Social Entrepreneurship

Is competition a good thing?

This morning I googled the phrase “collaboration is a good thing,” and found 2,650 results. Then I googled “competition is a good thing,” and came up with 80,700 results.

For every web-page that has acknowledged the hard-won value of collaborative projects and processes, there are 30 web-pages that hale the hallmark of North American enterprise, competition. This shouldn’t surprise me. We live in competitive times. For my entire adult life, competition has been credited with everything from maintaining the quality of healthcare and education in America to sending people to the moon to spurring innovation.

This month, competition is being credited with helping more people to serve. That’s right. One of those 80,700 results for “competition is a good thing” is a quote from a fellow social innovator who I deeply respect, Jonathan Greenblatt. His quote appeared in Suzanne Perry’s recent article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, “An Obama-Inspired Volunteer-Recruitment Web Site Will Soon Debut.”

Jonathan was referring to the unfortunate (in my opinion) dynamic that has characterized my organization’s relationship with the recently launched All for Good platform. Social Actions and All for Good are both open source databases that help people find and share opportunities to make a difference.

Social Actions was built from the bottom up, by and for the nonprofit technology sector. All for Good was built from the top down with inspiration coming directly from President Obama’s call for a Craigslist for Service and with support from Google and the Craigslist Foundation. All for Good’s board of directors reads like a Who’s Who of technology, the media, and nonprofit worlds. Social Actions supporters, friends, and mentors are the rockstars of the nonprofit technology sector, ie, geeks who care.

As far as I am concerned, there is no need for Social Actions and All for Good to compete with one another in an effort to help more Americans find ways to serve. Here’s why:

• There’s no such thing as an organization too big to collaborate
• There’s no such thing as an organization too small to collaborate with
• When the grassroots and giants conspire for good, the possibilities are endless (think Obama)

Most importantly, in certain circumstances, collaborative dynamics and processes can be far more effective at producing innovation than competition. For example, Social Actions has been working for the last five months on a project called the Social Entrepreneur API. We have brought together the staff of five leading award programs in social entrepreneurship and are building out the infrastructure for distributing information about social entrepreneurs far and wide. The service, which will launch later this summer, represents a breakthrough example of similar organizations leaving their similarities and differences behind and actively pursuing a collaborative opportunity that advances the entire field of social entrepreneurship.

I worry that if All for Good and Social Actions become outright competitors, the outcome will not be as good for volunteerism and service as it could be. Conversations about open standards will become partisan. Efforts to create innovative applications that distribute ways to do good will be duplicated. And the opportunity to lead the social sector by example in the direction of collaborative innovation will be squandered.

I’ll leave you with this thought: global competition may have sent people into outer space for the first time, but now collaboration between large and small nations keeps them there. I cannot recall if that sentiment is original. If it’s not original, please let me know who I should give credit to. Attribution for a good idea is the first step toward collaborative innovation.

Here are some questions for this discussion:

• Is it possible for large and small organizations to collaborate?  
• In what circumstances does collaborating compromise or contribute to innovation?
• In what circumstances does competing compromise or contribute to innovation?
• If you had to choose competition or collaboration as your default, which would you choose?

Join Peter Deitz in the conversation.

You have the charge, the energy, the get-up-and-go that's so essential to entrepreneurship, and the caring quality that makes you want to make things better -- so maybe you're the kind of social entrepreneur who has more than one iron in the fire, or who starts one social venture and as soon as its up and running is looking for the next change to make -- a serial social entrepreneur.

• Are you part of an international SE franchise?
• Have you started one up?
• Are you thinking about going this route?
• What are the issues that scaling up across national boundaries create?
• Can you distill the essence of a successful program so that it can be reconfigured in more than one culture?

Maybe you've started a series of social ventures, one after another.

