1. The Berkeley Bottom Liners share one resonating trait: Apparently each teammate snores. Loudly.
2. Ellen suffers from a debilitating chips/frites/fries addiction and should seek help immediately.
3. Global X intends to capture the world digitally, and he simply cannot be stopped.
4. Oxford SBS students possess an uncanny talent for compressing two years’ worth of b-school fun into one... week.
5. For Rob, there is no greater indignation than being mistakenly called Edwin.

 

 

"What did you just call me?"

 

The movement is building. Not long ago, I attended conferences where panelists and attendees debated the need for social entrepreneurship. The following oft-discussed themes at this year’s Forum reflected the continuing growth of the field:

 

Even Silicon Valley is getting in on the action. In the past few weeks alone, influential tech personalities have visited the Haas campus and shared their visions for a better world.  Valley veteran and longtime Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner John Doerr, while accepting a lifetime achievement award from the Haas Lester Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, discussed his interest in tackling challenges in education, global health and poverty, and cleantech. I’ve heard celebrated high-tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla focus his remarks exclusively on alternative forms of energy. I’ve had dinner with KP partner Randy Komisar, who declared that at KP, “the best opportunities lie with solving the world’s biggest problems” and highlighted their recent cleantech and pandemic investment initiatives.

 

For me, all of this new interest and activity spawn more questions than answers. Will the private sector seek profit maximization in these endeavors, above all other goals? How interested will they be in pursuing solutions to issue areas where markets have traditionally failed? Are we going to learn how to play together? And what about the gaps between individual or blended initiatives developed by the private, public, and social sectors?

 

 

Where to go from here?

 

Time and time again, the events of the Forum triggered memories of the very life inflection point that has brought me to Benetech, Berkeley, and beyond. In the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, I had responded by becoming the first newly processed volunteer from the Palo Alto area chapter of the Red Cross to be deployed to New York.  There, I earned a field promotion while supervising local volunteers at Ground Zero.  (Prior to that unforgettable, month-long disaster relief assignment, I had worked for an investment bank and a technology startup.)

 

The opportunity to be at the Forum during my final semester at business school has reinforced my desire to converge my experiences and skills to invest in, connect, and celebrate social entrepreneurs. Benetech and Berkeley provided me with incredible opportunities to embark on and prepare further for this journey, and I’m sure that my participation in the Skoll World Forum will play a pivotal role in these future plans.

 

Personally, I see a field full of promise. Even with the uncertainty surrounding my post-graduation plans, I will fight hard to stay a part of it!

 

 

So what *is* the (Berkeley) bottom line?

 

It’s about the people.

 

Moreover, it’s about the people and the power of their ideas. It’s about those who start, structure, and scale organizations and those who marshal resources – financial, human, and intellectual – to bring those ideas to life.

 

The profits (social, environmental, and economic) follow.

 

As I’ve experienced at the 2007 Skoll World Forum, the bottom line is about the people within the communities that were underserved. And it’s about those who now serve them:

 

  

 

2006 Skoll grantee Karen Tse                  2007 Skoll grantee Joe Madiath

 

 

 

Super Skoll staffers Avon Swofford and Johnny Falla

 

 

It’s about a mentor, former boss, and friend:

 

 

2006 Skoll grantee Jim Fruchterman

 

It’s about the future stewards of the movement:

 

 

 

It’s about those back at home who supported us:

 

  

 

UC Berkeley faculty and staff members

 

And last but certainly not least, it’s about two incredible teammates; a connector of the field and champion alumnus of Haas; and a man and his vision for the kind of world he wants to leave behind:

 

 

Jeff Skoll, The Berkeley Bottom Liners, and Social "Victor" Edge

 

My heartfelt thanks to all who represent this bottom line. Our lives and our world are made better by you.

 

(**Special thanks to Jeff Skoll, Sally Osberg, Victor d'Allant, and the rest of the Skoll Foundation for making us part of the 'ohana!)

 

[EO]

2007 has been the year of tap water for me. I live in California, where the municipal tap is generally safe and pretty tasty, as water goes. For years, I was a “buy a bottle of water to take with me whenever I’m out” kind of gal, but business school – and one event in particular - changed all that.

