But Stanford contributes to more than just technological innovation — and its innovations in other fields often get overlooked. Researchers, students and alumni are also developing social innovations: innovative ideas aimed at improving our society. These social innovators aim to end cycles of poverty, improve healthcare access, conserve natural resources — and the list continues.

Social innovation begins with ideas, but things don’t just end there. The best social innovators turn their ideas into organizations aimed at social change. Somewhere between traditional nonprofit and for-profit models, these organizations strive to be sustainable and measure success by calculating their social bang for the buck. The people behind these organizations, who hold others’ needs and rights as a priority in order for a better future, are what we deem “social entrepreneurs.”

This column is our way of bringing these people and their ideas to you. Each week, we will interview leading social innovators, allowing them to share their thoughts and experiences with the Stanford community. Some will be from campus, some from the Bay Area and some from farther away. The column is a way of connecting their ideas and organizations with you.

Social innovation is, of course, not a panacea. It requires lots of money from generous philanthropists, and its focus on measurable results diverts its energy away from less tangible social goals, such as social justice.

“Charity is not justice,” Princeton Prof. Cornel West reminded a Stanford audience last October. Smaller organizations with limited aims need to work together on a national scale to accomplish larger changes in our society.

However, even taken individually, these socially innovative organizations are improving people’s lives and communities around the world. As these organizations grow, so will their goals and their impact.

This is an important new movement. It is prompting intelligent and entrepreneurial people to address social issues that others had written off as either unsolvable or not their concern. These people are not just aiming to make a difference, but aiming to make a big difference.

Elliott Brown, Class of ’97, founder and director of Springboard Forward, has developed a model for helping what our society considers the “working poor” through career development, and now locally competes with Manpower, the world’s largest staffing firm. Laura Scher, co-founder and CEO of Working Assets, has formed a hybrid business model where a portion of profits from credit card and telecommunication services is donated to progressive causes. Additionally, she is a lecturer in the Social Innovation course series through the Stanford Public Policy Program.

While this column is mainly about socially innovative ideas and organizations, it’s also about showing why cynicism and apathy are mistaken.

In our news media, and even in our classes, we learn much more about the problems facing our society than efforts to solve them. We spend more time studying the roots of injustices, than the roots of efforts to end them. Apathy and cynicism are the result.

The less we know about solving social problems, the more likely we are to say, when faced with problems, “That’s just the way the world works.” People feeling apathy and cynicism are not unreasonable, they’re just uninformed. But apathy and cynicism do have real and negative consequences.

It’s a prevalent attitude, but it’s not everywhere. Social entrepreneurs remind us that the world is better now because of the efforts of their like-minded motivated peers and themselves, and that the future could be better if we take action now.

Stanford and its surrounding areas are full of bright, motivated people. This much is clear. But how this talent will be used is up in the air. We hope this column will help inspire and inform people at Stanford about how their talents can be used, not just to pursue profit, but to make the world a better place — a much better place — as well.

Lija McHugh is a senior in public policy, and Adam Stone is a co-term in philosophy. This column is a project with the student group FUSION (Future Social Innovators Network) at Stanford.