"7-Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship" via MaRS
Much of the coverage on this blog is focused on social ventures emanating from the United States. Although I try to keep track of the shifts, trends, and new ideas in global social entrepreneurship, the reality is that different places have their own scenes, their own leaders, their own constraints, their own opportunities. Despite that, the composition of this blog's audience suggests just how international this field really is.
Yesterday I decided to look at the Facebook Fan Page (or Like page, or whatever its called these days) for the blog and used their "Insights" feature to learn more about the audience. Insights is a basic analytics suite that gives the managers of pages the ability to see things like how many people have been active 'liking' or commenting on shared links, where members of the community come from, what language they speak, and other demographic information.
Some of the information I learned wasn't terribly surprising. Of the ~3,500 community members, 52% are male and 44% are female. The audience is pretty young: 27% are between 18 and 24, and another 40% are between 25-34. Only just over 10% are 45 plus. Part of that youthfulness may also be a reflection of the general demographics on Facebook.
What was more surprising were the city and country demographics. Perhaps unsurprisingly, New York City is home to more community members than any other city. But guess what number two is? New Delhi, India. Guess what number three is? A tie, between Chicago and Mumbai. And number four? Maybe that's when San Francisco peeps its head in? Nope, #4 would be Jakarta, Indonesia.
In fact, of the top 20 cities represented, only 9 are in the US. The list, in order, is: New York City, New Delhi, Chicago, Mumbai, Jakarta, San Francisco, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Seattle, Providence (thanks Brown University), Zurich, Pleasanton (this one I don't get), Paris, London, Toronto, Madrid, Tokyo, Atlanta.
Similarly cool is the composition of countries. Of the 3,500 fans, less than half come from the United States, and the #2 country of origin, India, has 2.5x more people than #3, which is the UK. The list, in order, is: United States, India, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, France, Australia, Jordan, Singapore, Spain, Japan, Switzerland, South Africa, Pakistan, Norway, Sweden, Philippines, and rounding out the top 20, Kenya.
This is obviously only one small piece of evidence about the global social entrepreneurship community, but I do think it's compelling. It is another reminder that in the 21st century, global differences are not opportunities for exploitation and power hierarchy, but opportunities for collaboration and mutual support.
Photo credit: Raveesh Vyas
In our Big Ideas series, we check in regularly with leading thinkers in the field of social innovation. We want to know what they're working on, what questions they're wresting with, and what opportunities and challenges they see up ahead for the sector.
Today we hear from John Elkington, co-founder and Executive Chairman of the London-based Volans, which works with entrepreneurs, businesses, investors and governments globally to develop and scale innovative solutions to financial, social, and environmental challenges. He's also the co-founder of the think tank and consultancy SustainAbility, and the author of numerous books, including The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World, co-authored with Pamela Hartigan. Read on for highlights from our conversation.
On the historic difficulty in getting companies to take social entrepreneurship seriously: “I've worked for 35 years with big companies, trying to get them to pay attention to sustainability and social entrepreneurs. In the past, most of them just didn't know what to make of the space. A few said, 'We understood it when you were trying to get us to pay attention to NGOs, because they have the potential to damage our brands [by highlighting irresponsible behavior or calling for boycotts], but we don't understand why you're trying to get us to pay attention to social entrepreneurs.'”
On how that’s changing: “To our surprise and delight, we started to find companies from around the world coming to us. For example, we work with Allianz, the financial services company, [which] has a fast-track program for rising executives which includes exposure to social entrepreneurs. Allianz fields some of their best people to work with leading social entrepreneurs.”
On other signs of progress: “Pamela Hartigan and I give 40 to 50 keynotes each year. One of the things we've noticed is that the size of the events and their prominence is growing all the time – and it's starting to cross-cut different sectors.”
On the limits of corporate social responsibility (CSR): “CSR for many companies has been framed as, 'We've got to be seen to be good [and nice], we've got to protect ourselves as part of risk management.' The increasing criticism of CSR flows from a recognition that even the best corporate social responsibility work is still peripheral and largely defensive. People are also beginning to realize that sustainable development is about creating new business and economic models which have the capacity to sustain a world population of 9 billion by, say, 2050. That's a much bigger and more disruptive agenda than most CSR experts are prepared (or able) to sign their companies on for.”
