• How I learned to love Priceline for getting cheap four-star hotels $85 for four star hotels in DC and London!
• How my excessive flying on one airline leads to great service and lots of free upgrades to business class
• The wonders of frequent flier programs, where the airline goes out of its way to take care of its best customers, even those who are always picking the cheapest fares possible
• How I got out of Heathrow on the first California-bound flight after the volcano ash flight suspension
• How we encourage employees to skip on hotels where practical
• Paying employees to not stay in a hotel and buy a nice dinner or a bottle of wine for their host. For example, I almost always stay with one of my cousins in New York City. Benetech will give me $50 a night in lieu of staying in an expensive hotel.

• What’s your travel tip? Do you have an example of penny-wise, pound foolish travel ideas that backfired?
• Do you have ideas for reducing your environmental impact while getting the job done? How can we make travel more effective and less wearing?

Social Entrepreneurship - a growing movement in Asia Pacific

• The sessions on “social media” and “reimagining networks” inspired new ways of thinking about how Internet culture is reshaping our field into one characterized by open platforms and peer-to-peer communications.
• All five sessions located in the “Reception” room were designed for Interaction among delegates in small groups, tapping the immense renewable energy of activated smart people. (The "compelling action" session ran twice due to popular demand and an innovative panel format resembling musical chairs.)
• As for the Interdependence piece, plenary speakers, panelists, and audience questions reminded us that large scale impact requires a new appreciation and harnessing of the Interdependence of people, planet, and purpose initiatives. These reminders gave new meaning to the sometimes tired rituals of conference networking. 

• Have we, as a field of study and community, evolved beyond social entrepreneurship?
• To what extent does the ascendance of Internet, Interaction, and Interdependence represent a new paradigm in which to consider our work?
• If you could drop everything and become a highly influential social entrepreneur, social intrapreneur, or social interpreneur, which one would you choose?

 Join Peter Deitz in the conversation.

Around the time I started SVT in 2001, I remember noticing that all the highly accomplished social entrepreneurs I met seemed to have something in common: they did not have a life partner. Either they seemed to be perpetually single as they entered middle age and beyond, or they were divorced. The only renowned social entrepreneurs I knew who had stayed married for decades were the ones who worked with their partners.

Death by Definitions in Social Enterprise Land

• What are creative ways that new innovations can reach poorest of the poor?
• What new inventions do you expect to scale and reach the two billion persons at the base of the pyramid?
• What mechanisms enable adoption by local communities that may be hesitant with new technologies?
• What surprising bottleneck or challenge is not being talked about enough?
• Which partnerships between business and the social sector have been most successful at promoting invention-led development? 

"What I think some wazungu (foreigners) misunderstand about poverty (which is good for them to know) is:
Lacking basic needs does not mean your thinking capacity must be low.  They sometimes think that because Africans are living in poor countries, therefore they cannot think about themselves. They think that since they don’t have money, so they can’t be able to plan, implement, monitor and supervise anything even if given chance or supported.  They should know that, even if a person/community is poor, the best way to help is to listen and give chance to the beneficiaries to know what really is their problem, and what they think is their priority."

These are the words of our Tanzanian partner, Mama Lucy Kamptoni, who used income from selling chickens to build an innovative school in her village.  As she points out, would-be agents of change often have clever ideas for solving the world’s problems – far too many of them imagined entirely without input from the very communities we aim to transform. 
If we don’t listen to the voices of those we serve, no one else will. And voices like Mama Lucy’s need to be heard.  How does the world – and our work – change when we start listening?  And how can we ensure our supporters listen too?

Here’s a few ideas we’ve been experimenting with at Epic Change:

• Conversation:  Our #TwitterKids project aims to encourage people around the world to engage in direct conversation with 5th graders at Mama Lucy’s school on Twitter and Tumblr. Our blog includes posts and comments from Mama Lucy, parents and teachers in Arusha.
• Collaboration:  Students stood in line to vote from an Internet café in Arusha, while global supporters rallied votes elsewhere. Together, we won $10,000 from IdeaBlob  to create a technology lab at Mama Lucy’s school.
• Connection: Epic Change is launching TweetsGiving 2009  – a global celebration that aims to change the world with the power of gratitude.  By focusing on a universal theme – thankfulness – friends across the globe can connect directly and share meaningful content with Mama Lucy’s community in Tanzania.  Join the #TwitterKids at www.TweetsGiving.org to celebrate all we have to be grateful for, especially the too-often thankless work of entrepreneurs who are creating a better future for us all.

At Epic Change, we look for every possible opportunity for Mama Lucy and her community to share their story in their own voices. Just recently, for instance, Mama Lucy participated in the European Summit for Global Transformation. 

• How do you amplify the voices of social innovators like Mama Lucy? 
• How are you creating bridges that connect your donor community and the community impacted by your work? 
• And how the world will be different when we start to live in one another’s virtual backyards?  Mama Lucy and I, who I’m sure were meant to be neighbors, can’t wait to find out.

