Scaling Innovation: Inaugural Conference of the Social Impact Exchange
A platform and forum for a new type of action-oriented collaboration
What follows is an excerpt from a speech delivered by Dr. Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, at the inaugural conference of the Social Impact Exchange on June 17, 2010 in New York City.
I can’t think of a better place to talk about scaling innovation.
And by that I mean not only this conference I mean, quite literally, this neighborhood in Lower Manhattan.
Let me explain.
Forty years ago, Battery Park City and the land on which this beautiful building now stands did not exist.
Manhattan ended at the West Side Highway where dilapidated piers jutted into the Hudson having been abandoned years before in favor of modern ports elsewhere in New York Harbor.
In the late sixties, enterprising city planers plotted the future of Lower Manhattan which was an area badly in need of renewal at the time.
Battery Park City was created by landfill,…mostly from the excavation of the World Trade Center site…the centerpiece of that renewal effort.
So this is a particularly appropriate setting in which to talk about scaling innovation.
Battery Park City...literally the ground beneath our feet…is a wonderful metaphor for the challenges and possibilities of taking innovation to scale in ways that are creative and most importantly…enduring.
That is the challenge confronting 21st century philanthropyexactly what the Social Impact Exchange and this inaugural conference on scaling was designed to address.