On the ongoing challenges in advancing deep changes in business: “Accenture recently published a survey of about 900 CEOs from around the world talking about sustainability – most say that they embrace it. But then you look at their business models, at their footprints, [and] there's a complete mismatch between what they're currently doing and the sustainability agenda. When companies talk about sustainability, too often what they mean – in the context of the global economic downturn – is a return to business as usual. We've got to benchmark what governments, companies and [cities] are doing against a much more challenging set of longer-term objectives and metrics.
On the dangers of bandwagons and the need to protect the integrity of social entrepreneurship: “[Social entrepreneurship] is one more area where we may see elements of a bandwagon developing. On the positive side, bandwagons give that sense of positive momentum, and that's great. But bandwagons often run off the road because the people steering them don't know what they're doing. Also, there's a risk that your agenda, your language, can be co-opted and diluted by the new entrants.
“You want those breakthrough moments, but when they happen, you have to fight very energetically to preserve your original sense of what that agenda means. I think that social innovation will go through precisely the challenges that the sustainability agenda has gone through.”
Photo: John Elkington
On a fact-finding mission to the Netherlands, a delegation of California public officials marvel at the promise of bicycles for 21st Century transportation
I joined a team of latter-day explorers in the Netherlands this month on a quest to discover what American communities can learn from the Dutch about transforming bicycling in the United States from a largely recreational pastime to an integral part of our transportation system.
Patrick Seidler, vice-chairman of the Bikes Belong Foundation, sponsor of this fact-finding mission for key decision-makers from the San Francisco Bay Area, announced we were in search of the “twenty-seven percent solution”— the health, environmental, economic and community benefits gained in a nation where more than a quarter of all daily trips are made on bicycle.
Of course, the bicycle enjoys certain advantages in the Netherlands, notably a flat landscape and a long cycling tradition.
But the idea of learning from the success of the Dutch is not far-fetched. The Netherlands resembles the United States as a prosperous, technologically advanced nation where a huge share of the population owns automobiles. They simply don’t drive them each and every time they leave home, thanks to common sense transportation policies where biking and transit are promoted as an attractive alternative to the car. Indeed, millions of Dutch commuters combine bike and train trips, which offers the point-to-point convenience of the automobile and the speed of transit.
Seidler noted that a delegation of public officials from Madison, Wisconsin returned home from a similar tour of the Netherlands last spring, and within three weeks was implementing what they learned on the streets of the city. Bikes Belong, a non-profit group dedicated to getting more people on bikes more often, regularly takes public officials on tours of cities where biking is popular.
(Image by Zach Vanderkooy)
My fellow explorers on this journey included the president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (city council) and the city’s director of public works, chief traffic engineer and director of the Livable Streets Program. From San Jose, came a city council member, the chief traffic engineer and representatives of the business community. Suburban Marin County was represented by city council members from San Rafael, Mill Valley and Corte Madera as well as a transit project director.
Here is what we discovered in the world capital of biking.
Kids Just Wanna Ride Bikes
The trip started in Utrecht, where our group marveled at the parade of bicyclists whizzing past us all over town. This raised an immediate question: Why is biking a way of life in the Netherlands and only a tiny portion of the transportation picture in United States?
We uncovered a large part of the answer that afternoon at a suburban primary school, where Principal Peter Kooy told us that 95 percent of older students—kids in the 10-12 age range—bike to school at least some of the time.
Compare that to the 15 percent who either walk or bike to school in the United States, down from 50 percent in 1970, according to the National Center for Safe Routes to School program.
“I came to the Netherlands to have my mind blown about biking,” declared Damon Connolly, vice-mayor of San Rafael, California. "And that sure happened when I heard that 95 percent of kids bike to school.”
This helps explain the childhood obesity epidemic in the U.S., but also why so few adult Americans ride a bike to work or to do errands—a mere one percent of trips compared to 12 percent in Germany, 18 percent in Denmark, and 27 percent in the Netherlands.
A commitment to biking is not uniquely imprinted in the Dutch DNA. It is the result of a conscious push to promote biking that has resulted in a surge of cycle use since the1970s.
And a large part of that success can be attributed to what happens in school. Kids learn how to bike safely as part of their education said Ronald Tamse, a Utrecht city planner who led our group on a two-wheel tour of the city and its suburbs.
Kids getting ready to bike home at this primary school in Utrecht, Netherlands. Ninety-five percent of the older kids bike to school at least some of the time. (Photo by Jay Walljasper)
A municipal program sends special teachers into the schools to conduct bike classes, and students go to Trafficgarden, a miniature city complete with roads, sidewalks and busy intersections where students hone their pedestrian, biking and driving skills (in non-motorized pedal cars). At age 11, most kids in town are tested on their cycling skills on a course throughout the city, winning a certificate of accomplishment that ends up framed on many bedroom walls.
