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.

Related posts:

1. Introductory Guide to Social Entrepreneurship
2. The Rise of Social Entrepreneurship
3. The Young are Taking Over the World

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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.

Related posts:

1. Do Businesses Understand Collaboration?
2. Share Office Space to Lower Costs and Increase Collaboration
3. Collaboration Through Social Media

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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.

Sonia Arrison, author of the recent book, 100+: How The Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything, From Careers and Relationships to Family And Faith, writes on her website:

We are about to enter the golden age of aging. During the Cro-Magnon era, average human life expectancy was eighteen years. By the European Renaissance it was closer to thirty. Today in the developed West it is approximately eighty. As a species we are rightfully proud of this testament to our will and ingenuity. But few among us are prepared for the revolution on our doorstep—the coming explosion of scientific know-ledge that will increase the length and quality of life in ways that were unimaginable even twenty years ago.

On my JetSetCitizen.com blog I wrote a post titled, You are going to live to 150 years old. I linked to three TED videos, pointing to much longer lifespans in the near future:

Dean Ornish says your genes are not your fate

Aubrey de Grey says we can avoid aging

Barry Schuler: Genomics 101

And all I can tell you is, stay healthy for 20 years. If you can stay healthy for 20 years, you’ll see 150, maybe 300.

What if we do live to 100 or 150 years old or more?

Even if you doubt the claims of the above authors and scientists, extended lifespans are already having a profound impact on our society. I have an 80 year old uncle who spends six months in Thailand every year. My 91 year old grandmother still plants her own garden. We are already living longer now  and we haven’t started implementing the key genetic research that is still being tested on animals.

Consider some of the ramifications:

• Retirement ages must increase or government pension obligations will not be met. In my JetSetCitizen post, I wrote:
  

  In 1935 when the Social Security Act was implemented in the United States, average life expectancy was 59 years old. Introducing pensions to those over 65 years old seemed like a good idea because most people would die before they ever received any money. Now people are living to 78 on average in the US and even longer in other countries. There are people collecting pensions for more years than they worked.

• 100 will be the new 60. Consider the lifestyle and activities of people aged 60 now. That’s what it will be like for 80 or 100 year-olds in the future.
• Our medical systems will be crushed. In 1960, US health care expenditures were 5.2% of GDP. They are now about 16% and rising. The cheap revolution we have enjoyed in manufactured goods and technology, will not be experience in service industries like education and health care.

Action Items

• If you are under 50, it is unlikely that your government will be able to afford your retirement pension. Start saving for yourself.
• Take care of your body. Living longer won’t be enjoyable with deteriorating joints, injuries and other medical maladies. Your current lifestyle decisions will catch up with you.
• Prepare for an extra decade or more of work. 65 is an arbitrary retirement age. It will most certainly be increased.
• If you are under about 50, it is not too late to change your career or lifestyle. You will still have 20 or more productive work years ahead of you.
• With decades of work ahead of you, why not travel the world or follow your dreams now?  There will be time to make up the work later if needed.

Related posts:

1. Forget Job2.0 – Cut your Work Hours and Start Life2.0
2. The Future is about Finding Meaning in Everything We do and Buy
3. How Small of a House Could you Live in?

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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.

What if I fail?

Most of us can be hesitant at times because we ask ourselves, “What if I fail?” Fields says that instead of thinking of realistic failure outcomes, we tend come up with doomsday scenarios. For example,  what will happen if you open your dream business and it completely fails?

We tend to imagine the worst case situation. I will lose all my money. My friends and family will hate me. No one will hire me again because I failed. I will never be able to earn the same salary as my current job. My spouse will leave me. I will be forced into bankruptcy and won’t be able to get credit again for seven years. I will be living on the street. My life will be over. Even my dog will leave me because I won’t be able to feed it.

Fields recommends coming up with a realistic failure scenario. What will really happen if you fail? A more honest assessment might be, you burn through all of your savings. You will have to get a job again. At the very least, you will have learned a great deal and you will probably have made some great connections. Make the failure scenario as clear and vivid as possible.

More importantly, Fields instructs us to give equal attention to the other half of the question, “how will I recover?” What will you do to get back on your feet if you fail? Most situations are recoverable, so answering this question alone will do a lot to minimize your fears.

What if I Do Nothing?

