TED Video:Patient Capitalism
Ξ June 30th, 2008 | → 1 Comments | ∇ video |
Dignity is more important than wealth.
(video opens up in a new box)
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A New Africa… Brought to You By NextEinstein
Ξ June 30th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Uncategorized |
Clicking through the blog at Ted.com today, I came across something that absolutely made me glow. This initiative, in my opinion, represents the vision of what “aid” should be. It’s realistic, which is what makes me so hopeful. It won’t change Africa tomorrow or next year, but it will change the continent in 15, 20 and 25 years on. Real lasting change takes a long time and this program recognizes that. NextEinstein is a program that enables donors to contribute - money, materials, awareness - to AIMS (African Institute for Mathematical Sciences). The site points out that only Africans can solve their own problems and that Math and Science are the solutions to the poverty and violence that currently plague the land. I couldn’t agree more. I don’t mean to downplay the importance of writers, economists or any other profession, but let’s be honest, it was the scientists and engineers that cured polio, took us to the moon and even invented Pong. They get things done, they solve problems, they create new economies and they lift up their societies by doing so. Whatever grand solution one imagines for Africa must include this dynamic group. NextEinstein gave themselves the moniker from the idealistic concept that just maybe the next Einstein is waiting to be found in Africa. Who knows if that will happen, but I’ve got to say that this concept is a far more effective and pragmatic approach to the crises in Africa than throwing rock concerts around the world.
Creative Capitalism
Ξ June 27th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ links |
A fantastic new site has just launched that is totally dedicated to Creative Capitalism. Here’s what it’s all about in their words:
Creative Capitalism: A Conversation is a web experiment designed to produce a book — a collection of essays and commentary on capitalism, philanthropy and global development — to be edited by us and published by Simon and Schuster in the fall of 2008. The book takes as its starting point a speech Bill Gates delivered this January at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In it, he said that many of the world’s problems are too big for philanthropy–even on the scale of the Gates Foundation. And he said that the free-market capitalist system itself would have to solve them.
I’ve read through a bunch of the articles and so far it seems to be one of the best, most thoughtful forums I’ve seen on the subject. Here are two articles proposing the pros and cons of creative capitalism:
http://creativecapitalism.typepad.com/creative_capitalism/2008/06/the-case-for-cr.html
http://creativecapitalism.typepad.com/creative_capitalism/2008/06/against-creativ.html
The Generation of Change: The Millenial Need for Financial and Moral Satisfaction in the Workplace
Ξ June 26th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Op-Ed |
Lately I’ve seen a slew of blog postings about a recent article in the NYTimes entitled “Big Paycheck or Service? Students Are Put to Test”. As you can probably tell from the title, the article focuses on the choice between money and service that is facing today’s graduates. It touches a social nerve that’s received a lot of attention as the infamous Gen Y, or Millenials, are beginning to enter the real world. Will they serve themselves or will they serve the world?
Having been born in 1983, I’ve paid particular attention to the fact that we are alternately praised for our work ethic and proficiency with technology and disparaged for our selfishness and lack of loyalty. I can understand how confusing it must be to our elders because I’m perplexed myself by the incredible range of behavior displayed by my generation. We obsess over our Facebook profiles, some of us even bring our parents to job interviews and then droves of us line up to go through rounds of rigorous application for the opportunity to teach in America’s most distressed schools with Teach for America. Some of us develop software that changes the world before we’ve finished college and yet binge drinking is at an all time high on those same campuses. It doesn’t seem like any label sticks for very long and with good reason. Any attempt to fit such a large and diverse group of people under a single umbrella is missing the point. We don’t share a single set of values. If American culture is as fragmented as it has ever been, why should it make sense for an entire generation to fit neatly into a single classification? I don’t think it does.
Labels are beside the point, though, because whatever you wish to call us the important fact remains that this is an era in which the decision to serve oneself or to serve humanity is as important as it’s ever been. There are more millionaires in the world than ever before and yet there are more global calamities sitting on our doorsteps as well, about which none of us can feign ignorance. There is incredible potential for lining our pockets and even more unprecedented potential to change the world. Which path will we choose? Will we prove to be selfish or selfless?