Join Epic Change founder Stacey Monk, and her Tanzanian partner Mama Lucy Kamptoni, in a conversation about amplifying the voices and impact of remarkable unseen grassroots social innovators across the globe. 

This holiday, give knowledge. 

Social entrepreneurs know all about giving knowledge. Whether they are teaching people how to live with HIV, or sharing strategies that indigenous entrepreneurs can use to grow their business, or grooming their own staff to take on more senior roles in the organization, social entrepreneurs recognize the empowering value of sharing information.

So when you think about what could make a difference this holiday, consider what information you can share, what data can you aggregate,  and how you can collaborate. To give you inspiration, let’s look at just a few of the gifts friends have given us this year.

• Collaboration Resources for Social Entrepreneurs from Christina Jordan at #i4c
• Start-up Guide and Crowd-sourced Top 400 #SocEnt on Twitter from Martin Montero
• Global Social Investment Exchange from Tamzin Ractliffe at GreaterGood
• Social Entrepreneur API from Peter Deitz, Christine Egger, and David Peery
• Open Toolkit for Social Entrepreneurship from Charles Tsai of Global Youth Fund
• Human Centric Design Kit from Tatyana Mamut at IDEO
• Child Protection Policy from Ann Cotton at Camfed
• Creative Commons CC0 (CC zero) from Commons CEO Joi Ito
• Measurement tools and systems PULSE and IRIS from GIIN, Acumen, and others
• Real World Meet-ups - Net Tuesdays from NetSquared and TechSoup

We could go on with gratitude to all those who foster convenings, collaboration, and conversation but then the list would become very long very quickly.  And we are indeed grateful for aggregators and all those who provide data, remove barriers, filter information for the rest of us, and share knowledge to fostering innovation.

Shared data is much more than interesting, though, and much more than timesaving – it is impactful. As the Stanford Social Innovation Review article on “catalytic philanthropy” champions, there is a tremendous value in creating “actionable knowledge." Lucy Bernholz in her technology paper Disrupting Philanthropy declares "data are the new platform for change. They will continue to fundamentally alter how philanthropic capital flows.”

Hans Rosling explains “Data debunks myths” and goes on to point out that “database hugging hampers innovation.” Instead, statistics and data should be “intellectual sidewalks” because, he explains, “Sidewalks are free in most of the world.  They enable communication to take place, culture is helped by it, corporate sector is helped by it, families are helped by it, it is a beautiful idea.”

Just look at how data sharing is making it easier and more efficient for people to make better decisions and contribute to a better world. 

There are organizations that vet and help you search for causes and organizations you care about so that you can more strategically donate your money and time.

“Social Looping” or “meaningfully connecting people to the impact their participation has created for a cause” is a trend showing up in both the donor, lending, and shopping experiences. SOLVEcoop and other marketplaces, are striving to show how conscious commerce can have an impact.

For example, you could buy a dazzling vase from Ayu Komang Agustini in Bali,  or perhaps get a little “Patience” from artisans in Zimbabwe or other “global gifts that matter.”  Oliberté introduces shoes that are made in Africa for people who care about alleviating poverty. The UK’s Kick4Change “home and away” program invests in truly “grass roots sports” both locally and abroad in South Africa. But how can you make sure that your child's soccer ball is not made by children but rather by adults in safe working conditions in Pakistan?

Without organizations like TransFair and B-Corporation creating standards and certifications, it is hard to know who to trust and even harder to create market incentives for everyone to play by the same rules. Data makes conscious shopping easier--the GoodGuide even launched a phone app for “Barcode Scanning for Good.” 
 

So whether you are giving advice or sharing data, this holiday, the best gift you can give is knowledge. It is the cornerstone of innovation and collaboration.  Together we are on verge of revolutionizing the social entrepreneurship sector and beyond.  It won't be instant and it will be challenging, but in the words of Hildy Gottlieb, “Transparent community engagement - trusting others - is the path of quiet bravery.

Please join Jill Finlayson in the conversation:

• What are you doing to be brave?
• Are you mentoring or sharing expertise? Who are you helping and how did you find each other?
• What gifts of data and knowledge have you already received this year?
• How can you help contribute to open data sources?
• What gifts of data and collaboration would you like to receive or create in the new year?

We've had the Tao of Physics and the Tao of Pooh, the Tao of Leadership and even the Tao of Warren Buffett.

Thinking about the Tao of things is a pretty neat way to think about the things themselves. It gets at the essence, but not in a static way. It's about process, and it's about alignment with the beating heart of all that is...

But before I get too lyrical, let me just ask: What's the Tao of Social Entrepreneurship?

First, I suppose, we need to get an idea of what "Tao" is.

The Chinese word "Tao" is one of those words that's very hard to translate --you just have to get a feel for it. It is most often rendered "the way", with or without a capital W, and of the 173 translations of the first verse of Lao-Tsu's Tao Te Ching featured here, many just leave the word untranslated, while some of them use such terms as "existence," "truth," "it" or "nature" -- it has even been used to translate the Greek "logos" in the New Testament -- "In the beginning was the Tao".

My suggested translation for the day: "flow." So our question becomes: What's the flow of social entrepreneurship?