“To make safer roads, we focus on the children,” Tamse explained. “Because it not only helps them bike and walk more safely, but it helps them to become safer drivers who will look out for pedestrians and bicyclists in the future.”
These kinds of programs would make a huge difference in the United States, where 60 percent of people report in surveys they would like to bike regularly if they felt safer—but only eight percent actually do.
Squarely Addressing the Problems of Bike Safety & Theft
Next stop was the Hague, where bikes account for 27 percent of all trips around the city of 500,000—exactly the average for the Netherlands as a whole. Not content with being merely average, the Hague is spending 10 million euros a year (roughly 14 million dollars) to improve those statistics.
Hidde van der Bijl, a policy officer for cycling in Hague’s city government, outlined their strategy about improving bicycle speed and safety: separating bike paths as much as possible from city streets and when that is not possible designating certain streets as bike boulevards where two wheelers gain priority over cars and trucks. The latter are being used in the U.S. in cities like Portland, Berkeley, and Minneapolis. These are practical innovations that could make a dramatic difference in nearly every American town because research on this side of the Atlantic shows that physical separation from motorized traffic on busy streets is the single most effective policy that gets more people to bike.
Officials in the Hague realize that fear about safety isn’t the only thing that discourages people from riding bikes more frequently; that’s why they are tackling the problems of bike parking.
This might seem a minor point to American cyclists who seldom find it hard to park bikes just a few steps from their destinations. But upon closer look, parking emerges as a significant issue for cyclists in any large city.
With the growing popularity of cycling in the Netherlands, finding a parking place for your bike is becoming more difficult, as seen here in the Hague. (Photo by Jay Walljasper)
“The car is parked out in front of the house on the street, while the bike is stuffed away out back in a shed or they have to carry it up and down the stairs in their buildings,” van der Bijl explained. “So people choose the car because it is easier.”
“It’s an issue for me personally,” agreed Ed Reiskin, San Francisco’s director of public works, “because I always have to carry my bicycle down to the street.”
People also worry about their bike being stolen off the street at their home or job. That’s why creating more secure bike parking in residential neighborhoods, commercial districts and workplaces is a priority for Hague’s transportation planners.
The city is busy building parking facilities in the basement of new office developments and at strategic outdoor locations throughout the center city, many of them staffed by attendants like a parking garage. You can park your favorite bike there for a nominal fee, confident that it will still be there when you return. (Groningen, the Netherlands biking capital, with 59 percent of urban trips made on two wheels, debuted the first guarded parking facility in 1982 and now sports more than 30 in a town of 180,000.)
Meanwhile in high density residential neighborhoods, the city is installing bike racks or special bike sheds to make life easier for two-wheel commuters, sometimes taking over auto parking spaces to do it. One parking space can be converted to 10 bike spaces, according to van der Bijl.
Something Hopeful in Rotterdam
On our third day in the Netherlands, we biked across the Atlantic—at least it felt that way in Rotterdam, a city whose streets seemed almost American. We came face-to-face with familiar road conditions: heavy traffic on 4-lane roads with aggressive drivers.
Bob Ravasio, a Marin County realtor and city council member in the town of Corte Madera, quipped “Utrecht seems like a fantasy land now. This is what we’re up against at home.”
Rotterdam heightened our optimism about boosting biking in the U.S. when we learned that 22 percent of trips around town each day are made on bicycles—below average among Dutch cities but more than double the rate of any major American city. If they could do it, so could we.
“Rotterdam could be San Francisco or Oakland with more bikes,” observed Damon Connolly.
A busy bikeway in Rotterdam, a Dutch city that feels American with wide streets and heavy automobile traffic. (Photo by Zach Vanderkooy)
Even more encouraging was the news from Tom Boot of the city’s planning department that Rotterdam has been increasing its share of bike traffic by 3 percent annually for the last several years. They’ve achieved this phenomenal growth by expanding and improving the network of bikeways—separating them from car traffic whenever possible and coloring the asphalt bright red everywhere else to clearly mark bike lanes for motorists to see.
“Good things are happening here,” observed Bruno Maier, vice-president of Bikes Belong, “and you can really envision it happening back home.”