We can be both. Our career choice doesn’t need to be framed as a decision between salary and service. As awareness of climate change, poverty and other global problems grows so do the questions about whether these issues could be addressed more efficiently with an entrepreneurial approach rather than depending on non-profits. As I referenced in my last post, four Harvard Business School professors have recently published a casebook making just this point. Author Jane Wei-Skillern says that, “Societal problems are increasingly large and complex, taxing the ability of nonprofit organizations to solve them” and that “a new model for the social sector based on entrepreneurship would allow organizations to create more value with their limited resources and tap additional resources not directly under their control.”
It used to be that businessmen made billions of dollars and then donated the money a la Bill Gates; business and philanthropy were two separate and often conflicting realms. The networks of purpose driven businesses popping up all over the internet and the panoply of blogs devoted solely to social enterprise are evidence that this paradigm is changing. Microfinance is turning poverty into an investment opportunity and groundbreaking alternative energy companies are producing solutions to both peak oil and climate change.
Phrases like corporate social responsibility, environmentally sustainable business, and serving consumers at the “base of the pyramid” would have been met with quizzical faces when our parents came of age, but are now the latest thing in the corporate world. Many of these changes have come about because of the wrongdoings of the past, but the important thing is that they are happening. MBA students around the world are more aware than ever before of the responsibility they have to address these issues and they’re doing so at conferences like Net Impact.
During my childhood the images I associated with big business were never good, mostly the tar covered seals of the Exxon Valdez spill and employees streaming out of the Enron headquarters. My generation grew up with the notion that big business created the problems and then the non-profits did their best to clean it up. That was life. Perhaps this resignation was what led us to think that our career could give us money or the chance to make a difference, but not both. But times have changed and even though we can be self-centered at times we’re an adaptive bunch it seems. We’re starting to realize that perhaps it’s not that business is bad, but that business has been done the wrong way. Maybe it could be truly groundbreaking if we did business the right way. Maybe we can have our cake and eat it too. How millennial of us.
More evidence that social entrepreneurs are becoming necessary
Ξ June 25th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ links |
Here’s a link that I just had forwarded to me from a friend. In the interview among other things, the author claims that despite their best intentions, non-profits haven’t been up to the task and social entrepreneurs need to step in. She also tells us that more and more business students are interested in careers in social entreprise… I knew my generation wasn’t completely lost.
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5782.html
Green is just a color after all
Ξ June 25th, 2008 | → 1 Comments | ∇ Op-Ed, links |
I just read another fantastic story over at Worldchanging.com (click here for story). If you didn’t click that link to read the story here’s a brief synopsis. “Green” has gone big, but it doesn’t seem to have lived up to expectations. Emissions are still going up and all we’ve really done is to create a “green” fad. Though awareness has certainly been raised and the public is more ready to act than just a decade ago, this “green” movement is failing because it’s mostly been a marketing campaign so far and hasn’t engaged the kind of values that would support a sustained commitment to solving environmental problems. As the authors put it, “What previous campaigns have missed is that the world we hope to build as we progress towards sustainability is not just a world that offers a better quality of life, it’s a world that’s more in alignment with the sort of fundamental values (from concern for our children to connection to nature to a sense of duty) that most define us as human beings.
I think that the message Steffen and Steinberger are getting across is fairly universal. When you act out of a genuine desire for change, with a strong vision of the world you wish to create, progress will come naturally. Acting out of guilt or shame never produces results nearly as effective as acting upon a positive vision of compassion or idealism. One reason that I think Kiva has been so unbelievably successful is because it does take the more positive route. People are motivated because the one to one lending promotes a sense of human connection and compassion. Kiva is an unbelievable model to follow for any business trying to promote positive change because they’re acting from genuine values. Lenders are not scared or coerced into action, they are impelled by their own humanity.
MicroPlace Press Release
Ξ June 24th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Microfinance, links |
This is a bit old, but still very relevant to me considering my newfound obsession with MicroPlace. A press release announcing their “Small change. Big change” campaign.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080602/20080602005989.html?.v=1
A new kind of Kiva…without that “warm glow”
Ξ June 24th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Microfinance, links |
I came across a great new opportunity for my company today going through the Social Actions Blog. Peter Deitz wrote a quick synopsis on a company called MicroPlace and how it differs from Kiva.