In the Spring of 2006, I was taking Kellie MacElhaney’s Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility class at Haas, and had the opportunity to hear Peter Thum and Jonathan Greenblatt of Ethos Water tell their story.

We heard inspiring tales of two social entrepreneurs moving pallets of bottled water through Los Angeles in the back of their cars and store employees making art projects with Ethos signage. All for the good of access to clean water for children halfway around the world. The pinnacle of their success was the sale to Starbucks, in which the ultimate decision was that scale trumped everything else for the good of the children. 

I love the Ethos story. MBAs with good intentions build a brand and raise public awareness about a preventable social problem, make a buck and set aside 5 cents a bottle to take action (or rather fund action). That a mega-player like Starbucks would come in and take Ethos to the Big Time makes me salivate.

But it didn’t take long for me to start doing a little environmental impact math.

The plastic bottles like the ones that carry Ethos’ municipal tap have had a devastating effect on the environment. The life cycle of just one of those bottles from manufacturing to customer (for 30 short minutes of satisfaction) to landfill (Starbucks does not recycle in its stores) involves a significant chunk of polluting resources.  [More here.]

At the time, Ethos expected $10 million in ten years would go to NGOs that helped children in Africa get access to clean water. While every little bit helps, why is 5 cents the right number?

And what about dangerous chemicals like Bisphenol A and phthalates in plastic that leach into the water over time and cause reproductive harm?

“Is this the right answer to solving world water shortages?” I wondered.

Ethos should be doing everything it can to put itself out of business. Change consumer awareness about clean water issues, and educate them about all that humans do to ensure that less water is available to our poorest populations. Consumers will stop buying bottled water.

Soon after that talk, I started carrying around a reusable water bottle.

At the Forum, I was curious to see another brand of Ethical Water, Belu.

Hmm. A competitor to Ethos! Would it pass the stink test?

A little research and chatting with reps at the Forum revealed that Belu is a nonprofit organization – 100% of profits go to funding water projects around the world. Their bottles are biodegradable (made of corn-based plastic), safer, and can be recycled. The company is also involved in water clean-up projects in communities throughout the UK.  [Belu has a snazzy flash video that will walk you through what they do.] Now we’re talking! An incrementally better bottled water.

I believe moving consumer behavior through innovative products is a great way to create social change. Organizations, whether they are for-profit or nonprofit should all be thinking about how they can create positive impacts. And I’m glad these products are evolving. But for those of us who have the privilege of access to clean water, I say show me the tap.

P.S. A note to say that it has been a pleasure and an honor to participate on SocialEdge as a member of The Berkeley Bottom Line. I love you guys! Sniff.

I can’t believe a full week has passed since the Forum!  I’m now back at Berkeley and fully recharged (ha!).  I wanted to get one last post in about the last day of the Forum and some final reflections.

Thursday was kind of a day of the walking wounded.  Not only were people just exhausted from conference fatigue, but there was also some serious partying going on late into the night.  Let’s just say that many tequila shots were consumed.  Don’t worry though, I won’t repeat Peter Grabriel’s joke about the “social” in social entrepreneur [I’m sure you can count on Edwin for that]. 

Everybody I spoke with loved the Forum.  These are some of the smartest people around and they have all dedicated their lives to helping those less fortunate.  And, they did so by choice.  Most of them could be making serious money in corporate America, but they choose to bust their buts everyday to serve the public interest. 

The Skoll World Forum is a chance for these people to step back from their daily lives and reflect on the year.  Peter Samuelson, for example, explained to me that it is an incredibly useful milestone for him.  He’s able to stop and see what he’s accomplished in the last year.  For the newbies, they are clearly just in awe.  It’s kind of fun to watch them run around networking with as many people as possible.  The passion and energy is infectious.

Personally, I am more excited about social entrepreneurship than ever before.  The buzz word around b-schools today is “Innovation.”  I’ve been learning about the characteristics of innovators, and I can tell you that social entrepreneurs are textbook cases.  These people reverse the rules, they run twice as fast as the next guy, and embrace failure as a learning experience. 