Amsterdam’s New Neighborhood Where Bikes are the King of the Road
The experience of biking through four Dutch cities provided our team of Bay Area transportation leaders with plenty of examples of what they can do to make cycling more safe, popular and pleasurable back home. Bridget Smith, for instance, director of San Francisco’s Livable Streets Program, is excited about using more color on the roadways as an inexpensive but dramatic way of making sure everyone can tell bike lanes from car lanes.
But the experience also fueled our imaginations about the future of cities. We saw one glimpse of what’s possible on Java Island, a cluster of neighborhoods constructed over the past 10 years in what was once the city’s harbor. It’s a scenic waterfront location with strikingly handsome modern architecture in a pleasing variety of styles that is linked to the rest of the city by tram, road, and bike paths. Although brand new, it exudes a charm reminiscent of the city’s famous canal neighborhoods—which for my money are one of the most vibrant and downright pleasing urban quarters on earth.
San Francisco board of supervisors president David Chiu looks out on a new neighborhood in Amsterdam, where bikes and pedestrians (and boats) take priority over cars. (Photo by Jay Walljasper)
Like old Amsterdam, Java Island enjoys a picturesque waterfront setting. It also shares another trait with the city’s medieval districts that you would never expect in a newly built housing development—it accommodates bicycles more easily than cars. Motorized traffic is shunted to the side of each cluster of apartment buildings in underground parking garages, while pedestrians and bicyclists have free reign of the courtyards that link people’s homes like a green commons.
This result of this visionary planning is more than just lovely—Java Island represents a bold new vision of urban life where people matter more than motor vehicles. You feel a liberating sense of ease moving about these new neighborhoods—and so do the residents. I’ve never seen kids—even really young ones—who look so completely comfortable running around their neighborhoods, not even during my own childhood in the days before autos completely ruled the road. We passed two sets of young girls staging tea parties, one of them taking place on a blanket just inches from the joint biking/walking trail that served as the neighborhood’s main street.
Pascal van den Noort, a transportation consultant leading our tour through the city, urged the group to “imitate this in California, please.”
Amsterdam city council member Fjodor Molenaar, who met up with us on Java Island, explained that the Dutch call this an "Auto Luw” development, which translates as “car light” or “car sparse,” adding that this planning idea is now the official policy of the city.
To get a sense of how it feels to bike in the Netherlands, here is video that Molenaar recommended to us at a meeting the next day with city transportation officials at the mayor’s residence. It’s a trailer for a new movie called “Riding Bikes With the Dutch” in which filmmaker Michael W. Bauch chronicles his family’s adventure swapping homes with a family in Amsterdam:
Bringing It All Back Home
After five days of biking around Dutch cities, the Bay Area delegation was fired up about the potential of bicycling to improve life in American cities. On our last day, after a lengthy jaunt through Amsterdam—covering medieval and modern neighborhoods, rich and poor ones, all full of bikers—we dismounted for one last discussion at an outdoor café overlooking the waterfront. The next day most of us would be headed back to our homes and jobs and cars in the U.S., where most people would dismiss the idea of bikes making up a quarter percent of urban traffic as “science fiction.”
One question popping up all over the group was how could we reconcile our amazing experience of biking in the Netherlands with the auto-choked streets of San Francisco, San Jose and Marin County? Hillie Talens of C.R.O.W. (a transportation organization focusing on infrastructure and public space) reminded us: it took the Dutch 35 years to construct the ambitious bicycle system we were now enjoying. In the mid-1970s biking was at a low point in the country and declining fast. Even Amsterdam turned to an American for a plan to rip an expressway through its beautiful central city. But the oil crises of that time convinced the country that they needed to lessen their dependence on imported oil.
The Dutch gradually turned things around by embracing a different vision for their cities. While the country’s wealth, population and levels of car ownership have continued to grow through the decades, the share of trips made by cars has not. We could accomplish something similar in the United States, by enacting new plans to make urban cycling safer, easier and more convenient.
Following the Dutch model will make biking mainstream in America. The morning and evening rush hour of cyclists you see on the streets in the Netherlands are not all the young, white, male ultrafit athletes in spandex we are accustomed to seeing in the U.S.—people of all ages and income levels use bikes for everyday transportation, with women biking more than men.
Of course, we won’t do everything the same as the Dutch— there are considerable differences between the two countries geographically, politically and culturally. This was reflected in the questions our team posed to the numerous transportation experts we met during the week. Where did you find the money to do that? How did you overcome the opposition of motorists, merchants, developers etc.?