• How many ventures have you started?
• How many have you thought about starting?
• Are you better at initial ideas and inspiring others than at long term follow through? Are you a spark plug more than an engine?
• Do your programs approach the same issue in different parts of the world?
• Are you able to network your various ventures?
• Did you make a failed attempt or two, and learn from your mistakes, and move on to your current venture which is successful?

- whether you've been involved in a sequence of different ventures, or running a cluster of them at the same time.

Money.  "Money, that's what I want", sang the very same Beatles who sang "Money can't buy me love".  "Money, it's a gas", sang the Pink Floyd, "Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash. ... Money, its a hit. Don't give me that do goody good bullshit. ... Money, it’s a crime..."  

Obviously money has the power to confuse us, we don't know what to do about it, we're uncertain whether IMF loans are "a good idea" or quite the reverse, -- and it was while he was pondering the issues at that scale, that it dawned on Muhammad Yunus that a few dollars might do more for a village in Bangladesh than several millions in loans.  

Not that big numbers are bad and little ones good -- "Sufia Begum earned the equivalent of 2 US cents a day and it was this knowledge which paralyzed me. In my university courses, I dealt in millions and billions of dollars, but here before my eyes, the problems of life and death were posed in terms of pennies," Yunus writes later -- but this profound insight at the lowest end of the financial scale has translated into millions of dollars in loans, a very high percentage of which are repaid, and a Nobel Prize, a telecom.... and the social movement which can claim Kiva among other innovations as its offspring.  We too, at Social Edge, are Yunus and Grameen Bank’s close intellectual and spiritual kin.

With very slight exertion man can obtain what is necessary for the preservation of the body, so long as he is contented with that which is indispensable, said Maimonides.

What’s indispensable, what are the basic human necessities, both material and spiritual, where and what are the greatest obstacles to obtaining them, what human resources can we bring to bear?

How can we obtain money, teach others to obtain money, channel or funnel it wisely? What are the advantages to large scale deployment of funds, what are the advantages of micro-loans? What does it cost to keep a volunteer or full-time worker from charitable burnout, or funding board-member from enthusiasm fatigue?

Our hope is that you'll join us in this event to post your own question, insights, anecdotes, and suggestions about money and how it "works" in terms of social entrepreneurship for good and ill.

• Money: Is there ever too much?
• How much would you need to begin your next major project?
• How do you balance income and expenditure when need is far greater than supply?
• How have current economic troubles affected those you work among?
• How have the troubles affected your own work?
• Is the need greater now? Is the response correspondingly greater?

The topic is money, and we should discuss it from whatever angle has the most impact in your part of the world.

Join Charles "Hipbone" Cameron in the conversation.
 

Marina Kim, Erin Krampetz and Lennon Flowers, with Ashoka’s University Program, welcome you to a discussion on how universities can actively promote positive social change in the world.  

Based on Ashoka’s work as co-founders of the University Network for Social Entrepreneurship, and more recently in launching the Changemaker Campus Initiative, we firmly believe that fostering social entrepreneurship education and engagement on college campuses presents a powerful way to do just that.

Examples include, but are by no means limited to:

•    Research with a solutions orientation; see: Innovations Journal
•    Practical preparations for students beyond theoretical training; see: Clinton Global Initiative University, Transformative Action Institute, Net Impact
•    Student-launched non-profits working in concert with the communities they are trying to serve; see: Genocide Intervention Network, Center for Global Engagement, Gumball Capital or FORGE
•    And a growing number of partnerships between universities and practitioners, aimed at evaluating the success of particular interventions and bringing today’s most innovative ideas into classrooms
    
While we are encouraged by the progress to date, we are not quite there yet. Despite the considerable growth in the field, we must do more to identify and assess expected learning outcomes, and to measure the impact of programs on students, faculty, and the communities they serve.

• For universities, it can be tempting in the midst of budget cuts to revert to traditional approaches and away from interdisciplinary studies and inter-departmental programs.

• For faculty and researchers, there are few opportunities for publication and tenure, and we only have a handful of credible and widespread ways to embed social entrepreneurship into existing coursework.

