IdeaEconomy.Net

Big Ideas:

• Social Entrepreneurs focus on doing good in the world, not only profits.
• IdeaMensch summarizes the work of 33 social entrepreneurs making a difference.

IdeaMensch has a great post providing examples of  33 social entrepreneurs. These social entrepreneurs are proof that talented individuals can indeed make a substantial difference to the world.

Some of my favourite examples are:

Emile Cureau and Rachel Cope are developing a charitable web app called LazyAngel that allows Internet users to fight child malnutrition for free.

Print a Forest, aims to plant 75 trees for every tree used for printing on paper.

Matt Flannery is the co-founder of Kiva, the original global microfinance platform. Kiva benefits low-income entrepreneurs by offering microloans from people like you and me.

Kendra Stitt Robins is the founder and executive director of Project Night Night, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing care packages for homeless and transient children living in shelters across the country.

Take a moment now to read about all the social entrepreneurs on IdeaMensch.

Action Items

• Get some inspiration and read about the 33 social entrepreneurs.
• Think about how you can shift your business or job to doing a little more good in the world?
• Profits are not enough for a meaningful life, plan on how you are going to make a difference.

Big Ideas:

• Collaboration and creativity are big buzz words now but most businesses don’t really know how to collaborate or be creative.
• Collaborative efforts often produce mediocre results because ego gets in the way.
• A great team can produce amazing results, but finding those team members is not an easy task.

There is no question that the Internet has changed the way we work and connect with others. From a few people working on a shared Google document to thousands contributing to projects like Wikipedia or Linux, we are collaborating in unprecedented ways. When it works, collaboration is synergistic and amazing. The problem is that too often, real, meaningful collaboration is thwarted by an ugly thing called people.

As much as we talk about creativity and collaboration, most people don’t really know what those things mean. We are all human, so egos get in the way. We want to own, control and dominate. It happens with children playing together, in office politics and in volunteer or non-profit settings. Too often, it is more important to be right than to do the right thing. That is where collaboration fails.

Intuitively, we understand the benefits of  co-working, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding or a great business team on our collaborative efforts, but most of us also have many negative experiences where team efforts get mired in bureaucracy and territorial silo building. It is pretty hard to create something amazing when team members are jockeying for control and recognition.

At least from my experiences, I believe that most businesses don’t understand collaboration. How many of your colleagues or customers are still emailing Word and Excel documents as attachments? If you are over 30 years old, chances are your business processes are still heavily influenced from the Microsoft dominated days of installed software more than two decades ago. The world is a different place now. There are plenty of examples of dynamic, young companies are prospering even when the partners are global dispersed, but they are still the exception.

For real collaboration to work, many elements need to be in place:

1. Trust. Great relationships take time to build. With the exception of old schoolmates or childhood friends, most of us don’t have those deep social connections anymore.
2. Talent. Each person has to bring some unique skill to the team. Partnerships quickly fall apart when there is even the appearance of a less than equal contribution.
3. Personality. There are some people you just can’t work with regardless of their skills. Finding people that you like AND are good is not easy.
4. Shared vision. All members of the team have to be pulling in the same direction for the collaboration to be successful.
5. Technological savvy. Everyone needs to buy into the tools to work together. There are talented geniuses who can seclude themselves from the rest of the world, but you need to embrace technology if you expect to really collaborate with a good team, regardless of where they are located.
6. Communicate. Information hoarding is a remnant of the industrial age. Remove all bottlenecks to effective and direct communication. Social capital is more valuable than financial capital.

Collaboration is Still King

Amazing things can happen if you build the right team. The problem is that you have to sort through many less than optimal candidates on your way. It is all a numbers game, work with as many people as you can to find the right talent. Results will be mediocre most of the time, but every once in a while you will find that diamond in the rough. Do everything you can to work with the diamonds and throw the coal back in the ground for someone else to deal with.

Action Items

• If you haven’t already, move your business to the cloud. Everything from shared documents, online workspaces, project management and customer relationship management software can be done much better online where everyone has access to the same information in real time.
• Deliberately start and join new projects with new team members. The only way to find great people to work with is to work with a lot of people.
• Get really good at something. Talented people are not going to want to work with you if you don’t bring anything to the table.
• Personality counts. You need to play nice with others if you want them to stick around.
• Great businesses are built on great processes. Get organized and anal about how you do business, communicate and serve your employees and customers. Creative breakthroughs do not come from some unorganized eureaka moment. Real innovation is systematic and deliberate, and almost always the result of hard work, rich collaborative efforts and insights from outside sources.

