Using Legal Frameworks to Foster Social Change: A Panel Discussion with the Fall 2012 Social Entrepreneurs in Residence at Stanford

November 14, 2012 12:45pm - 2:00pm

Room 280A

The Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law and the Center on the Legal Profession invite you to a panel discussion with the three Fall 2012 Social Entrepreneurs in Residence at Stanford (SEERS), fellows who are visiting Stanford as part of the Program on Social Entrepreneurship at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL).

Mazibuko Jara, chair of South Africa's National Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Equality (NGCLE), as well as the founder and first chairperson of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which combines social mobilization and targeted litigation to protect the rights those living with HIV; Emily Arnold-Fernandez, founder of Asylum Access, an international organization dedicated to securing refugees' rights by integrating individualized legal assistance, community legal empowerment, policy advocacy, and strategic litigation; and Zainah Anwar, one of the founding members of Sisters in Islam (SIS), an NGO that works on women's rights in Islam based in Malaysia, will discuss their career paths and their experiences in using legal frameworks to effect social change.

Link for RSVP: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/law/forms/SEER.fb

The Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE) hosts this invitation-only roundtable with two research pioneers Charles Eesley and Shai Bernstein at Stanford University on drivers for innovation and entrepreneurship of Silicon Valley.

This roundtable is designed to bring together a small circle of the Valley's leading executives, entrepreneurs, investors, service providers, and Stanford faculty for an in-depth, off-the-record conversation.

The Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE) cordially invites you and your guests to an invitation-only roundtable with two research pioneers at Stanford University on drivers for innovation and entrepreneurship of Silicon Valley.

This roundtable is designed to bring together a small circle of the Valley's leading executives, entrepreneurs, investors, service providers, and Stanford faculty for an in-depth, off-the-record  conversation.  Your participation and insights  will inform future research at Stanford on topics relevant for the future sustainability of the Valley.

CHARLES EESLEY Assistant Professor Department of Managament Sciences and Engineering Stanford University Charles Eesley, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Management Sciences and Engineering, Stanford University

SHAI BERNSTEIN Assistant Professor of Finance Stanford Graduate School of Business Shai Bernstein, Assistant Professor of Finance, Stanford Graduate School of Business

8:30AM: Welcome and Introductions

8:40AM-9:30AM: "Stanford University’s Economic Impact via Innovation and Entrepreneurship"

Topic for discussion:

• How do various key institutions of the Valley's ecosystem, such as Stanford, contribute to real economic outcomes in innovation and entrepreneurship?
• How can they be measured? What has been Stanford's economic impact?
• How has it changed over time? What light does this new analysis shed on changes and vulnerabilities for the Valley going forward?

Charles Eesley will share the results of a newly-released study that puts into perspective the sheer scale of Stanford's economic impact. In this systematic survey of Stanford alumni and faculty conducted by Eesley and SPRIE co-director William F. Miller, it is estimated that companies formed by Stanford entrepreneurs generate world revenue of $2.7 trillion annually and have created 5.4 million jobs since the 1930s. In addition to quantifying Stanford’s economic impact, the report examines Stanford’s role in fostering entrepreneurship and describes how the university creates an ecosystem that encourages creativity and entrepreneurship across schools and disciplines.

Moderator: William F. Miller, SPRIE Co-director; Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management Emeritus, Stanford Graduate School of Business

Discussant: Dixon Doll, Co-Founder and General Partner, DCM

Roundtable Discussion: All

9:30AM - 10:20AM: "Does Going Public Affect Innovation?"

After going public, how do firms perform in innovative activities, such as internal innovative projects, inventors' turnover, and reliance on acquisition of external technologies? Is the overall"IPO effect" positive or negative for a firms' innovation? Why? What implications does this have for innovation strategies in Silicon Valley?

Shai Bernstein will share his new findings on the "IPO effect" by comparing the long-run innovation of …firms that completed their filing and went public with that of …firms that withdrew their filing and remained private due to exogenous reasons. Using standard patent-based metrics, the results illustrate that the quality of internal innovation of public firms declines by 40 percent relative to …firms that remained private. He will discuss the reasons why and public leads firms to change their strategies in pursuing innovation.

Moderator: Henry S. Rowen, SPRIE Co-director; Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University

Discussant: Bob Pavey, Partner, Morgenthaler Ventures

Roundtable Discussion: All

10:20AM-10:30AM: Wrap-up Discussion

All participants should RSVP by Wednesday, October 31.

Any further questions, please contact Yan Mei at yanmei@stanford.edu, or 650.725.1885.