• For students, good intentions often result in replicated efforts, with little support from faculty and university structures.

• Finally, many established social entrepreneurs are seeking new and innovative ways to engage with universities, but the systems are not in place to make practitioner-academic exchanges valuable and impactful for both sides of the partnership.

Solutions are needed, and we think you have some of the answers.  We’ll take your comments and suggestions seriously by sharing them with our university partners – and hopefully working with you to help make it happen.  Here are a few key questions:

1.    What is working and not working on university campuses to support aspiring social entrepreneurs?  
2.    What additional support, resources or knowledge would be useful to support a broader range of students, faculty and administrators to employ a socially entrepreneurial mindset in their work or career path?
3.    For graduates, what do you wish you would have learned in college to better support you in making change in the world?
4.    For current non-profit practitioners, philanthropists, business leaders or government officials, how could universities better support you and your present work?
5.    “Connecting theory to practice” is a challenge. How do we systematically link:
•    Researchers to pressing research questions?  
•    Students to role models and innovative organizations?
•    Classroom learning to on-the-ground realities?
•    Students to meaningful careers with a social impact?

Join Marina Kim, Erin Krampetz and Lennon Flowers in the conversation.

This discussion is the executive summary of the 2009 Skoll World Forum on “Shifting Power Dynamics.” It contains lessons learned at the Forum and links back to the broader social media archive of blog posts, tweets, pictures and videos from the three-day event.

My Top Four Lessons Learned at the Skoll World Forum 2009

At times, it’s necessary to overstate your cause
On the opening night of the Skoll World Forum 2009, the Executive Director of Sundance Institute, Kenneth S. Brecher,  ended his riveting story about Russian poet Anna Akhmatova with a quote from Isaiah Berlin, "Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated." I now understand that the overstating of  micro-finance as liberating and triple bottom lines as indispensible, for example, are  necessary to push these concepts and others through an investment community that would have otherwise prefer to continue with business as usual.

Power shifts, even at the Skoll World Forum
The role of Twitter at this year’s Forum had a democratizing effect on participation. Delegates used Twitter within sessions to discuss the ideas being presented. Moreover, their live stream of tweets permitted virtual delegates to follow along from afar, and in some case, to pose questions to the panel.  In Tom Watson’s session on “(Financial) Power to the People,” Tori Tuncan requested via Twitter that I ask Premal Shah of Kiva if any Kiva entrepreneurs went on to make their own loans to other Kiva entrepreneurs. Participation from afar and through backchannels had the effect of making the Forum as a whole more informal and web 2.0-ish, even if that was not the intent or vision of the Forum organizers.

Everyone attending could have been a panelist
At some point during the Forum, someone tweeted, “The audience members at the sessions are just as expert, if not more, than the panelists.” I found this to be the case as well. During the panel on Water and the Millennial Development Goals, I realized that the panel represented a consensus that the MDGs are attainable and that top-down institutional approaches to solving the water crisis would suffice. Meanwhile, the audience included a water activist working in the field with extensive experience dealing with water access issues in India. If only the panel had contained more diverse viewpoints, then the audience member’s perspective (which was well received) would have received more attention than the 45 seconds it took him to ask a poignant question.

We still don’t have a universal definition of social entrepreneurship. We haven’t agreed on how to measure its impact.  And as for spreading the practice, that’s also a mystery. But these are all good things.
During the Forum, I came to realize that the vagueness that surrounds social entrepreneurship is actually a net gain for our sector. The intersection of business motives, business processes, and activist intentions brings together an unlikely group of bedfellows. The less we agree on what social entrepreneurship is, how best to measure it, and how to scale it, the more likely we’ll continue to innovate at the margins and encourage unlikely people to meet one another and collaborate.

At the closing ceremony, the new Executive Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, Pamela Hartigan, left us with these words from an Irish blessing, “Until we meet again, let God hold you in the palm of his hand.” I say, “Until we meet again, let’s keep the conversation and collaboration going online.”

