Corporate Social Innovation

Corporate social innovation, or CSI, happens when social solutions are the core of the business. This standard covers companies that either remade or created a company based on a social need.

These companies are the vanguard of the new business logic; they view community needs as opportunities to develop ideas and demonstrate business technologies, to find and serve new markets, and to solve long-standing social problems. They focus their efforts on inventing sophisticated solutions in close collaboration with their stakeholders.

Handling social sector problems often forces companies to stretch their capabilities to produce innovations that have business as well as community payoffs. When companies approach social needs in this way, they have a stake in the problems, and they treat the effort the way they would treat any other project central to the company's operations. They use their best people and their core skills. This is not charity; it is a strategic business investment.