What's its way, what's its nature, how does it naturally unfold, what are its sources, its springs, its aquifers, its currents and eddies, its curves and swerves-- how does it flow?

How does it flow clear and deep?

When does it get blocked up, and what keeps it fresh?

It seems to me that inspiration/enthusiasm and funding are two of the central currents of social entrepreneurship, so the questions we can discuss here will include:

• What is it that generates the flow of enthusiasm, and
• What kinds of things weaken or block that flow?
  
• What is it that generates the flow of funding, and
• What kinds of things weaken or block that flow?
  

Then there's the second part of the opening line of Lao-Tsu to consider: The way that can be put into words isn't the true way...

What is it about social enterprise --about your own social entrepreneurial experience -- that maybe doesn't "fit" into the neat boxes it is supposed to fit into?

• Are "expectations from headquarters" a poor fit with "realities on the ground"?
• Do "funding requirements" fit with "mission goals"?
• Where are your bottlenecks, and how can you release the full potential of your endeavors?

And -- perhaps most important of all -- where does "let go and let it flow" fit in?

Charles (Hipbone) Cameron invites you to join him for a month of flowing conversation, as we dive into The Tao of 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.

The Charismatic Entrepreneur --a Blessing or a Curse?

In the early stages of any entrepreneurial venture, social or otherwise, it is the energy and drive of the single entrepreneur (or sometimes a duo of co-preneurs, à la Google) that keep the “show on the road”. Her (or his) passion, drive, connections, persuasive powers etc. are what enable the venture to get through the impossibly difficult early days. 

In social entrepreneurship this is even more the case.  As there is often no equity upside, the financial incentive is essentially non-existent.  Moreover, the social nature of the organisation gives the enterprise the element of a “crusade”. In this regard the CEO/Founder’s vision is the lifeblood of the enterprise—the source of strength on which others often draw.

Yet frequently this strength becomes a source of weakness instead, especially as the organisation matures. So impassioned is the leader by the mission, so violently consumed by this personal passion, they stifle innovation, debate, staff development and, inevitably, the enterprise’s future. Such dysfunctionality is often the rule, in the dozens of social enterprises I have observed over the past decade.  For example:

•    The success of one consumer-oriented social enterprise is deeply threatened by a CEO who seems unable to yield control, threatening the company’s development and its access to capital.
•    A technology oriented social business failed partly due to the CEO’s need for control and his/her refusal to listen to staff, advisors and shareholders.
•    An environmental firm loses key staff on a regular basis because the CEO is unwilling to be challenged.
…sadly, I could go on and on.

It is not always thus. I sit on the Board of a company, where the CEO/Founder, an unusually secure individual, regularly raises the issue of succession and team development in order to secure sustainability.

•    How can social enterprises benefit from the drive of the entrepreneur without sacrificing their futures?
•    What role can the Board play in these situations?
•    How can good governance be achieved when there are no external shareholders with power?  This is a serious problem where the CEO retains control in order to “protect the ‘mission’ of the organisation”.  Frequently this power is used to protect his/her position.
•    Can external stakeholders have a role in helping to address and resolve these problematic circumstances?
•    How can credit be shared in a world where success is often personalised by the media?

Join Rod Schwartz, CEO of ClearlySo, 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.

Are the only innovations in social entrepreneurship Anglo-Saxon?  Well, you might think so. 

At the annual Skoll World Forum, (the “Davos of social entrepreneurship”) the overwhelming majority of speakers, experts and practitioners came from Anglo-Saxon countries, particularly the US and UK.  I recently attended a lecture by a well-regarded professor on social enterprise and finance.  He stated that “without a doubt the UK and the US lead the world in terms of thinking in this area”. 

I found myself wondering, “Is this really true?”  Is this, perhaps, just an example of Anglo-Saxon “imperialism”, which ought to be contrary to the spirit of the world of social enterprise and finance?  Or do many of us think it is true because so much of the literature is written in English –the current “lingua franca” of the social enterprise world and the only language many of my colleagues and I can understand!  Perhaps there is indeed a large Anglo-Saxon contingent to the global “voice” on this subject, but have we got the proportions right at our global gatherings?

This is important to me because I am passionately interested in progress in the sector and believe that its pace is quickened when inputs are diverse.  If, by contrast, so many voices are Anglo-Saxon (like mine, I should confess), does this not hamper growth?  Are we not limiting our access to innovative ideas to only those which might spring forth from an “Anglo-Saxon” mindset?  Also, are there not ways to deploy social networking technologies to harness a broader range of views?   Even if we persist in writing in English can we not at least tap into a broader range of voices by nationality?

There is openness to models from the developing world.  But in many cases these models are deployed by Anglo-Saxons who move to these poorer countries.  Does this represent then a diversity of thinking or not? 

Continental Europe and Japan represent an enormous proportion of global economic activity—yet their voice regarding social entrepreneurship is far more limited.  Is this because there is not much going on or because we just do not know where to look, or have limited access because of linguistic barriers? 

What do you think?  Join Rod Schwartz, CEO of ClearlySo, in the conversation.