Join Peter Deitz, Founder and Executive Director of Social Actions and SWF’09 blogger and Twitterer, in the conversation.
 

Co-preneurs: when one and one makes eleven?

One of our Skoll grantees recently emailed us with a comment that gave us the seed of this week's event:
 

There is a bourgeoning subfield of entrepreneurs, social and otherwise called co-preneurs -- husband and wife teams that built something special together, with all the joys and challenges you might expect from two people working and living so closely.

Marriage isn't the only way two people can make a formidable team where either one alone might have been far less successfully, of course. In their article "Social entrepreneurship: the case for definition", Roger L. Martin and Sally Osberg argue that we need to understand entrepreneurship before we tack the term "social" onto it:
 

To explore and illustrate our definition of entrepreneurship, we will take a close look at a few contemporary American entrepreneurs (or pairs thereof): Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of Apple Computer, Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll of eBay, and Ann and Mike Moore of Snugli...

And that's interesting -- Martin and Osberg's explanation of entrepreneurs focuses on pairs. We could add in Bill Gates and Paul Allen at Microsoft for good measure, and maybe even Bill Gates and Warren Buffet when it comes to philanthropy...

Which brings us to the next question: what happens when you add "social" into the mix -- when *social* entrepreneurs work in closely-teamed pairs?

The sociologist Max Weber talks about "charismatic" people and "the routinisation of charisma".  My guess is that a charismatic dreamer can often provide the spark for a social movement, but may need to team with a doer -- an executive/managerial type -- to get things done.

It’s my belief that there's often terrific benefit to a two-person team approach, and I have been saddened by the lack of attention to that possibility in most of the literature I've seen. It can be a husband and a wife, a dreamer and a doer, a tunnel-visionary and a detail-catcher, etc. In short, I think social entrepreneurship will often work best where there's a marriage of skill-sets.

Here are ten examples of social co-preneurs and power couples: Matt Flannery and Premal Shah at Kiva, Sam Goldman and Nedjip Tozun at d.light design, Mark Plotkin and Liliana Madrigal at the Amazon Conservation Team, Jeremy Hockenstein and Mai Siriphongphanh at Digital Divide Data, brothers Craig and Marc Kielburger at Free the Children, Susan Burns and Mathis Wackernagel at the Global Footprint Network, Martin Fisher and Nick Moon at KickStart, Dr. Mitch Besser and Gene Falk at mothers2mothers, Andrea and Barry Coleman at Riders for Health, John and Susan Collin Marks at Search for Common Ground.

Questions:

•    what pairs of skill-sets can be particularly effective in social entrepreneurship?

•    what particular trials and tribulations does this kind of team work have to face?

•    is it sometimes harder or easier for a couple or two-person team to get funding, than for an individual?

•    what couples -- married or otherwise teamed together -- have had particular success in this field?

Please join Charles "hipbone" Cameron as we explore the ways that one and one can make eleven...
 

The day-to-day life of a social entrepreneur is filled with competing and shifting priorities, difficult challenges and most of all the unexpected.

An example: in preparing for this topic, I experienced the birth of my first child and was faced with the unexpected challenge of trying to meet his needs while offering the Social Edge community a compelling topic with rich ideas and some practical solutions.

I realized that a couple of key pieces of “infrastructure” gave me the tools to respond to the challenge. The most important were communications tools –access to email and a mobile phone that pulls you back to work when something needs to be a priority.

Here is my list of basic operational challenges:

- Finance
How am I going to get enough funding for my project? How do I know where my money is going?

- Communications
How do I stay in contact with my constituencies? Can I communicate in real time? Do I have the technology to support that?

- Business Process
Do I understand how I create social change? Can it be written down?

- Databases
Do I know what pieces of information are important to my communication strategy? To measuring my social change? To just understanding if I’m headed in the right direction?

- Metrics
What is important for me to measure? Can I measure it?