Jonathan Fields goes on to identify two more important questions. The first is, “what if I do nothing?” He says that the “what if I do nothing, is the most horrible scenario out there.” What if you do nothing towards accomplishing your dreams or goals in life and just continue what you are doing today? Think 10, 20 or 30 years into the future. How will you feel if you take no action and never really challenge yourself? Balance this inaction forecast with your how will I recover plan, and you will likely see that doing nothing is much more terrifying.

What if I succeed?

The next question Fields says we need to ask is “what if I succeed?”  Would you work towards achieving your dreams if you absolutely knew you could not fail? What does that success look like? How would you feel? Get a clear mental picture of what your success would look like.

• What if you started exercising and you became much more energetic, healthy and felt good about yourself?
• What if you started that business you always dreamed of, and it succeeded?
• What if you took a year off to travel the world and you never came back home?
• What if you wrote a book and it became a best seller?
• What if you spent more time with your family and you all became closer?

Many of us are afraid of success so we sabotage ourselves? Achieving our life’s goals is not as evil as we might make it out to be.

Action Items

• Make a list of all the things you want to accomplish in life, don’t worry if they are too silly or unrealistic. Just get all your ideas on paper.
• Number them in order of importance. What are the top five things you would like to do with your life?
• Write a few sentences for each about why you want to achieve that goal.
• Now, for each of those top five goals answer the three questions in as vivid detail as you can.

1. What if I fail? What will I do to recover?
2. What if I do nothing?
3. What if I succeed?

Links

Uncertainty: Turning Fear & Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance – The website for Jonathan Field’s latest book.
JonathanFields.com
Follow Jonathan Fields on Twitter

No related posts.

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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?

How about running a full marathon of more than 42 kilometers versus secretly taking a taxing and just running across the finish line?

I think it is safe to say, that most of us understand the value of effort and sacrifice in our accomplishments. We tend to under-appreciate the things we get easily.

The Ikea Effect

One description of this psychological bias is termed the Ikea Effect. Wired Magazine author Jonah Lehrer writes about the personal satisfaction from assembling our own furniture,

Although the furniture might look like crap — I always have a few leftover screws — the flimsy assembly of molded plywood feels like a masterpiece.

Lehrer goes on to write about experiments that show that mice have a preference for food they have to work harder for. It turns out humans are not so different. With the advance of pre-prepared meals and fast food, it has become very easy to get a high caloric intake.

Food stops being something we make and create — it doesn’t require very many lever presses, so to speak — and becomes something we simply ingest. Eating just gets easier. And then we get fatter.

But maybe we’re not just consuming more calories because they’re available at such a low cost. Maybe we’re also consuming more calories because each calorie gives us less pleasure. The lesson of those lever-pressing mice, after all, is that when we don’t work for our food — when it only requires a single press, or a few whirls of the microwave — it tastes much less delicious.

Relationships seem stronger the harder you had to work to make them successful. You appreciate anything you make yourself more highly than that which you buy. Hard work and sacrifice make final accomplishments that much more rewarding. In our convenience focused lives, perhaps we can increase our personal satisfaction by taking the more arduous route.

Action Items

• Instead of complaining about traffic of your daily commute, how about cycling to work so you get exercise and a sense of accomplishment everyday.
• Grow your own herbs and use them in the preparation of your own meals. Nothing will be as healthy or delicious.
• Stop looking for shortcuts in work and life. There is no substitute for hard work and focused effort.

Related posts:

1. Forget Job2.0 – Cut your Work Hours and Start Life2.0

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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.

The Social Media Big Three

The way we work and live is undergoing nothing short of a revolution. Three themes that I tend to keep coming back to are authenticity, transparency and collaboration (or engagement).

Authenticity

Authenticity is somewhat of a loaded and overused term now, but it remains an integral part of this social media age. We can’t trust our food to have real ingredients, companies to represent our best interests, nor politicians to deliver on their promises. Everything around us seems to be a marketing pitch, so when we find someone or something that appears to be real,  we embrace it.

Consider this video series of Alberta PC Leadership Candidate, Doug Griffiths. It is very refreshing to find a politician that is not afraid to be himself and honestly communicate in the open without media handlers getting in the way.

