Marcia Stepanek's blogshttp://www.justmeans.com/editorials/socialenterprise/3.htmlSat, 25 May 2013 19:31:54 GMThttp://www.justmeans.com en hourly 1http://www.justmeans.com/XPrize-Offers-New-Oil-Spill-Contest-Details/25945.htmlMon, 09 Aug 2010 09:57:33 GMTMarcia Stepanek In June, we broke the news here that the XPrize Foundation would soon be announcing a new contest to encourage innovation in oil spill clean-up technology, an initiative spurred by the Gulf Coast oil spill. Last week, XPrize organizers officially kicked off the contest and offered new details.Called the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge, the $1 million prize contest [not a $10 million prize, as suggested earlier by XPrize VP Frances Beland] is named for the wife of Google CEO Eric Schmidt. W Read Full Article ]]> In June, we broke the news here that the XPrize Foundation would soon be announcing a new contest to encourage innovation in oil spill clean-up technology, an initiative spurred by the Gulf Coast oil spill. Last week, XPrize organizers officially kicked off the contest and offered new details.Called the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge, the $1 million prize contest [not a $10 million prize, as suggested earlier by XPrize VP Frances Beland] is named for the wife of Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Wendy also is the chief of the Schmidt Family Foundation, which is putting up the prize money.The contest aims to encourage the development of "breakthrough technologies that will speed the pace of cleaning up seawater surface oil resulting from spillage from ocean platforms, tankers, and other sources," organizers say on the XPrize Web site.This X Challenge is a one-year competition that culminates in the summer of 2011; the $1 million prize will be awarded to the team that demonstrates the ability to recover oil on the sea surface at the highest oil recovery rate and the highest recovery efficiency. Final contest rules will be posted on the X Prize site in September."The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill appears to be contained but the devastating impact caused by this oil spill will last for years," the contest Web site reads. "It is also inevitable that future oil spills will occur, so we need to be prepared to safeguard our oceans and shores."Teams from around the world are being invited to start registering for this competition now; judges from academia and the oil cleanup industry will select the top teams after evaluating their proposals,using a weighted score based on the following criteria: technical approach and commercialization plan; minimal negative environmental impact; scalability of and ability to deploy technology; cost and human labor of implementation; and improvement of technology over today's baseline "booms and skimmers."What do you think? Let us hear from you.]]>http://www.justmeans.com/Obama-s-Business-Innovation-Hubs--Down--But-Not-Out/24344.htmlSun, 01 Aug 2010 11:12:51 GMTMarcia Stepanek The Obama Administration's promise to launch innovation hubs to catalyze business innovation in economically hard-hit areas of the country has been cash-strapped and slow to materialize -- but don't count the program out just yet, says Marc Berejka, a former Microsoft lobbyist and now a top policy advisor in President Obama's U.S. Commerce Department. I caught up with Berejka at the Supernova 2010 conference Friday at The Wharton School in Philadelphia. What follows is an edited transcript of ou Read Full Article ]]> The Obama Administration's promise to launch innovation hubs to catalyze business innovation in economically hard-hit areas of the country has been cash-strapped and slow to materialize -- but don't count the program out just yet, says Marc Berejka, a former Microsoft lobbyist and now a top policy advisor in President Obama's U.S. Commerce Department. I caught up with Berejka at the Supernova 2010 conference Friday at The Wharton School in Philadelphia. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation:MS: You said during one of the Supernova panels today that President Obama still wants to see what the government can do to help kick-start business innovation clusters in areas of the country that have been hit hard by the economic downturn. What's the status of this initiative?MB: There's been a pretty common understanding in the commercial and policy space that there are parts of the country that have thrived on new innovations and new technologies. Silicon Valley, of course, is one such area, where a lot of tech geeks and business people have been combining their ideas, resulting in phenomenal successes. And those clusters exist elsewhere -- along Route 128 near Boston, in Triangle Park in North Carolina, and in Seattle, around Microsoft and Boeing. And so the question is, if these clusters arise organically and create all sorts of new jobs and opportunities, is there something in that which can be emulated elsewhere around the country? How can policy levers be used to foster that type of economic clustering elsewhere, where job prospects might not be as good as they are in these innovation hotbeds?MS: Past administrations in Washington chose simply to boost existing hubs rather than to try seeding new ones. What might this government -- any government -- actually do to seed recovery in less vibrant areas of the country?MB: And that's the question we're asking and think we need to starting asking as a nation. Sure, people would be hard-pressed to say, of course, that Silicon Valley had a policy framework that led to the formation of innovation there. In fact, there was no policy in Seattle. The fact of the matter is that Paul Allen and Bill Gates grew up there and the innovation cluster grew up around them. We don't want as a government to get in the way of any clusters naturally emerging and sustaining themselves. But we do want to consider whether there is something policy makers can do to stir the pot in areas not as economically thriving. Take Detroit, for example. It's suffering badly due to the downturn in the U.S auto industry. Is there anything policymakers, working with entrepreneurs, can do there to get the local economy to spin a little faster? In tough times like these, every little bit helps.The government should not be picking winners or losers geographically. But if local or federal policy can help a region that is suffering and help to convene teams of entrepreneurs in these areas, we should be exploring these policy paths.MS: So what is the status of your thinking on this? Should we expect to see movement out of the Administration on these seed hubs any time soon?MB: We have a team at Commerce, a small team, and it's focusing on what policy levers can be identified and pulled. It's in the early stages and one of the challenges is that we are in Fiscal Year 2010, and this is the first full fiscal year of the Obama Administration. Up until this point, there was not a lot of money for regional innovation clusters, to be honest, and we've had to scrape money together to support this team. But the news is that there is a team and we're very focused on this going forward. The Department of Energy also has latched onto this notion of economic clusters, for the development of alternative energy. The Energy Department has money from the Recovery Act and it is looking at creating hubs for developing energy efficient technologies. We are approaching this more generally at Commerce.Okay, readers. It's your turn. What do you think? Should there be more or less support for government efforts to seed innovation clusters across the United States -- and under what conditions? