I then asked respondents whether the organization has any written policies regarding the intellectual property assets. Written policies are not necessary for having internally understood standards or expectations of management regarding organizational decisions and processes. However, in this context, written policies were chosen as a way to determine the more thoughtfulness than just awareness of […]

The next question I asked the respondents was whether the organization had officially registered their copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office or their trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Asking about the registration of intellectual property is insight into two things: that there is a desire to claim ownership and the ability to […]

I sent the survey to 107 people at the organizations curated on the theS&I 100 list, which was a list of vetted social entrepreneurs and social enterprises. The point of using this list was to highlight innovators working on social challenges, i.e. social entrepreneurs, since innovation is linked to the creation of intellectual property. I […]

Okay, my next decisions weren’t nearly life and death. But, the quality of my research choices at this point would be the difference between meaningful data and just an interesting exercise. If I was going to focus on surveying social entrepreneurs I needed to know that the definition I was using would enable me to […]