What is a supply chain? A supply chain tracks the flow of material, information, capital, and labour, in delivering goods and services to consumers. A value chain focuses more on the activities, rather than materials, when analysing production, supply, distribution, usage and end-of-life for products and related services. The Systems Change Observatory (SCO) explores this month how a supply chains perspective can help us understand systems better and guide us in improving them. Jessica Jacobson and Dr Sudhir Rama Murthy spoke to Skoll Scholar (2018) Kevin Warner, who works on supply chain ce ..read more

On 15-17 October 2020, Social Enterprise UK are running a ‘Buy Social’ campaign, showcasing the incredible social ventures that are set up with the sole intention to support communities. In the spirit of the campaign, Skoll Centre Programme Manager for Social Ventures, Chris Blues, shares ten brilliant organisations local to Oxford. We hope this list will serve useful to our community, and welcome you to share your own suggestions with us on Twitter using #BuySocial! Tap Social Movement  Tap Social Movement was founded in an attempt to stop this vicious cycle by providing opportunities wh ..read more

The Circular Economy Lab asked students at Oxford University to imagine what the future might look like if we embraced a green, equitable recovery to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s an insight into the world they envisioned. It’s amazing to think how much has changed. When the pandemic arrived, inequality in its many forms was laid bare. When people’s wellbeing became the subject of global headlines for a whole year, we started to observe and reflect more widely on where beings were not well within our systems. When it became crystal clear we all breathe the same air, we looked at how we could m ..read more

On 15-17 June 2020, the Skoll Centre’s Map the System Competition held its Global Final virtually. The ‘African Transformers’ team from Ashesi University competed against 30 other finalists from institutions around the world at the event, reaching the live public final as one of six finalists in the competition. Team members Lloyd Teta, Denver Chikokonya, Munyaradzi Madzoma, Nadine Afkwah Tim and Marshal Ruzvidzo tell us how they mapped the system to understand the root causes of improper waste management in Ghana. African Transformers is a team of five undergraduate E ..read more

Written by Mark Mann, Social Enterprise Lead & Innovation Lead for Humanities & Social Sciences at Oxford University Innovation and Chris Blues, Programme Manager for Social Ventures at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. The University of Oxford’s response to COVID-19 has been quite simply, remarkable. New ventures have been created, established and new ventures are pivoting, and new initiatives have been set up. The Oxford Vaccine Group is leading the search for a vaccine. New ventures such as, OxSed and OxVent, are working across testing, diagnostics and ventilation. The L ..read more

With the emergence of systems thinking in social impact, the need for measurement and evaluation tools informed by systems thinking is increasingly becoming a necessity. An increase in publications such as Principles for Effective Use of Systems Thinking in Evaluation by the Systems Thinking in Evaluation, Topical Interest Group (SETIG 2018) and the Systems Practice Workbook by the Omidyar Group is further advancing this thought. The Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, in collaboration with Forum for the Future, also organised a session at the Skoll World Forum 2018 on measurin ..read more

Rangan Srikhanta is a 2019-20 Skoll Scholar and MBA. In this blog, Rangan reflects on completing his final term at Oxford Saïd during the pandemic. My last post was an opportunity for me to reflect on what brought me to Oxford and the transformative experience it was having in the space of just one term. This post has taken much longer to marinate than usual, but COVID-19 has provided many an opportunity to stop and reflect. The Oxford Bubble As the pandemic infiltrated our Oxford bubble, it become a transformative experience in understanding the human condition. From being dismayed at th ..read more

On 15-17 June 2020, the Skoll Centre’s Map the System competition held its Global Final virtually. As a member of this year’s judging panel, Ed Straw shares his insights. The more researchers are conscious of their ‘traditions of understanding’ in relation to the subject, the less biased will be the output. Through culture, education and experiences of many forms, everyone holds preconceptions about their field of study – their ‘positionality’. The tendency for many is for US-European norms in economics, democracy, science and so on to be the starting point. As a judge for the Map the Sys ..read more

On 15-17 June 2020, the Skoll Centre’s Map the System Competition held its Global Final virtually. The team from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign competed against 30 other finalists from institutions around the world at the event, coming in second place in the competition. Team members Angela, Ajaita and Jiho tell us their key learnings from taking part, and how they mapped the system to explore menstrual inequity in the United States. Choosing Our Topic We were originally nervous about this topic, unsure of how much information we’d find on menstrual inequity, especially for such an ec ..read more

On 15-17 June 2020, the Skoll Centre’s Map the System Competition held its Global Final virtually. The team from Mount Royal University competed against 30 other finalists from institutions around the world at the event. Team member Jillian Mah shares her learnings from the process of mapping the Canadian charity system for the competition. Over the past 10 months, I joined a team at Mount Royal University to compete in the Map the System Competition alongside two wonderful people, Ashley Dion and Matthew Taburadaf for whom I am incredibly grateful to have worked with.  I won’t speak for ..read more