- Geography
If I have global constituents, can I reach them?

- Constituency
Who are my supporters and participants?

At the recent Tech Museum Awards, I ran into an organization that had chosen a business process whereby only after collecting 1,000 orders, they would produce and distribute their device.

Their approach did not require any operating capital, but severely restricted their volume and social impact since they needed orders in hand before they could have impact.

They tracked orders and manufacturing with spreadsheets and found they couldn’t get the answers they needed to make operational decisions—they didn’t know when they would get enough orders to start the production run on 1,000 devices (e.g. before they have the money in hand)?

The real social innovation is in the business process (e.g. order collection), but often the thing that makes a business process scale and operate efficiently is technology.

• How important is technology to the business processes of social entrepreneurs? Minor concern or pervasive through everything they do?

• The list above outlines some of the basic operational challenge questions but I wonder what is missing? What is unique to social entrepreneurs?

• And with the diversity of social entrepreneurs, what operational challenges are shared by all or at lease most social entrepreneurs?

• Is communication the most common and most important operational challenge? How do you solve the communication challenge?

• How do financial challenges constrain social impact? How much of the time are financial challenges a red herring – i.e. more money wouldn’t really solve the problem?
 

Join David Geilhufe, Philanthropy Program Manager with Netsuite, in the conversation.

Social Entrepreneurs are being asked to be good at a great many things.  So in the spirit of being supportive, this year’s Holiday Gift Guide for Social Entrepreneurs is designed to help social entrepreneurs measure up to the task... and still have some fun.

Transparency
Today people expect authenticity and openness – in other words transparency.  For tips on this new trade, give them useful books like Tactical Transparency: How Leaders Can Leverage Social Media to Maximize Value and Build their Brand by Shel Holtz and John C. Havens and CauseWired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World by Tom Watson.

But don’t stop there, help them further demonstrate their honesty with a deck of transparent playing cards (they’re water proof too!) and give them some place to store their books with these awesome invisible book shelves that make it look like your books are floating on air.

Fundraising
With the global economic crisis at a feverish pitch, many social ventures wonder how they will make ends meet without losing their minds.  To help them be one with their budget, give them The Zen of Fundraising: 89 Timeless Ideas to Strengthen and Develop Your Donor Relationships by Ken Burnett and The Porcupine Principle: And Other Fundraising Secrets by Jonathan Farnhill.

And when all else fails, it might be nice to have some prayer flags on hand… they may even take to wearing prayer wheels or mailing prayer flags to donors.

Impact Measurement
How do you know if you have made an impact and how do you show the world?  In addition to reading SVT on Impact, consider Ruerd Ruben who takes a stab at figuring it out in his book The Impact of Fair Trade.

But first you have to figure out what to measure and what units to use. To get you pondering, how about this unique Equal Measure measuring cup that puts things into perspective: “...boil twenty thousand grains of rice in twenty thousand drops of water."  Of course, you still have to enter the data.  Did you know that “75% of all users do not touch type but use a “hunt and peck” approach? Enter the FrogPad with a new approach faster keyboard input.” 

Innovation
Which reminds me, if you are going to be innovative, you can't be afraid to try something new. Consider the Bluetooth Laser Virtual Keyboard where instead of typing on a tiny smart phone, you can go for a virtual full size keyboard. Too weird for you, but still looking for the convenience of a full size yet portable keyboard - how about one that rolls up?  For more inspiration on the magical recipe that enables a social entrepreneur to be successful, take a read of Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success.

Sustainability
Give them ROI For Nonprofits: The New Key to Sustainability and help them walk the talk with an Organic : delicious and sustainable t-shirt, a Solar Backpack or a hybrid model solar/battery flashlight.  Feeling like an angel, go ahead, give them an all electric Tesla Roadster - come on, you know they want one.