And, inevitably, American innovators could envision other solutions the Dutch, the Danish, the Germans or the Chinese have not yet thought up.
But the Netherlands does offer plenty of practical ideas with which to get started, as well as the inspiration of seeing a place where bikes have gained their rightful role as a form of transportation. Sitting in the sunshine with a chilly breeze blowing off the harbor one day, each member of the group shared thoughts of what they’d learned. Here is a selection of the comments:
David Chiu, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (city council):
“It’s one thing to read statistics about the Dutch biking at ten times the rate we do in the U.S. It’s another thing to see it happening; not just for hard-core bicyclists but as an everyday way of life for the majority of citizens.
“There is actually a road map of do-able public policies we can adopt to get us where the Dutch are today.”
Sam Liccardo, San Jose City Council:
“We can start by identifying a few corridors that serve many workplaces and have a high transit-dependent population and build them out with bicycle infrastructure.
“We can brand biking as cool, make it hip—and get the bicycling community coming out to meetings to support these improvements.”
Shiloh Ballard, vice-president of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (a business and civic organization):
“What we can immediately take back home is their general planning for bikes; for instance, all the visual clues that tell motorists to look for bicycles.”
Ricardo Olea, chief traffic engineer, city of San Francisco:
“I understand better all the passion people have about biking—people who want to see a bike system like the Netherlands in their lifetime.”
Manuel Pineda, deputy director for the San Jose Department of Transportation:
“I realized that politics is the same everywhere you go; they faced some of the same issues here that we do.
“We can concentrate on two or three corridors that can be a showcase that gets people excited, to get thing going, to show what’s possible.”
Ed Reiskin, director of public works, City of San Francisco
“They don’t just think about bikes, every presentation we heard tied things together—public transit, parking, cars, streets. The Dutch sense that people are going to do what’s easiest. If we think about how to improve the quality of biking, more people will bike.”
Bridget Smith, director of Livable Streets Program, city of San Francisco:
“I see what can be accomplished with a vision. All I’ve learned here will infuse my work for a long time.”
Damon Connolly, vice-mayor of San Rafael:
“What I will be thinking about when I get home is how closely related land use planning is to transportation planning—they are almost the same thing.”
Bob Ravasio, city council member in Corte Madera:
“The low-hanging fruit is getting people start with short trips—to the store, not commuting all the way from Marin County to San Francisco.“
Bill Gamlen, senior rail engineer, Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit:
“We need to build the infrastructure, get quality bike routes going like the Star Routes in Rotterdam.”
Ian Dewar, advocacy manager for Specialized Bicycles, based in San Jose:
“I was really, really surprised by the low number of bike accidents they have here. The education they do really pays off.”
Zach Vanderkooy, program coordinator for Bikes Belong:
“The Dutch are not somehow exceptional people when it comes to biking. Everything we see here is the result of a deliberate decision to improve biking here. Even little things, like paint on the street, adds up.”
Kate Scheider, research analyst and communications coordinator for Bikes Belong:
“I see the importance of more investment in research and data on bicycling at the national level.”
Bruno Maier, vice-president of Bikes Belong:
“Imagine if all the bikes we saw in the Netherlands were single-occupancy vehicles. It would not be the same place.”
Jay Walljasper is a contributing editor of National Geographic Traveler, Senior Fellow at Project for Public Spaces and co-editor of OnTheCommons.org. Editor of Utne Reader magazine for 15 years, he is the author of "The Great Neighborhood Book" and (coming this winter) "All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons."
Feature image on homepage of bicycle track in the Hague by Zach Vanderkooy.
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The New York Times has been giving startups some serious love lately, from recent Thomas Friedman op-ed's to yesterday's article reporting on new research that suggests that startups are the most important vehicle for job creation in the American economy. The study has important implications for everything from tax policy to education.
In the story of the United States, both entrepreneurship and small business have almost mythic importance. The country was of course, founded by business and civic entrepreneurs who risked everything for the chance at a better life and a better government in a new world. Small businesses have a prominence that derives not only from their economic impact, but for the fact that they seem to be the place where Americans can claim the freedom and independence promised in the American Dream.
But this mythology matters beyond its inspiration for the masses. Policymakers are charged with creating regulatory frameworks that lead to more businesses and more job creation. Put another way, they're tasked with understanding where myth meets reality and designing policy structures that enable more economic growth. People who advocate for policies friendly to small business are quick to point out that 2/3 of new jobs are created by firms with under 500 employees.