As I head back to my business school bubble (even if only for a short time), I can’t help but reflect on what’s next.  In the short term, I can’t wait to dive back into our efforts to expand social entrepreneurship programming at Berkeley.  Even Bill Drayton today called for more SE education in business schools.  See Edwin’s post here for more info on our efforts.

After graduation, I look forward to applying these principles in my own career.  I’ve been saying that I’m going into corporate social responsibility, but maybe it’s time to reframe my perspective.  Maybe I’m going to be a corporate social entrepreneur!

[RK]

Throughout the week, I've been asking social entrepreneurs what they hope to get out of the Forum.  I've polled Skoll social entrepreneurs, Ashoka Fellows, Acumen Fund Fellows, and Schwab entrepreneurs.  (Not too shabby a selection, I must say.)

The most popular responses included:

    -  To learn.

    -  To be inspired.

    -  To tell one’s story, and hear those of others.

    -  To marshal resources for one’s organization and its cause.

    -  To seek out strategic partnerships to strengthen (organizational and programmatic) practices and solve problems.

Donning my "aspiring practitioner" hat, I learned just how valuable engaging with other Forum delegates could really be.  During the Wednesday session on "The Problems and Perils of Scaling," I was mesmerized by the stories shared and lessons learned by Schwab entrepreneurs, both on the panel and in the audience.  Pamela Hartigan did a fantastic job of moderating the discussion; oftentimes, she called on audience members for advice and not just questions.

It was in this context that I was able to reach out to both a panelist and an audience member, to discuss one of many initiatives keeping me busy back at Berkeley.

At Haas, I’ve been driving efforts to create, vet, and incubate a social venture idea in the field of sexual health.  The mission is to advance sexual well-being and address the inadequacy of sex education – on issues such as HIV/AIDS, population growth, and youth development – in underserved communities worldwide.**

Panelist Mechai Viravaidya, founder of The Population and Community Development Association, regaled the panel audience with humorous anecdotes of successful methods he once employed to de-stigmatize sex and to encourage family planning in Thailand.  After the session, I approached Mechai with a follow-up request to discuss my project with him.  Mechai not only graciously agreed, he also immediately connected me to his associate.  Furthermore, an audience member within earshot of our conversation introduced herself as an HIV/AIDS faculty researcher at the University of California, San Francisco Medical School.  She's offered to help me access student resources and field experts at UCSF!

After Thursday’s closing plenary for the Forum, I separately bumped into Mechai, his associate, and the USCF researcher.  Both parties reiterated their willingness to help with my project.  And while it’s too early to say where such connections might lead, these delegates truly personified the collaborative spirit of the Forum.

With the field of social entrepreneurship still nascent and the issues so vast, I ask that more practitioners – both current and aspiring changemakers – be granted access to future Forums, to catalyze another much-needed shift in social innovation.

(**Please contact me if you'd like to help out with the sexual health social venture!)

[EO]

On Thursday at the 2007 Skoll World Forum, many of us started the morning recovering from a heavy night of socializing with a cup of coffee and the provocative, if stuffy (Mark had a cold), words of Mark Kramer, co-founder of FSG Social Impact Advisors.*

He chose to discuss trends in philanthropy and social entrepreneurship as he sees it. The most personally compelling point for me was the notion that the next generation of social entrepreneurs and current students do not see the hard-line distinction between nonprofit and for-profit organizations. There has been so much anxiety around defining social entrepreneurship on either the nonprofit or for-profit model, but those who are most vocal are the entrepreneurs and funders who have been working in the sector for thirty years or more.

The younger generation--leaders and funders who are emerging to the scene, and may have come from wealth or not—does not see things in such black and white terms. Based on my experience at Berkeley, I would absolutely agree.

What I see is that students who have a professional inclination to “social responsibility” are looking for fulfilling, meaningful work above all else and are considering both for-profit and nonprofit career opportunities side-by-side. They are interested in the impacts of organizations first, over their legal status. Perhaps cynically, I would suggest that --all things being equal-- MBAs are most concerned with the potential compensation trade-offs when they are faced with both options.