About the seminar

Does labor mobility matter for innovation more in some countries than in others? Based on theoretical considerations of the economic systems literature we argue that labor flexibility has different innovation effects depending on national-level institutions. This talk further argues that institutional constraints may be encountered by creating functional equivalents. The analysis is based on career histories in the videogames industry. The videogames industry is structured differently between the best performing countries U.S. and Japan. This raises two issues on human capital diversity: How does composition of human capital affect innovation? How do people react towards institutional constraints in the labor market? Contrasting approaches on the systematic relations between the structure of labor markets and the dynamics of innovation is first introduced, the seminar will then present an empirical case which is based on the career histories of 39.439 videogame developers between 1999 and 2009.

This talk is part of the seminar series hosted by by the Stanford Project on Japanese Entrepreneurship (STAJE) at Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and sponsored by The Miner Foundation.

About the speaker

Cornelia Storz is Professor for the Study of Economic Institutions and East Asian Development at the University of Frankfurt, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, and affiliated to the Interdisciplinary Centre for East Asian Studies (IZO). She is associate researcher of the EHESS, Paris.

Her research focuses on comparative institutional analysis, innovation and industry emergence. With scholarships of JSPS, JILPT, BMBF and others she has been invited to the University of Tokyo, the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training, the RIETI at METI, the Hitotsubashi University, the Stanford Graduate Business School and others. She was granted research funds by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the Wolfgang Ritter Foundation, the Japan Foundation and others.

Recent papers have been published in Research Policy, ZfB and Social Science Japan Journal. She is co-editing a special section of Research Policy on “Path Dependence and Emergence of New Industries” and a special issue of Socio Economic Review on “Asian Capitalism” (both forthcoming). She is co-author of Institutional Diversity and Innovation. Continuing and Emerging Patterns in Japan and China  (Routledge, 2011) and co-editor of Institutional Variety in East Asia. Formal and informal patterns of coordination (Edward Elgar, 2011). She is co-organiser of the SASE network “Asian Capitalisms” and member of executive committee of the European Research Network EJARN, based at the Stockholm Schools of Economics.

About the seminar

This talk will describe new research showing that bankruptcy law reforms affect the rate of founding by well-educated and older entrepreneurs and the performance of their ventures.

The seminar will show the results of a natural experiment in Japan where changes to bankruptcy laws reduced the consequences of closing a company to find that:

1. likelihood of bankruptcy increases, especially for firms founded by elite entrepreneurs
2. elite entrepreneurs form an increasing proportion of the new firms
3. new firm performance increases as these elite entrepreneurs are more likely to found higher performing firms.

While prior research emphasizes the lowering of entry barriers, our work suggests that reducing the "barriers to failure" can stimulate venture formation among elite individuals leading to higher performing firms. Overall, we find that legal reforms that reduce failure barriers encourage "better", not just 'more", entrepreneurs to found ventures.

This talk is part of the seminar series hosted by the Stanford Project on Japanese Entrepreneurship (STAJE) at Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneruship, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and sponsored by The Miner Foundation.

The Program on Social Entrepreneurship at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law invites you to a special event and reception to meet the second class of Social Entrepreneurs-in-Residence at Stanford.

Hailing from Malaysia, South Africa and the San Francisco Bay Area, this group is working to advance the rights of women, minority groups and refugees around the world.

Please join us for this special occasion to meet this innovative group, learn more about their work and celebrate their arrival to Stanford.

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Abstract:

Zainah Anwar will speak on the necessity and possibility of reform in the way Islam is understood and used as a source of law and public policy in Muslim contexts. From Sisters in Islam in Malaysia and its ground-breaking work at the national level to Musawah, the global movement for equality and justice, Muslim women activists today are at the forefront in challenging the use of Islam to justify continued discrimination against women and violations of fundamental liberties. They are producing new feminist knowledge, combining Islamic principles, human rights, constitutional guarantees of equality and non-discrimination, and women's lived realities to break the constructed binary between Islam and human rights, and the disconnect between law and reality. They are publicly challenging traditional religious authorities with alternative understandings of Islam in ways that take into consideration changing times and context. Anwar will share the experience of Sisters in Islam and the global movement it initiated, their work and challenges, and the resulting public contestations and  hope for change. 

About the Speaker: 

Zainah Anwar is currently a visiting Social Entrepreneur in Residence at Stanford for fall 2012 through CDDRL’s Program on Social Entrepreneurship. Anwar is a founding member of Sisters in Islam (SIS) and currently the director of Musawah based in Malaysia, the global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family. She is at the forefront of the women’s movement pushing for an end to the use of Islam to justify discrimination against women. The pioneering work of SIS in understanding Islam from a rights perspective and creating an alternative public voice of Muslim women demanding equality and justice led it to initiate Musawah in 2009. This knowledge-building movement brings together activists and scholars to create new feminist knowledge in Islam to break the binary between Islam and human rights and the disconnect between law and reality.  

Anwar also writes a monthly newspaper column on politics, religion and women’s rights, called Sharing the Nation. She is a former member of the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia. Her book, Islamic Revivalism in Malaysia: Dakwah Among the Students, has become a standard reference in the study of Islam in Malaysia.