Big Ideas:

• Social Entrepreneurship is about focusing on making the world a better place, not just profit maximization.
• Entrepreneurs have a choice of socially good versus socially destructive business activity. We are either part of the problem or part of the solution.

There are many ways to make a living. You could sell gourmet pet food to rich yuppies. You can market $97 get rich quick schemes on the Internet. You can  promote the latest abdominal exercise machine on TV promising 6-pack abs with only 5 minutes a day. Maybe you could start a cup cake business selling $5 sugar highs. There are far too many businesses that are a net drain on society, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

It is possible to do good AND earn a profit. Unfortunately, economics has put the goal of profit maximization above everything else. Imagine a world where businesses maximized social good instead. Profits are important, if you lose money for too long you will go out of business, but no one needs private jets, luxury yachts and $200,000 cars – levels of profits, particularly when so much of the world lacks basic access to food, health care and education.

It doesn’t necessarily follow that you have to forsake profits for social good either. What if you could get rich doing good in the world? Money can pervert incentives to create real societal value, but there are businesses prospering with a heavy social good focus. That is what social entrepreneurship is about, using entrepreneurial and business skills towards making the world a better place.

Social Entrepreneurship Links

Social Entrepreneurship on Wikipedia.

A social entrepreneur recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create and manage a venture to achieve social change (a social venture). While a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur focuses on creating social capital. Thus, the main aim of social entrepreneurship is to further social and environmental goals.

Grameen Bank
Noble Peace Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus’s micro loan bank funding rural poor. One of the most famous examples of social entrepreneurship.

Social entrepreneurship on PBS.org.
Examples of social entrepreneurs, lesson plans for teachers, and many great links for further research.

Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at The Duke Fuqua School of Business.
Social entrepreneurship case studies, academic research and other resources.

Skoll Foundation
Leading social entrepreneurship foundation with over $250 million in funding for social entrepreneurs. Many examples of social entrepreneurs.

Ashoka.org
One of the largest and most famous organizations that invests in social entrepreneurs around the world.

Acumen Fund
Invests in entrepreneurial approaches to solving global poverty.

Umair Haque
Harvard Business School professor and leading thinker on the need for socially productive business and economic activity.

SocialEdge.org (A Skoll Foundation program.)
Great articles on social entrepreneurship and related topics.

Canadian Social Entrepreneurship Foundation
Provides funding, resources, and mentorship for social entrepreneurs under 40 years old in Canada.

Social Entrepreneurship on Alltop.com
Links to the latest posts from many leading social entrepreneurship blogs and websites.

GreenMarketing.tv
Articles, interviews with social entrepreneurs, marketing tutorials and more. Very comprehensive site.

School for Social Entrepreneurs
UK based training programs for social entrepreneurs.

Public Radio International Social Entrepreneurship Podcast

Social Innovation Conversations
Large selection of podcasts on social entrepreneurship.

Action Items

• Ask yourself, is your business making the world a better place or are you selling toxic products and services that are a net drain to society and the environment?
• If you are not happy with that first answer, what can you do to change it?
• Read about social entrepreneurs in the links above to see what is possible if you put your mind to it. You might just make the world a little better place.

Big Ideas

• Average lifespans have been increasing for more than a century.
• Science is on the verge of substantially increasing our longevity.
• Aging is a disease and it can be slowed.
• Increased lifespans are already altering our economies, this is only the beginning. [Read more →]

Big Ideas

• Subtle and creative advertising can be much more effective than in your face interruptions.
• Hi-Tec demonstrates water-proof shoes that help you walk on water.

The Newest Sports Craze – Liquid Mountaineering – Walking on Water

[Read more →]

Big Ideas

• Tens of thousands are now involved with the Occupy Wall Street Protests worldwide
• Web based platforms facilitate the coordination of mass gatherings and protests around the world
• With online collaboration tools, a single leader or clear plan are not required.