Another hypothesis—proposed by my illustrious co-blogger Rob--is that our generation has not witnessed the direct conflict between sectors that our parents’ generation did. Citizens (representative of the social sector) held a great deal of mistrust for the government during the Vietnam War and Watergate. Corporations went head-to-head against government and activists over the Clean Air Act and the rise of the EPA’s enforcement of superfund site clean-ups. Sure, relationships across the sectors are not perfect, but it is far more common to see sectors come together around a problem today because there is less animosity overall.

Let’s hope that, by working more closely together, the sectors will continue to learn about each other and will do less to create divisions that harm society’s ability to meet global needs.

[*Full disclosure: I will be working as a full-time consultant with FSG in the fall. But I had not met Mark before today.]

What do John Elkington, Bill Drayton, Roger Martin, Roshaneh Zafar, Martin Fisher, Taddy Blecher, and Mindy Lubber all have in common?  Apart from all being wicked smart and accomplished social entrepreneurs, they all had dinner with Ed Miliband last night.

During the closing sessions today, almost all of them talked about this dinner.  What happened there?  Who said what?  What did they eat?  Did anybody get drunk?  Why wasn’t I invited?  Oh right …

Apparently, over dinner, someone posed the question, “Do you think government should be involved in social entrepreneurship?”  Seriously.

I was heartened to hear several speakers, especially Bill Drayton and an impassioned Mindy Lubber, point out the dangers of this question.  Mindy explained, “I can’t imagine government not being a part of these solutions.”  Can you see an end to poverty and climate change without government involvement?

“Getting to scale is not about doubling the size of your budget,” she said.  The problems we are talking about are global, bigger than any single organization and, as a result, our solutions must be just as big.

I see this point as quite related to my earlier post about corporate involvement in SE.  Since when do we have the luxury of not accepting help?  Taddy Belcher spoke today about Yunus’ “business is boxed” theory, which is basically the idea that different sectors and institutions operate in strict silos.  Taddy argued that social entrepreneurs are uniquely qualified to break these silos by educating people about “how to blur the lines.” 

What a cool idea: An opinion leader and even public awareness/advocacy campaign to promote social entrepreneurship.  We could call it “Blurring the Lines.” 

We are a pain in the @ss.

There, I said it.  Sometimes it makes sense to simply not mince words.  I’m not apologetic about stating it.  After all, I'm merely recounting what I've been told.  And I’m not sorry about being one. 

The delegates at the Forum are a collective pain in the @ss to those who support and defend the status quo.  This status quo is comprised of rigid structures and bureaucratic institutions that turn a blind eye towards issues threatening humanity and the world.  Massive issues that Google.org leader Larry Brilliant speaks of, like climate change and communicable diseases.  Root cause issues being tackled by people like Muhammad Yunus, including poverty at the community and global level.

As Sally Osberg and Roger Martin have described in their SSIR article, by definition, social entrepreneurs call attention to such issues.  They then identify and implement solutions that, according to Muhammad Yunus, if can be done once, then can be done six billion times.  Finally, social entrepreneurs work to integrate the solutions into society at large and replicate their impact.  As stated in Sally and Roger’s article, social entrepreneurs are paradoxically both disruptive and generative.  Thought leaders at the Forum have called the field "noisy."  And they're glad the noise that they're making is being heard.

The Berkeley Bottom Line team has also been accused of being a pain in the @ss (again, in those exact words!).  When we’re not in Oxford blogging, we’re driving an initiative to expand and institutionalize social entrepreneurship programming at Berkeley.  One goal (of many) is to use Haas resources to identify research projects at Berkeley with potential to make huge social or environmental impact, and take them from the “laboratory” to the “real world.”

This initiative began as a white paper that I wrote during my first year at Haas, and the funding that the paper received helped to pay for our trip to Oxford.  With Tom Kalil as our advisor, we’ve added first-year students to the team, and have been making a lot of noise at school.  Harvard SE Lab founder Gordon Bloom, whom I bumped into at the Forum, encouraged us to keep making noise.  Indeed, we’ve reached out to Greg Dees, Jed Emerson, and other thought leaders.  All have been supportive.  I love that people – especially Haas faculty and administration – are finally paying attention to this need and this opportunity. 