Leadership
Good leaders need to, well, lead.  Pick up a copy of Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin.  Balance that with some Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery along with A Sense of Urgency.  And don't forget about succession planning. Help feed the pipeline of new social entrepreneurs through Ashoka’s Youth Venture or teaching social change in schools through Donors Choose, or providing kits to create more changemakers around the world.  Important reminder, while youth and your social entrepreneur's children can be a good resource, you shouldn't take them for granted which is why you might want to give this "No, I will not fix your computer" youth t-shirt. Ahh, it's all about respect :-)

Social Return on Investment
How about finding gifts that do good?  Then you can feel really good about materialism. Consider these items - you get the goods and so do other people!

Toms Shoes
One Laptop per Child
BoGo Solar LED Light
Design 21 Allumonde Ring

Check out last year's gift guide for more goodies for good people.  But before you click over there and continue your shopping binge, please stop to consider and comment on the following outstanding questions:

• What other things does a social entrepreneur need to be good at?  Please suggest more gift ideas for how they/their venture can be more scalable, emphathetic, resilient, and contented in the new year.
• What marketplaces offer a social return on your investment? Where can you shop for gifts for the ethical leader?
• And most importantly, how can you help create marketing or market incentives to help your favorite social entrepreneur's fundraising efforts be a success this season despite in the global financial climate?

Join Jill Finlayson in the conversation.

The first time you dive into a swimming pool, it feels like you're taking a risk -- but you do it, and it's a thrill, and you swim, and climb out, and do it again.  It must feel risky to a young bird to be pushed out of the nest -- but the bird does it, and learns to fly.

There's some degree of risk in everything we do, even crossing the street -- but we take risks, wisely or unwisely, and in business terms we try to calibrate the risk, to know the percentages, to weigh up benefits against costs. And we consider both the likelihood and the consequences of the risk we're taking in evaluating it.

And then some of us thrive on risk, some of us find our motivation in the risk itself.

Social entrepreneurs are inherently risk-takers. For one thing, our dreams run ahead of current possibilities, and a new approach will inevitably carry risks -- some of them we can handle in advance with careful planning and forethought, but some of them will come at us out of the blue, or simply demand courage, the courage of our convictions.

We are Edgy people, after all -- on the cutting edge of social progress, hopefully -- and at times we may feel we're on the razor's edge of hope and despair.

• What risks have you taken, to make the difference you want to make?
• Have you at times gambled, perhaps unwisely? 
• Have you taken risks that have come back to haunt you?

• If so, have you learned from the experience? Did it make you less inclined to take risks in future? More determined to succeed? More cautious about the risks you choose to take?

If you make a gamble because you have faith, and it pays off -- was it just the luck of the draw, or synchronicity, good fortune or good karma?

And let's look at this from another angle. What's the risk the world would face if you hadn't taken the risks you do?

Particularly now, when the global financial crisis is threatening all kinds of philanthropic support and business credit just when the human needs are greatest, what risks can we as a society afford to take -- and what risks are you prepared to take to see a positive outcome?

I've only scratched the surface of the questions we might discuss about risk -- what's yours?

Are you a risk-taker?  Is that a virtue or a vice, or both?  Let's talk...

Join Charles "Hipbone" Cameron in the conversation.

• What really jump-starts your motivation?
• Are there situations around you that just cry aloud for help?
• What evil troubles you, and what good can come of it?
• Does the death of a loved one bring home to you the fragility of our existence?
• What brings a sense of urgency that can carry you through the rough times?

• Are we too cautious when it comes to taking risks on social change projects? 
• Are we selling the overall effectiveness of the sector for surer short term gains? 
• Or is something else going on?

• How does government make your task more difficult?
• Is it the enemy? Is it an ally?
• Is it the cause of the problems you address?
• Is the problem more one of malice, or indifference?
• Are there governmental means of addressing your problems?
• Is the law itself the issue? And are you working to change the law?

• What red tape needs cutting?
• Is bribery a concern?  
• Do your people receive death threats?
• Do you live or work in a war zone?