In August, the National Bureau of Economic Research published a research paper that made some important suggestions about where new jobs really come from. In short, the report suggests that the size of companies does not matter when it comes to job creation -- what matters is age. The research suggests that most job creation occurs in the early years of new companies.
Why does this matter? It matters from a policy perspective because the things that establishes small businesses care about are often different than the things that startups care about. Creating policies and structures that enable ecosystems which promote entrepreneurship and new venture creation is a task wholly distinct from supporting small business.
The article mentions a few examples of where government policy aimed at promoting job creation through small businesses don't help startups very much. Programs to spur bank lending, for example, don't matter terribly to startups who are primarily financed through equity investment (which effectively means selling a portion of their company, rather than incurring debt). Another example is the focus on individual income taxes -- something the small business sector in general cares a lot about, but which your average startup and its early employees care far less about. Instead, startup ecosystems are worried about things like a rise in capital gains tax, which could reduce incentives for early stage investors.
Mythology matters. The stories we tell about ourselves and our society create the aspiration that catalyzes new careers and companies. But data matters as well. And when it comes to policy, data matters even more. The government should not turn its back from policies which help small businesses, but this data also suggests that it shouldn't assume that those policies are the vehicle which will create the jobs of the future.
Photo credit: star5112
In our Big Ideas series, we check in regularly with top thinkers in the field of social innovation. We want to know what they're working on, what questions they're wrestling with, and what opportunities and challenges they see up ahead for the sector.
Alan Khazei, founder of Be the Change, Inc. and co-founder of City Year, has been a social entrepreneur, advocate, movement builder, political candidate, and, now, author. For more than 20 years, he has focused on encouraging and strengthening the power of citizens to serve and transform society.
On Wednesday, September 1 at 8 p.m. EST, to celebrate the publication of his new book, Big Citizenship: How Pragmatic Idealism Can Bring out the Best in America, Khazei will be participating in a virtual book party by conference call with Davis Guggenheim, the director of "An Inconvenient Truth" and the forthcoming and highly anticipated film on education reform, "Waiting For Superman." You can join by calling (712) 432-0075, with the code: 182915. RSVP by emailing echerniack@gmail.com.
On the meaning of ‘big citizenship’: "When Harry Truman was leaving the White House, he said he wasn’t leaving the highest office of the land, he was assuming the highest office – that of citizen. We need to look at what’s driving change in America and around the world today: the energy, idealism and innovation of citizens. It’s people engaging in service, politics and movements, which is what has driven change in our country from the very beginning – whether it was the citizen soldiers of the revolution, or the abolitionists, or the suffragettes, or the civil rights activists. That’s what we need now, especially during this time of economic hardship. It’s up to all of us to work together to come up to the solutions to our problems. Nobody changes the world by themselves. I’ve been blessed to be part of a number of different efforts for progress. Whether it was starting City Year, saving Americorps or organizing the Service Nation campaign, at the beginning of every single one of them people said, ‘It’ll never work.’ What always has made it happen is the willingness of citizens to act – not necessarily the identified leaders, but everyday people.
"We’re going to have a website for the book and part of it will allow people to nominate their own ‘big citizen.’ There are literally millions. I’m hoping the website can be a vehicle for people to share their stories, and spur action. If we can get a critical mass of people to feel like they’re actually holding an office and using it to its full capacity, that will lead to big change."
On moving beyond the old debates about government: "We’re stuck in this tired debate between ‘big government is the answer’ and ‘government is the problem.’ It’s looking at the wrong question – and it’s gotten to a silly level of partisanship. We’re not living in the 1930s of FDR or the 1980s of Reagan. It’s our time and we need to do what Lincoln said, to 'think anew and act anew.' What I’m saying is both sides are wrong. What we need is big citizenship. And through it, we need to recapture our sense of common purpose. We need to move from the number one question at election time being ‘Are you better off?’ to ‘Are we better off?’ The focus on narrow interests is what’s gotten us into this mess. Our Constitution doesn’t begin with the words, ‘I, a member of the United States, in order to get more for myself…’ it begins with ‘We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union.’"
On a different role for government: "Government isn’t the answer; it’s a part of the answer. We can’t just look to one sector alone to solve problems. Each sector has something to add. Increasingly, new solutions are coming from combinations of the private, government, and nonprofit sectors working together, each bringing what it does best."