Transparency

In a world where everyone carries a camera with internet connectivity, it is very hard to hide anything for long. Police and governments are using social media to identify and locate criminals, just as the world is holding dictators responsible for the carnage they are wrecking on their own citizens. Corporations and politicians can no longer hide behind closed doors either.

Two of the Alberta PC Leadership Candidates had a short Twitter debate, highlighted on Stuart Thomson’s Tumblr blog. In the dialogue, candidate @Rick_Orman misrepresents @GriffMLA’s stand on a provincial sales tax and is soon called on it. Thomson offers a great commentary on the discussion, including “See if you can spot the younger candidate.”

With Doug Griffiths as the youngest candidate at 38 years old, it does appear that youth is a substantial advantage in understanding how to use the new new tools to connect and engage.

Collaboration (Engagement)

With social media, the one-to-many broadcast model of traditional communications has given way to a more egalitarian system where everyone has a voice and can publish their own articles, videos or anything else they wish. This change in power structure is hard for many to cope with. The ‘do as I say’ mentality of older and larger organizations, is not acceptable for younger generations brought up in with a culture of inclusion.

Even with smaller startups, non-profits and community groups, egos and turf protection still get in the way of the ultimate purpose of the business or organization. There always seems to be someone who thinks they are correct and refuses to listen to alternative view points. Skilled knowledge workers and citizens are no longer tolerating this lack of involvement and demand to be heard.

I have noticed substantial resistance to basic collaboration tools like shared Google Docs. General principles like respect for the ideas of others or inviting divergent view points are commonly overlooked by the stronger members of the group. Often, these people don’t even notice how they are trampling on the good intentions of others.

Politics, is no different. Inexpensive technology, ubiquitous internet access and robust social media platforms offer unprecedented opportunities to connect with constituents. Of course, there will be those who don’t get it, like Newt Gingrich and his purchased Twitter Followers. However, there is no doubting how integral social media was to Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign. As FastCompany magazine reported;

What Obama did so successfully is that he went to where his customer base was. He could no longer afford to meet with everyone at their kitchen tables, but he could friend them on Facebook or follow them on Twitter.

Alberta PC Leadership Race

Getting back to the Alberta PC Leadership Campaign, here is a chart of all the candidates and their Twitter statistics. I will let you draw your own conclusions from this, but the real test is contacting the candidates via Twitter to see who responds and what they say. You can’t fake real engagement. It takes work.

(Full Disclosure: I am volunteering on Doug Griffiths campaign for the Alberta PC Party Leadership because he embraces the principles of Authenticity, Transparency and Collaboration more than anyone I have ever seen. In fact, he has a 100% volunteer campaign solely on his ability to inspire supporters.)

Action Items:

• Are you and your company pretending to be something you are not? How about embracing the core of what you really stand for and letting the whole world know about it?
• Do you have secrets you don’t want the public to know? If you have to hide your actions, perhaps it is time to stop doing bad things?
• Do your employees have all the information they need to know to help you grow your company? Why not open up the books and let everyone contribute?
• Make time every week to really listen to customers, employees and partners and try to understand their ideas and view points. Even if you feel they are wrong, there is much to be gained from giving employees an opportunity to fail.
• Are you connecting with customers and potential customers through social media? Effective social media takes time, but the rewards can be worth it.

Related posts:

1. Forget Social Media, Business Need Results
2. Is Social Media Making us Less Human?
3. Creative Marketing and Social Media Strategy from Jerry Aulenbach

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Big Ideas:

• Social media connections are weak; real world meet ups are still essential.
• Smaller conferences focused around an activity build stronger connections.

The Rise of Anti-Conferences

It is more important than ever to make real world connections than ever, but conferences? Spending a few days with thousands of people frantically handing out business cards is a difficult way to establish meaningful connections.

TheNextWeb reported on the rising trend of anti-conferences:

I can go and swap my business card with 500 people at a conference, but at a smaller event I can make 100 solid relationships with people that last a lifetime.

Unconferences have been around for a while providing an unconventional and creative setting for people to meet and network, but I’m witnessing a trend for the conference aspect of an event, (thousands of participants watching a speaker, bad coffee, organized networking) being thrown out of the window and more activity conscious events being organized. Friends who went on Summit Series, an event for entrepreneurs on a charted cruise ship that sailed round the Bahamas, were raving about their yoga/music and shark tagging expeditions as well as the relationships they made onboard.