You have undoubtedly heard about the Occupy Wall Street protests that have been growing around the world. The short news snippets don’t really capture the magnitude of the movement. Protests are being scheduled in dozens of cities around the world and recently the Almalgamated Transit Union, with 190,000 members has given its support. This is a world wide phenomenon and it is growing quickly.

How Occupy Wall Street Started

The birth of the movement was a post on the Adbusters website on July 13th. Here is a small quote from that first call to action,

On September 17, we want to see 20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices.

The home page of OccupyWallSt.org describes the movement as,

Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.

Occupy Wall Street to Occupy the World

Another website, OccupyTogether, has since been created to coordinate some of the scheduled protests and other activities in dozens of cities around the world.

On Oct. 4th, the date of this post, there were more than 39,000 followers for the @OccupyWallSt Twitter account, with many thousands more for city focused protests around the world. (@OccupyChicago – 7000, @OccupyLA – 5000, @Occupy_Boston – 3500, @OccupyToronto – 1600, @OccupyTokyo – 400, with many more for every major city on the planet.)

Lessons in Collaboration

We have learned from the middle east uprisings this spring that leaderless movements have the power to topple governments and really change the world.  Occupy Wall Street is no different. There is no central organization or leader directing the movement,  participants are connecting and coordinating with widely available web based platforms . There are groups like MoveOn.org, that are trying to co-opt the protests, but for the most part, it is a largely ego-less and egalitarian process. Even the demands of OccupyWallStreet.org have been community driven.

The Future of Collaboration

Whether you support the protests or not, there are many principles here to learn from. With the internet, and social media in particular, ordinary citizens can coordinate and mobilize on a large scale. Time, money and central leadership are no longer necessary for massive collaboration.

Consider some of these implications.

• Motivating and involving a dispersed volunteer effort is starkly different than an employer – employee relationship. Try motivating people to take action without paying them.
• A vision to do good in the world is far more powerful than any monetary reward. Is your company making the world a better place?
• Large groups of people can be mobilized without central control or authority. What could your employees accomplish if given the freedom?
• Democratic and egalitarian processes can formulate a unified vision. Direction doesn’t have to come from the boss. Give your employees the information and freedom to direct their own future.
• Self-interests and ego gratification only serve to derail the process. Let the cause or vision be the focus, not a rock star executive.

Action Items

• For your next project, try an egalitarian process where there is no leader and decisions must be made democratically.
• Find a meaningful unifying vision for the project, and get out of the way.
• Put trust in the process. You will not always get your way, but continued involvement by motivated participants is far more valuable than being in control.
• If your company is not making the world a better place, than maybe it is time to adjust your priorities.

Links
OccupyWallSt.org
OccupyTogether.org
General Assembly for Occupy Wall Street
Reddit -  Occupy Wall Street

Big Ideas

• Jonathan Fields introduces three simple questions to help tackle your fears.

Is fear of failure holding you back from success? Author Jonathan Fields has a great TEDx video providing a blueprint to overcoming fears with three easy questions.
[Read more →]

Big Ideas:

• We get more satisfaction when we exert more effort.
• Obesity may be linked to how easy it has become to eat high calorie foods.

Photo by Kappa Wayfarer

What would bring more personal satisfaction to you, being dropped on the top of Mount Everest by a helicopter or actually climbing the entire mountain and reaching it on your own after days of effort?

[Read more →]

Big Ideas

• Downsizing the size of your home can save you money and time.
• It is likely that you could live in 1/4 of the space you currently do.
• Smaller designs can still be beautiful.

Average home sizes in the U.S. have increased from 983 square feet in 1950, to 2,430 square feet in 2006, according to the National Association of Home Builders. Over that same period, the average number of people per household has declined from 3.37 to 2.57. (US Census) With record high foreclosures in the U.S. in recent years, perhaps Americans in particular have been living in too large, for too long?

[Read more →]

Big Ideas:

• Social Media is transforming business, government and society in general.
• Success requires embracing the principles of Authenticity, Transparency and Collaboration.
• The Alberta PC Party Leadership Race offers a great case study in the future of politics.

Social media and technology in general, are having profound effects on all aspects of our lives. From toppling dictatorships in the Middle East, to getting an under dog in the white house, to outing rioting hoodlums in London and Vancouver, the world is much different than it was just a decade ago.

[Read more →]