wrong. Learning to draw can help to make one’s perceptions fit more closely with reality. First of all, drawing teaches accurate perception—how to see what is really “out there.” Second, perceptual skills learned through drawing can transfer usefully to other fields. For example, learning to accurately see negative spaces is useful in business problem‐solving. In business, there is a term called “white spaces.” Writers of business books recommend that business problem‐solvers look at the ‘white spaces,&rsqu... posted on Jul 9 2023 (2,611 reads)

For years, he would interview job candidates, and he would only be able to hire one and have to turn everybody else down. He would often give up his entire afternoon just trying to find jobs for the other people who he couldn't hire himself, really opening up his personal network to do that. A lot of times, this orientation toward helping others got him in trouble. In one particular case, he had a colleague who I ended up calling Brad in the book, who essentially was getting out of the business, and he needed somebody to buy his clients quickly. Peter said, "Sure, I'll do it." He basically paid about $10,000 for Brad's clients on the spot, just to help him out. The... posted on Apr 24 2013 (46,562 reads)