TOPIC: RESEARCH (21)

Institute for the Future (IFTF)

http://www.iftf.org

Institute for the Future is a non-profit research organization that has been forecasting practical future scenarios for over forty years. IFTF brings people together to make the future—today. Whether you’re a strategic leader in a large organization or a community leader in a struggling neighborhood or a netizen who wants to mobilize global crowds, we have practical tools, research, and programs that turn foresight into the critical new insights that ultimately lead to action.

Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC)

http://www.icic.org

The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City is a nonprofit research and strategy organization and the leading authority on U.S. inner city economies and the businesses that thrive there. Founded in 1994 by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter, ICIC strengthens inner city economies by providing businesses, governments and investors with the most comprehensive and actionable information in the field about urban market opportunities.

Diigo

http://www.diigo.com

If you browse or read a lot on the web, we believe you will find Diigo indispensable. Diigo is two services in one -- it is a research and collaborative research tool on the one hand, and a knowledge-sharing community and social content site on the other.

Global Footprint Network

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN

Global Footprint Network is an international think tank working to advance sustainability through use of the Ecological Footprint, a resource accounting tool that measures how much nature we have, how much we use and who uses what.
By making ecological limits central to decision-making, we are working to end overshoot and create a society where all people can live well, within the means of one planet.

B Lab

http://www.bcorporation.net

Certified B Corporations are a new type of corporation which uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.

Urban Life International

http://www.ulicanada.org/

Urban Life International is an independent research training organization with the desire to foment a better understanding and response to the urban challenge.  The urban challenge has been described as the need to transform concrete and steel into communities of health and hope.  The people who live in cities are caught in-between segregation and integration, diversity and distinction, and density and privacy.  Their quality of life is determined in how they respond to these challenges.

City Form Lab

http://cityform.mit.edu/en.html

The City Form Lab at the Singapore University of Technology & Design in collaboration with the School of Architecture & Planning at MIT focuses on empirical studies of urban form. We develop new software tools for researching city form; use cutting-edge spatial analysis and statistics to investigate how the physical pattern of urban infrastructure affects the social, environmental and economic quality of urban environments; and develop creative design and policy solutions for contemporary urban challenges. By bringing together multi-diciplinary urban research expertise  and excellence in design, we develop context sensitive and timely insight about the role of urban form in affecting the quality of life in 21st century cities.

The Solar Foundation

http://www.thesolarfoundation.org

The Solar Foundation is an independent national 501(c)(3) nonprofit working to demonstrate the global benefits of solar energy through research and education. Founded in 1977 and based in Washington, DC, we are increasing the widespread adoption of solar energy and transforming the marketplace through our coordinated public education & outreach efforts, high-level data collection, and innovative research. 

The Energy Collective

http://theenergycollective.com

The Energy Collective is an independent, moderated community of professionals focused on the complex challenges of meeting the world's energy needs sustainably. Our members are our content contributors, and include leading scientists, activists, policy makers, executives and entrepreneurs.

Pop Tech

http://poptech.org

We convene this community in intimate, peer-level gatherings where participants can share their most provocative questions and their most promising new ideas, and begin to work together on new approaches to some of the world’s toughest challenges.

Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org

Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project based on an openly editable model. The name "Wikipedia" is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning "quick") and encyclopedia. Wikipedia's articles provide links to guide the user to related pages with additional information.

Give Well

http://www.givewell.org

GiveWell is an independent, nonprofit charity evaluator. We find outstanding giving opportunities and publish the full details of our analysis to help donors decide where to give.

Skoll Foundation

http://www.skollfoundation.org

The Skoll Foundation drives large scale change by investing in, connecting and celebrating social entrepreneurs and the innovators who help them solve the world’s most pressing problems.

Zooniverse

https://www.zooniverse.org

The Zooniverse is home to the internet's largest, most popular and most successful citizen science projects. Our current projects are here but plenty more are on the way. If you're new to the Zooniverse, we suggest picking a project and diving in - the same account will get you into all of our projects, and you can keep track of what you've contributed by watching 'My Zooniverse'.

Building a Smarter Planet

http://asmarterplanet.com

Building a smarter planet is an IBM-sponsored blog intended to provide readers with a place to talk about the issues raised within the content. It is our hope that you will feel compelled to share some of the things you see, read and hear on this blog with your friends, family and peers. This blog is not going to deliver final answers to the issues raised, but we hope it acts as a starting point for conversations about how we can help make our planet smarter.