Social media has made it easier than ever to connect with thousands of people around the world, but most of those connections are tenuous at best. Real and lasting relationships come from  intimate real world gatherings where the focus is on something other than generating immediate leads.

Having attendees participate in activities like rock climbing, hiking, yoga, wine-tasting or cooking classes is a great ice breaker that immediately creates shared experiences.

Action Items:

• Organize a sporting or cultural activity for clients, suppliers and/or acquaintances that focus on people, not business.
• Make a consistent effort to meet other professionals without a hard sell. Focus on them, not you.
• Set aside 30 minutes a day to support and connect others online. Again, NO sales pitches.

Related posts:

1. How Web Videos Power Global Innovation – Another Great TED Video
2. Is Social Media Making us Less Human?
3. Social Capital is More Valuable than Money

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Big Idea:

• You can’t optimize yourself to greatness, outrageous results require outrageous actions.

Entrepreneurship, Lady Gaga Style

Love her or hate her, there is no denying that Lady Gaga is a superstar. She knows how to shock, entertain and continually push the bar. From bikini stage outfits to arriving at an awards ceremony in a man-carried egg, Lady Gaga knows how to make a splash.

Most businesses don’t think like Lady Gaga. Playing by the rules and doing what everyone else is doing is much safer than taking bold risks. That is why the state of business is so damn lousy. How often are you wowed by a company?

The Problem with Businesses

Ramit Sethi of Iwillteachyoutoberich.com wrote something that has bothered me for a while:

Years ago, American Airlines removed one olive from each first-class salad, resulting in a savings of $40,000/year. They are a massive public company with huge scale, so you can’t get those kinds of results. But the principle — focusing on small actions that give you incredibly huge results — is something you can do.

I am a huge fan of Ramit and I certainly believe in the idea of the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule where focusing on high impact areas can deliver disproportionate results, however I don’t think American Airlines cutting an olive from salads falls in that category.

Far too many businesses strive to cut costs and get more efficient as a way to success. That mentality might of worked in the industrial age, but we are long past that stage.

Do you think Lady Gaga has achieved the level of success she has because she is more efficient or better at cost cutting than the hundreds of thousands of less successful performers?

So many businesses are obsessed about keeping labour costs to some predetermined percentage of sales. Squeezing even an extra 0.1 percent can potentially add a lot of money to immediate profits but at what cost? Companies bullshit about how important customer service and employee satisfaction are, yet try to cut worker hours down to a bare minimum. The result is overworked, stress out employees and customers that are not getting satisfactory service.

What if those companies took a hit up front and actually increased the amount of staff on hand? What would be the long term benefit of a less stressed workforce or customers that can actually get the assistance they need?

United Airlines cut the olive from martinis in business class. Do you think those passengers noticed? I know some that did. What is the cost of an olive per business class traveler? They are saving five or ten cents on a fare that can be thousands of dollars.

That type of cost cutting is short sighted and self-defeating. I wonder how much the consultants were paid that provided the idea to cut an olive from the two airlines? My guess is that companies spending their time counting olives have much bigger problems to deal with.

Seth Godin said,

We see one organization after another, left unchecked, pushing miners or laborers or bureaucrats to exhaustion, all in the name of enhanced productivity.

Cash flow and costs are important but you can’t optimize your way to greatness. (Unless you do it to an extreme, Walmart style.) Instead of trying to giving your customers as little as possible, how about taking a cue from Lady Gaga and go full out for every interaction?

Action Items

• Are you running your business with an accountant or entrepreneur mindset?
• Are your trying to be more efficient or are you growing a business?
• Instead of trying to cut from your customers, think about where you can add more value.
• What small thing could you do for your customers or staff that would generate disproportionate results?
• Is there merit in diverting a portion of your marketing budget to making current customers happier? It is much cheaper to keep a current customer than it is to find a new one.

Related posts:

1. Do you Run a Business or a Company?
2. Social Capital is More Valuable than Money
3. How David Beats Goliath – Break the Rules to Succeed

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Big Ideas:

• Here is a great web application that turns email into a game.
• Game dynamics promise to transform many of our experiences into fun, challenging adventures.

Email as a Game?

