Food Sol: An action tank for food Entrepreneurship of All Kinds™
Food is everybody’s business.
Weekly: Community Table
Tuesdays 12:00 to 1:30pm, we welcome the entire Babson community to share ideas, questions, and actions around food. Some Tables feature a special guest with insight on a key topic. Others are open forums for food entrepreneurs to help one another.
NOTE: Community Table is on hiatus for Summer 2013. For questions, please email Suzy Costello.
Thursday, October 24, 2013: Babson Food Day
October 24th will mark 3rd annual Babson Food Day, which we will celebrate with Entrepreneurs-in-Residence Andrew Zimmern and Gail Simmons.
Babson Food Days 2012 was an action-packed two days of good food energy and innovation. Watch Andrew’s interview with local top chefs on food, innovation, entrepreneurship, and rock ’n roll. Below are some of our favorite photos from the one-of-a-kind Culinary Experience at Volante Farms.
Why is Food Sol at Babson?
As the leader in Entrepreneurial Thought and Action®, Babson teaches its future leaders how to convert complex challenges into opportunities for social, environmental and economic value creation simultaneously—not sequentially. Thus, Food Sol resources and supports food entrepreneurs who are taking positive action for the food system.
Why Does the Food System Need Entrepreneurship?
The number and scale of dilemmas linked to the global food system are complex, intertwined and daunting, but they are not insurmountable. As a global community, we face:
- Healthcare challenges based on both scarcity and overconsumption
- Dwindling global supply and distribution imbalances
- Land and water degradation
- Increased energy demands and climate change implications
- Questions of food safety and transparency
- Inefficient and unsustainable government subsidies
- Economic and regulatory pressures that threaten family farms
- Health and environmental concerns connected to large-scale agriculture and animal husbandry
- Antibiotic-resistant bacteria entering the human population through the food chain
- Inequitable labor practices and standards
Few agreements are in place to define any of these dilemmas—let alone determine a path forward.
Where Are the Entrepreneurial Opportunities?
Thousands of movements are already underway—from neighborhood to national in scope—to redesign our food system. Initiatives seeded by government, philanthropists, and business are all doing their parts to make change.
Food Sol’s Unique Offering
Food Sol supports eater-entrepreneurs to uncover and articulate what they care most about influencing in food—and then determine the “bite-sized” action they can take now to begin.
Practicing the country’s top entrepreneurial problem-solving method (Entrepreneurial Thought and Action®), Food Sol offers consulting, coaching, and market sensing to eater-entrepreneurs looking to navigate big food dilemmas and succeed in true triple-bottom-line food innovation.
People think and act the same way we eat: in bite-sized pieces. The big food dilemmas may seem overwhelming. But when dynamic, innovative thinkers sit down together—and engage in breakthrough interaction—they can design and scale change. Scaled change has the potential to become the new norm.
How We Work
Navigating the Big Picture: With enterprise-wide knowledge and cross-sector relationships, Food Sol connects dots to fuel smart action and activity in the food system.
Engagements: Entrepreneurial Thought and Action® is the cornerstone of everything we do. We employ Babson's method to activate and accelerate collaborative solutions to some of the food system's most entrenched challenges.
Thought leadership: Food Sol provides Babson’s voice on food-system dilemmas and innovations with potential.
Economics as a core focus: Creating social and environmental value within economically-sustainable business designs ensures that new ventures are both relevant and resilient.
Contact
For information, please email Rachel Greenberger