As social entrepreneurs and students interested in making large-scale social change, we must continue to act as a disruptive – and generative – force.  As Muhammad Yunus said at the opening plenary, "Let’s just go and make this happen!"

Please contact me or my teammates if you’d like to get involved with our initiative, in any capacity!

[EO]

There’s been a running joke this week at the Forum: Jeff Skoll’s personal goal is to make social entrepreneurs more popular than Britney Spears.  Well, there is one truism on PR that applies: Get yourself on Oprah and the rest is history. 

The Berkeley Bottom Line has just learned that the Skoll Forum’s own John Wood of Room to Read will be on OPRAH on Tuesday, April 3, 2007!  You heard it from the Berkeley Bottom Line first.

The Skoll World Forum is inspiring.  Seeing all of these phenomenally smart people dedicating their lives to solve the world’s biggest problems is inspiring.  Experiencing their passion is inspiring.  Seeing the impact is inspiring.  It’s late on Wednesday night and I just got home after a night of inspiration at the Skoll Awards ceremony.  So, why am I kind of bummed out right now?

I think there are a few things going on in my head.  It could be because I feel a bit inadequate sharing a room with these amazing, accomplished delegates.

However, I’ve also been a bit disappointed in how the delegates respond when I explain that I plan to go into corporate responsibility and also in the frequency of “corporate bashing,” as one delegate described.

I guess I had higher hopes that social entrepreneurs would think more holistically about these social problems.  From my public policy experience, I know that business is a huge stakeholder in pretty much any social challenge we face (Here’s one story about that phenomenon).

In fact, in SustainAbility’s new report, they conclude that social entrepreneurs desperately need big business—to help with funding, partnerships, and favorable government policies—to achieve the real change we all desire.  [For a great synopsis of this report and topic check out my fav blog by Joel Makower.  He rocks.]

I later chatted with John Elkington over coffee and he explained that he doesn’t think CSR and SE work together at all and, in fact, he thinks that CSR is a dying fad.  John predicts a “CSR recession” where all of these companies that have been staffing up CSR departments will shut them down.  [Excellent career choice, Rob.]

I’m not saying CSR is for everybody, but who do you think is going to convince these companies to support social entrepreneurship and provide the much needed ability to scale?  Government?  Activists?  Scrappy field workers?  Internal advocates?  Or, all of the above? 

Granted CSR is a bit of a fad right now and, more often than not, housed in the PR department.  But, in my mind CSR is just the latest vocab and these corporate challenges are not going away anytime soon.  Whatever phrase you use to describe CSR or whatever form it evolves into, I’m still convinced both CSR and SE are critical pieces to the same puzzle.

Wednesday night we were welcomed to the 2007 Skoll Awards Ceremony with a rousing performance by Salman Ahmad of Junoon. [I love it when folks get together and try to clap in rhythm with the band. Some say social entrepreneurship is inspiring. I say enforced simultaneous audience participation is far more impressive.]

We arrived slightly late to the event (due to my miscalculating how long it would take me to walk from one side of campus to the other), and as a result, were sent up a narrow, winding staircase to the bleacher seats way up in the second balcony of the Sheldonian. We were high up, but  actually, once settled, the bleachers at the way, way top were actually much more comfortable than the chairs on the floor. Who needs a clear sight line anyway?

The event really got underway when they began the screenings of Skoll’s Uncommon Heroes entrepreneur profiles. It must be really awesome to be a philanthropist and a film producer. You get really gorgeous, high production value tear-jerkers for the equivalent of a small discretionary grant. You get total creative control and don’t have to pay a distributor to show it. Natalie Portman comes to your openings. Sally Osberg compares you to Charles Dickens. Yes, Jeff Skoll has the life.

I will admit though, that from the last row of the second balcony, I was moved. The tear-stained faces of the African child with malaria and the newly graduated Cambodian lawyer flashed and faded on the double jumbotron-sized screens. I think Skoll/the Foundation must believe that the “social” in social entrepreneurship reflects humanity -- in all its highly dramatic and inspiring emotional states. It was an appropriately cinematic signature for the crowning of the new Skoll Entrepreneurs.