On changing the face of government: "We need more people who have had direct experience making change at the grassroots level to get into politics. They bring a different perspective about how things work and how to leverage the extraordinary power of elective office to make change. We need to broaden the qualifications for governing. If you look at the U.S. Senate, almost half are lawyers, a bunch are former elected officials, there’s one comedian – but there are very few people who come from the direct world of service, or social entrepreneurship, or the nonprofit sector.
"The debate in Washington would be very different right now if half the members of Congress had served in the Peace Corps, Americorps or the military. They would have a common bond. They would say, ‘I may not agree with you politically, but I respect that you have served the country and shown that you’re willing to put it first.’ I’m not impugning anybody’s motives, but we have to broaden the base of who is in elected office. And it’s not just Congress. We have 500,000 elected offices in the U.S. Increasingly in the 21st century, we’re going to have to fill them with leaders who understand how to bring all three sectors together."
On his new ideas and upcoming campaigns: "Through Be the Change, we’re still pushing the Service Nation campaign. We’re working on a program called Cities of Service, with Mayor Bloomberg. We’ve got this great Mission Serve initiative, where we’re trying to bring together the worlds of civilian service and military service, looking for ways to support each other, especially the veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan and their families. And we’re launching a new campaign called Opportunity Nation, trying to build a coalition of practitioners who are promoting social mobility, economic justice and efforts to fight poverty. We’ll try to convene a big national summit to inject the issue of opportunity into the national debate around the 2012 presidential election, with a goal of hopefully coming up with new policies that will help to reclaim America as a nation of opportunity."
Photo: Be the Change, Inc.
Banks ripe for disruption, better startup pitching, Wall Street Journal makes boring critiques of CSR (big surprise), and the potential for mobile technology to change justice systems around the world. All this and more in this week's weekend entrepreneur links.
In Hard Times, One New Bank (Double-Wide): The US consumer banking industry is waaaaaay up there on my "ripe for disruption" list. This article shows just how little space there has been for new actors to come in and change anything, recently. It profiles the only new bank to get new approval to operate in 2010. While there are interesting opportunities in creating entirely new banks, I actually think the first steps to changing the industry are going to be through companies that simplify and optimize certain parts of the banking experience, for example, Banksimple.net. Their whole value proposition is that they keep as many parts of the consumer banking experience free, only making money from two key revenue streams, which means a better overall experience.
5 Lessons from 150 Startup Pitches: I've watched a lot of pitches this summer, and performed a few myself, and one thing I can say for sure: no entrepreneur has the perfect pitch, and most of us (particularly in the social space) could use some work. This set of posts have been around for a while, but I've recently been re-engaging with these tips from Jason Cohen of Smart Bear Software. The lessons are definitely more directly relevant for web entrepreneurs, but have lots of great insight for social ventures, as well.
"Bah! Humbug!" in the Wall Street Journal: Matthew Bishop and Michael Green use their Philanthrocapitalism blog to combat a set of recents pieces appearing in the WSJ. The first piece they sought to refute argued that the "Giving Pledge" was causing billionaires to focus on the wrong things when there would be more value if they just continued to make money. The second argued (poorly, in their estimation), that CSR was always going to distract companies and they should just give up, try to make profits as deviously as necessary, and have the government regulate. Not surprisingly, Bishop and Green have a few thoughts on both matters.
On the Potential of Mobile Justice: Stories about the potential of mobile technology to change health outcomes and improve economies in the developing world abound. Where there are fewer stories -- and as yet, fewer models -- is in how mobile technology can be used to help change the systems of justice that underpin free societies everywhere. This piece shares a few of the ideas and strategies that a working group convened by the State Department came up with this summer, particularly in the context of providing justice for rape survivors in eastern Congo.
Photo credit: The Consumerist
As the sun shines across the Garden State, one beam slices down into Rockaway, New Jersey, striking a massive new solar panel installation. Neither prompted by federal stimulus dollars nor inspired by a nearby LEED-certified building, these panels are a pretty straightforward business investment.
The panels atop H&H Mack Sales, one of the largest truck dealerships in the state, are the result of a new incentive that just rolled out last month: selling solar power from individuals and businesses to energy corporations. According to New Jersey law, energy companies need solar energy to be a fixed portion of all the energy they create. Because of the somewhat cramped confines of New Jersey – the most densely populated state in the union – there aren't many vast stretches of land to lay out solar panels. So New Jersey set up an auction system for energy-users across the state – from homeowners to business proprietors – to sell the energy they produce from solar panels to energy giants. And best of all, these homeowners and businesses then get to use that energy for free.
