Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Trust is the new black? Pessimism is the new black? Moore’s Law. The World is not Flat? Jazz and innovation.
Am at SFO. Air Canada does it again. Almost 2 hours late. But time to catch up on yesterday’s conference fare and maybe even get into reporting on today. Given that I haven’t finished reporting on the Big Rethink of March 11-12!
Arianna was followed by a panel on social entrepreneurship: Jacqueline Novogratz, Founder and CEO of the Acumen Fund, Andrew Kuper, President of LeapFrog Investments, Jordan Kassalow, Founder of Vision Spring and Dan Reicher, Director, Climate Change and energy Initiatives, Google.com.
Quite the line-up. What was fun and and interesting was that each panel was moderated by an Economist Correspondent. This one by Matthew Bishop, the US Business Editor and NY Bureau Chief.
The Google guy was most interesting to me — this idea of them having a for-profit and a not-for-profit stream. He talked about the Google power meter (on the philanthropic side) as being, from their point of view, a game changer. http://www.google.org/powermeter/ He also talked about “google energy”. Lots going on in this space.
Google PowerMeter is a free software tool that allows you to view your home’s energy consumption from your personalized iGoogle homepage. Using information from utility smart meters and in-home energy management devices, Google PowerMeter helps you to save money and use less electricity. from Power Meter website.
Someone mentioned that social entrepreneurship was only a decade old — but Jacqueline reminded us that it is much older. For example, John D. Rockefeller was responsible for investing in a program to eradicate hookworm from children in the early 1900s.
The inevitable discussion about the valley of death and the lack of capital for projects at key times surfaced. As did a discussion on the need to “price” in a very different way. But there was agreement that there is a new generation of social entrepreneurs with lots of interest.
Flash of Genius 1: Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson
- New companies (and countries) thrive on disruption — they have no legacies to protect — they can compete around the idea of accelerated disruptive change.
The final panel of the day was: THE WORLD IS NOT FLAT? Panelists included Joi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons, John Kao, Author of Innovation Nation, Annlee Saxenian, Professor and Dean, School of Information, UC Berkeley. Some notions…
- Place is important in regard to innovation — e.g. Silicon Valley. And the people in these places really matter
- Innovation happens mainly at the sub-national level — is it really appropriate to HAVE a national strategy? They talked about the numerous countries that spend time on developing innovation strategies — and then what really happens? Canada is a good example of this!
- Prospering is not the same as winning. We should be talking about “prosperous” industries more than “competitive” industries.
- There was an telling interchange between a Gen Y woman and Annalee — the woman said her generation is into cross disciplinarity and Anna said great — she regretted how disciplinary her education had been. Today, however, another panelist mentioned that her students are still stuck in their disciplinary silos!
Flash of Genius 2: John Kao (on the piano) and Andrew Speight (on the sax). We had been sitting a long time in incredibly uncomfortable seats. So John asked us to stand up and find a partner. He started a story and we had to finish it in short segments, alternating between us. A good exercise for mid-afternoon lows. They then demonstrated the similarities between jazz improv and innovation. A good change of pace.
Next — Christina Romer — she deserves her own special blog.