The winners marched forward to accept their awards and receive their photograph and handshake with the famous people: Jeff, Muhammed, Peter (Gabriel), and Sally. Again, as Mr. Gabriel read the brief descriptions of the winners, and their noble faces flashed on screen at 50x magnitude, I got a little teary. I admit.

[NB: I also occasionally cry when I see a really good advertisement for American football, though, so take this with a grain of salt.]

The real kicker, of course, was Monica Yunus, Muhammed’s daughter. She closed the night with an extremely professional version of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” (Rogers & Hammerstein, Carousel). For those of us in the back, we had the benefit of Monica’s face in close-up projected on the jumbotron screens. Her mouth made the perfect O, like a Degas opera singer, on the final “aloooooone”. With moist eyes, I leaned forward and held my breath.

As the camera pulled back from her face, and the screen faded to black, I imagined the entire room filling with words as the credits began to roll. The lights came up and we stood to leave.

Social entrepreneurship.  Social Innovation.  Corporate Social Responsibility.  Corporate social entrepreneurship.  Intrapreneurship. Ecopreneurship.  Philanthropreneurship.  Yes, philanthropreneurship.

These are just some of the phrases that I heard people uttering this week at Skoll.  Social entrepreneurship is the whole point of the conference.  But, this terminology problem is so confusing.  How do I know if someone’s definition is the same as mine without having an SE-101 conversation with everybody I meet?

Today is Wednesday and I attended my favorite panel of the conference this morning.  The topic was corporate social entrepreneurship.  As far as I can tell, I think it is kind of the same thing as “social intrapreneurship,” which is basically about being a change agent or using entrepreneurial skills to move a social agenda within a corporation.  Surprisingly, that’s how I think about corporate social responsibility and what I will be doing in my full time job after graduation.  But, I kind of like being able to think of my new role being entrepreneurial.

However, Gib Bulloch from Accenture started off the panel describing their fascinating Development Partnerships program.  This guy clearly knows what he is talking about.  But, he opened with explaining that “we need to go beyond the CSR/philanthropy space.  If business is going to do better, it is going to have to bring CSR in from the cold.”  The CSR/Philanthropy space?  I don’t claim to be an expert, but I have studied CSR for nearly two years at a reasonably respectable institution and I’m pretty sure CSR and philanthropy are very different things. 

But, that’s exactly my point.  What if I walked up to Gib and said that I worked in corporate responsibility?  Would he totally misunderstand me?  What’s the deal?  Am I missing something?

Roger Martin and Sally Osberg just wrote an article about their definition of social entrepreneurship.  I recently saw John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, speak at Haas and he actually argued with an audience member about the definition of corporate responsibility.  Mackey dismissed the point as semantic.

Do we spend too much time talking about definitions?  As a communications guy by training, I say no way.  Definitions are the foundation for our understanding and scope. And how we set goals and define success.  But, the MBA in me kind of agrees with Mackey and thinks we should just get on with it.

It feels like everybody is just interested in coining the next new phrase.  As one very smart delegate reminded me, rewards in this space are not about money, they’re about power and reputation.  People want to be remembered.  Maybe they should just start blogging and then they can live forever  :)

This week has been all about the heroes. Uncommon Heroes (Skoll’s name for their awardees – Available online now). Geniuses. Laureates. Fellows. This place is sick with them.

I’m a young person, finishing my MBA. I am not (yet) a hero,* but with all the proper grooming and supports, I might become one someday.

[*I am a Pioneer though. Last summer, I received an Education Pioneers Fellowship to work for rockstar Skoll awardee Eric Schwarz at Citizen Schools. Read more about Education Pioneers and Citizen Schools.]

In the meantime, I will try to learn from the Masters. Wouldn’t it be nice to think that someday I will have accumulated enough experience to walk in their shoes? My path may not be theirs, but their stories are pretty captivating.

This morning I heard JB Schramm of College Summit talk about how growth and quality can go hand-in-hand for a social enterprise as it scales. Here, clearly, is a Master at work.

He talked about creating college-going cultures in high schools and sparking life-changing ideas in the minds of young people.