The president of H&H Mack Sales, Bill Horne, explained that the company decided to turn to solar power because of its environmental and financial benefits. "I carefully evaluated the significant revenue from [selling the solar energy at auction and] the elimination of up to 80% of my electric bill,” he said. Requiring energy corporations to buy solar power acts a direct subsidy on individuals buying solar panels.
Perhaps even greater than encouraging homeowners to go solar, this market incentivizes creating efficient,inexpensive solar panels: at a low enough cost, solar panels can pay for themselves. Take, for example, products like the Sunfish, a solar panel that'll be reaching stores in mid-2011. The innovation here is scale: huge solar panels are expensive to buy and install, so they went small and efficient. These plug-in panels can be installed pretty easily in an hour and can be yours for just under $800. With the largest model (which sells for $4,000) you could be making almost $1,200 a year, at current prices, from energy companies in New Jersey. You can even sell the energy you'll produce in the future – up to 15 years down the line.
This is just one of a huge number of experiments going on in solar energy across the U.S. Massachusetts is operating a similar market with a guaranteed lowest price of $300 per megawatt hour; New York offers income and sales tax exemptions; California offers rebates for every watt of energy produced. In fact, even beyond federal incentives there are systems in every state in the U.S. Here's a helpful map. The laws themselves may not be able to eradicate climate change and our dependence on fossil fuels. But with the right incentives, the market may be able to innovative us towards a workable clean energy future.
Seen & Heard is a collection of recent headlines in the news about our world, our work, and the spaces and places in between. With each post we ‘ll also share a list of job openings at Acumen Fund and in our sector. Seen & Heard will appear approximately twice a month and will replace the weekly News Roundups. We apologize to the legions of you who were die-hard News Roundup fans. We hope that this is an improvement. For those of you who like keeping a pulse on the latest news as it’s happening, please consider following us on Twitter! Finally, if you have ideas for how we can improve Seen & Heard, please don’t be shy and leave a comment below to let us know. Thanks for reading!
Headlines
- The tragic flooding in Pakistan continues to take an unprecedented toll on an unimaginable scale. Over 1,500 lives have been lost and approximately 20 million Pakistanis have been directly affected. On Friday we posted a blog naming a few of the organizations we trust who need your support in their relief efforts. Read the post here to learn how you can help.
Articles of the Week
AF and AF Family in the News
- The first episode of the new CNBC series “What the Future” features Acumen Fund founder and CEO Jacqueline Novogratz and the inspiring work of two of our investees in Kenya. Be sure to view all 3 parts!
- A good WSJ article on Acumen Fund Advisor and Partner Amy Robbins and the work of her foundation: “I’m never going to be the biggest player in the market, but if I can go to the riskiest places which often get overlooked by larger organizations, we can add the most value.”
Kenya in the News
- Kenyans recently passed an important constitutional referendum. Check out what’s at stake in this Salon article.
- A provocative NY Times op-ed on slum tourism in Kibera – do tourists who visit slums actually leave more likely to help or do they strip slum residents of their dignity?
India in the News
- India looks for new mechanisms to get food to the poor and asks should food be a right?
Water in the News
- The Washington Post reports on inefficient irrigation methods adding to the water shortages in Pakistan
- A new UN resolution declares water a right, but what does this mean for actually delivering the water?
General Development News
- A New Definition of Poor – Beyond Profit: a new Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index considers household access to basic needs in addition to income measures
Jobs
At Acumen Fund (links to all job openings at AF can be found here)
- Chief Financial Officer
- India Director
- Pakistan Portfolio Associate
- Pakistan Portfolio Consultant
- East Africa Portfolio Manager
- India Portfolio Associate
- Volunteer Communications Associate
- India Portfolio & Operations Manager
In the Sector
- Gray Matters Capital Foundation: Relationship Manager/Associate—Hyderabad, IN
- Innovations for Poverty Action: Director of Financial Innovation—New Haven, CT, US
- Intellecap: Chief Executive Officer—Hyderabad, IN
- Grameen Technology Center: Research and Development Manager—Jakarta, ID
- Embrace: Product Engineer—Bangalore, IN
- William Davidson Institute: Managing Editor, NextBillion—Ann Arbor, Michigan, US
Many thanks to Kit Burton for kicking off our first issue of Seen & Heard! This summer Kit volunteered in Acumen Fund’s New York office managing community engagement. Next week Kit will be returning to Brigham Young University where he will be graduating this December with a degree in International Relations.
