Business Model Innovation for Private & Public Sector
Saul Kaplan, Chief Catalyst of the Business Innovation Factory

Saul Kaplan will discuss the need for new business models in the public, private, non-profit, and for-profit sector in the 21st Century.  These institutions tend to move slowly and their different language and behavior exacerbate their xenophobia.  While all these sectors have business models, most non-private and social sector organizations deny that rules of business apply to them.  If an organization has a viable way to create, deliver, and capture value, even if it can't be clearly articulated, it has a business model:  by capturing value to provide grants, contributions, financial ROI to scale social impact, and use of taxes to deliver services to citizens.

With new rapidly emerging players, technologies, and solutions that use non-traditional rules, organizations need to collaborate in order to innovate.  We need new hybrid models that work across sectors to create real and sustainable change.  Already we see for-profit social enterprises, non-profits with for-profit divisions and for-profit companies with social missions (B-corps).  The traditional sector boundaries are blurring.  We must become comfortable with experimentation and ambiguity.

For more information about Business Model Innovation to Saul Kaplan's blog on Harvard Business Review.

Saul Kaplan is the founder and Chief Catalyst of the Business Innovation Factory (BIF).  BIF was inspired by a conversation between Saul and John Seely Brown on ways to enable collaborative innovation to test new business models and system level solutions in a real world laboratory.  So, in 2005, Saul created BIF with that very mission focusing on areas of high social importance.

Prior to BIF, Saul was Executive Director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation and Executive Counselor to the Governor on Economic and Community Development.  Before state leadership, Saul was a Senior Strategy Partner in Accenture's Health & Life-Science practice.