Say it loud, brother. The promise of access to high quality education for everyone is shared by many of the leading social entrepreneurs here at the Forum. But more entrepreneurs, investors, and public leaders must get on board if we’re really going to have the immediate, sustainable impact that is needed in the US.

As an undergraduate, I taught students from low-income families as an AmeriCorps Fellow with Summerbridge (now the Breakthrough Collaborative). The experience—preparing middle-schoolers for high school so that they could succeed and get to college—changed my life and inspired me to continue to work in education reform after I graduated. Now that I’m in business school, I have discovered a cohort of peers who are also looking for their niche in education reform – The good news is that there seems to be a growing pipeline of entrepreneurs who are moved to get involved in education.

[At Berkeley, the Education Leadership Club launched a case competition this year, so that MBAs from around the country could put their minds to some of the weighty strategic issues facing local Oakland Unified School District.]

And earlier this year, I worked on a team for FSG Social Impact Advisors to tackle the issue of educating foster youth in California on behalf of the James Irvine Foundation. The need is quite alarming:

1 in 10 foster youth go to college.
Just 1 in 100 actually graduate.

The solution is less alarming. It comes down to providing high quality education and creating college-going cultures in schools and homes. Of course, foster youth have the added challenge of moving from placement to placement, and social service agencies are almost never aligned in such a way that a foster child’s experience (residential, health, and education) is considered holistically. But fundamentally, the educational needs of foster youth are not so different from those of other at-risk, low-income youth (who, by the way, are also not going to college). If service providers could talk to one another and work together, millions of low-income youth in America might have a chance at a better future.

Successful entrepreneurial solutions for education reform exist. Citizen Schools. College Summit. Teach for America. The Seed Foundation. The Broad Residency. New Leaders for New Schools.

But great education reform efforts will need to align and complement each other if we’re going to help a student succeed from pre-kindergarten through college. The Forum seems like a great opportunity to facilitate such a discussion and influence the direction of education reform going forward.

Come meet me for coffee if you want to discuss.

Even though I may not be able to explain “social innovation” in a dark alley, I was excited to hear themes of corporate responsibility (CR) pop up throughout the plenary session.  It is clearer than ever to me that SE and CR are deeply linked and the lines are blurring.

Charles Handy knows how to give a powerpoint presentation.  It was if he had invited all 700 of us into his cozy living room to chat and check out his wife’s photo album next to a warm fire.  He described a new social contract between business and society, a topic with which I have struggled.  While business’ charge is to maximize shareholder value, it is nevertheless granted its right to exist by society.  He said that government can’t do everything (anything?) and business is starting to fill the gaps.

Muhammad Yunus’ passion and genuine nature was immediately apparent.  We skipped the Grameen Bank 101 session and went straight to talking about what’s next: brand extension.  He talked about Grameen Phone and Grameen Yogurt, a fascinating new joint-venture “social business” with Danone announced this month.  It’s a new yogurt that provides special ingredients tailored to treat malnourished children.  Danone plans to break even and even listed the stock with the understanding that it would pay NO dividends.  Talk about innovation.

Yunus explained these extensions as simply the natural course.  “One thing leads to another…”  Lisa Gansky whispered to me that it’s clear that, after winning the Nobel Prize, the Yunus/Grameen brand is now extremely valuable to corporations.  It’s good to see that Grameen is doing something with it. 

When asked about how he makes the business case, he said he doesn’t think about it that way.  “It’s not about convincing people.”  For him, it’s about leveraging his own success story to enable others and make it seem possible.  Not to mention playing off of the giant corporate egos.

Finally, her Majesty Queen Rania Al–Abdullah of Jordan ended up stealing the show.  I thought her speech was well written and included the right vocabulary.  She connected with strong feelings in the crowd by addressing the giant elephant in the room—the real world repercussions of the terrible war that is going on right now.

Her transparency and sincerity was refreshing amid a litany of the same-old-thing.  In other words, my only disappointment with the day was the familiar patting-SE-on-the-back message.  Social entrepreneurship is tough business and it’s usually not very pretty.  It’d be great to “keep it real” and see the entire social entrepreneurship picture, bruises and all.