Last April, Public Innovators co-hosted with the Aspen Institute a panel discussion about government's role in promoting social innovation and entrepreneurship. This event served as the public release of our report Advancing Social Entrepreneurship: Recommendations for Policy Makers and Government Agencies and included the following panelists:

• Andrew Wolk, Founder and CEO of Root Cause and Senior Lecturer in Social Entrepreneurship at MIT
• Michele Jolin, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress
• Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu of Louisiana
• Katherine Freund, Founder and CEO of ITNAmerica
• Frederick Hess, Resident Scholar and Director of Education Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute

In 2006, Louisiana Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu established the nation's first statewide Office of Social Entrepreneurship (see an overview of the OSE's mission, model, strategies, and vision).  This coming fall, the office will pilot a social innovation fund which will provide support to innovative, effective and sustainable solutions to social problems in Louisiana.

In preparing to launch a competition to determine the best models for investment, we faced an important question:  Do we focus on a particular social issue and solicit the best solutions for one particular problem, such as childhood obesity or high-school dropout rates? Or do we focus on seeking those models with the highest potential for increased social impact, regardless of the social area it addressed? We chose the latter and will launch the competition focused on a proposed solution’s ability to meet the highest standards of established criteria including innovation, social impact, measurability and sustainability.

Louisiana’s Lieutenant Governor recently took part in a roundtable, co-hosted by the Aspen Institute and Root Cause Public Innovators, to discuss the newly released report, "Advancing Social Entrepreneurship: Recommendations for Policy Makers and Government Agencies".  Included in the panel were a government official, a social entrepreneur, two think tank policy experts representing the political left and right, and an expert on social entrepreneurship.