As he puts it, MicroPlace is essentially Kiva without the “warm glow”, which is a pretty good way of putting it I think. What he means by this is that whereas Kiva does not provide a return on investment to its lenders, MicroPlace does. At first, I thought to myself, “Well that just seems like a more selfish form of Kiva.”
When I thought about it a little more, though, I realized that if lender behavior at MicroPlace is anything like I imagine it is with Kiva’s lenders then this is actually a really good thing. I know that a lot of Kiva lenders just put their repaid loans right back towards a new loan. If MicroPlace lenders do the same thing then not only would they put the money straight back in, but they would have accrued a return as well to supplement a larger loan or put towards multiple loans.
Even if lenders do not re-invest the money, it’s still a fantastic thing to have another company reaching out to developing world entrepreneurs. Any investment in these initiatives is good investment. Click the link below to check out Peter Deitz’s full analysis on his blog.
http://blog.socialactions.com/profiles/blog/show?id=2062983%3ABlogPost%3A2361
A couple of great links
Ξ June 20th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ links |
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008059.html
A great article about B Corporation, an innovative new company that certifies companies that are truly “purpose driven” to assist consumers in differentiating companies with great purposes from those that simply have great marketing.
http://philanthropy.blogspot.com/2008/06/microbuzzword-prefix-20085.html
Insight from Lucy Bernholz on micro-mania.
http://www.eightprinciples.com/
Just because it’s Friday, it’s summer and the sun is out.
Bigger, Stronger, Faster Giving
Ξ June 19th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Op-Ed |
A recent article in Slate magazine makes a dire prediction for charitable giving – it may go the same way as the rest of the economy. Citing drops across the economic spectrum in donations to non-profits, the author notes that charitable giving is a lagging indicator. The article quotes Robert Evans of EHL Consulting Group as saying that this basically means, “…in the minds of some, philanthropy is a luxury. You pay your bills first, and then start making charitable gifts.”
This got me to thinking about the whole notion of giving itself. Although giving seems to be an inherently selfless act, isn’t it somewhat illuminating that as soon as the economy takes a slight downturn so does giving? If giving is so selfless shouldn’t the numbers behave independently of economic indicators? In another great Slate article from about a year ago, Tim Harford cited two studies that showed altruistic behavior is positively affected by selling lottery tickets rather than asking for cash directly and that average contributions from males increased significantly when approached by attractive white girls.
Not only does our giving turn out to be more selfish than we thought, but we tend to make bad decisions when we do. We’re not so good at reconciling the fact that we should be prioritizing the problems we can solve over the ones we simply wish we could solve. A great example that may annoy some is that global warming is actually one of the least cost effective philanthropic efforts to throw money at. If you don’t believe me check out this TED video featuring Bjorn Lomborg who gives a much more fascinating and in depth analysis of the top twenty humanitarian issues and ranks them in order of easiest and cheapest to solve to the most expensive and time consuming.
As eye opening as these facts are, I still think humans are basically generous when they can and should be. I’m continually overwhelmed by the outpouring of support elicited by natural disasters like Thailand’s tsunami. But, it does occur to me that these insights on human behavior highlight a few obstacles in harnessing the altruism of the general public through traditional charities. Firstly, their giving is dependent on the health of the economy. Secondly, as a group we don’t make the best decisions. Lastly, our giving can be distracted by things like lottery tickets and hot girls….can you blame us?
This is not an attack on charities, but recognition of the fact that perhaps we can find a better way to organize our approach to global problem solving. What if we lived in a world where businesses were expected to have eradicating poverty, eliminating water-borne diseases or reducing illiteracy as a primary focus of their mission statements? What if when the economy took a downturn it didn’t mean that giving had to stop? During the last few centuries we created a marketplace that seemed to funnel money into all the wrong places. It can’t be that hard to create one that funnels it into all the right places. With enough informed and passionate business leaders, I don’t think it’s impossible to create an economy of giving rather than one of taking.