Finally, one of the greatest productivity destroyers has been gamified. If you have trouble emptying your inbox, Baydin’s Email Game might be the solution.

The best games are simple to understand, yet difficult to master. The Email Game magically delivers those gaming dynamics and takes it one step further by providing a real world achievement, an empty inbox.

How it Works

Connecting to your Gmail account, the Email Game has access to your emails and forces you to take action on every item in your inbox, one at a time. With a time counter racing down to zero, you need to take action quickly to maximize your points.

Quick, what is it going to be? Reply? Delete?, Archive? Take action and earn points. Can’t decide? You can skip an email but you will lose points.

There is an interesting “Boomerang” feature that lets you archive emails, yet bring them back to your inbox at a specified time in the future.

This is a fantastic idea with great execution. Everything is designed to get you to clear emails from your inbox as efficiently as possible.

What else can be Gamified?

Simple gaming dynamics exist in many areas of our lives. We compete for followers, friends and likes online. We collect rewards points and frequent flyer miles. Instantly winning a free ice cream or candy bar used to be a popular motivator for children. Cars like the Chevy Leaf even reward you with a growing electronic plant on your dashboard when you save gas. What components of your business can be turned into a game?

Action Items

• Think of ways to gamify your business offering.
• Can your employees ‘level up’ instead of taking training programs or getting promotions?
• Can you encourage customer loyalty and evangelism through friendly competitions to recommend your services?
• Can service failures like waiting times be made enjoyable through games or contests?

Links
The Gamification of a Sushi Chain in Japan
Games Can Make the World a Better Place

Related posts:

1. The Gamification of Business – Example of Kurasushi in Japan
2. Games Can Make the World a Better Place
3. Gamestorming (Games + Brainstorming) – Fun, Creativity Techniques by Dave Gray

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Big Ideas:

• Social capital is the most valuable asset.
• Startup incubators prove that very little money is needed to build hugely valuable companies.
• 8 effective ways to build social capital.

What is Social Capital?

Social capital is the idea that our networks and connections have value. We understand this idea in expressions like “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” However, it has only been in recent years that people are are really starting to understand and exploit their own social capital.

Let’s start off with a few questions. (I would love to see your answers in the comments.)

As an entrepreneur, what would you rather have; $100,000 in cash or strong connections with potential customers interested in buying your services? It would be pretty easy to burn through that much money without cost-effective ways of generating leads and an efficient conversion process.

Taking that first question further, would your rather have $100,000 now or solid introductions to venture capitalists and angel investors that could potentially provide millions of dollars in financing and provide the expertise to skyrocket your business?

How much money is a successful social media network of thousands of friends, followers and blog readers worth? Imagine if you had to use traditional advertising to convince that market to trust you.

With low start up costs for most technology or service businesses, access to money is nice but certainly not a barrier to success (I have a related post on this called, Is Venture Capital Dead?. Our social networks, however are invaluable in gaining valuable attention in a world awash in information.

Startup Incubators

I often point to the amazing success of start up incubators like Ycombinator and Techstars to demonstrate the power of social capital. With just $20,000 to $30,000 of investment and a few months in the programs, businesses with million dollar valuations have been repeatedly created. Two popular successes have been AirBnB and Dropbox.

Access to mentors, investor networks and just the camaraderie and support of fellow entrepreneurs is a major accelerator to business success.  A good idea and motivated team, supported with the social capital of the incubator are all that is needed.

Economics of Abundance

Unlike financial, resource or physical capital, social capital is not a scarce resource. This is a big idea. The way to get more social capital is through generosity. The more value you create for others, the more social capital, you create for yourself. You don’t need money, education or family connections to accumulate social capital, all that is needed is time and kindness.

How you build Social Capital

• Create insanely great content and give it away for free.
• Get involved in meetups and real world events.
• Be a connector and introduce people who need to meet.
• Share the valuable content of others with your network.
• Be there for your peers with an ear or a helping hand.
• Celebrate your supporters and fans with recognition and genuine appreciation.
• Connect with others without asking for anything.
• In summary: give, share, help, connect.

More Resources
Social Capital on Wikipedia
Academic Definitions of Social Capital from a variety of researchers.

Related posts:

1. Crowdfunding is Much More than Just Raising Capital
2. Is Social Media Making us Less Human?
3. Is Venture Capital Dead?

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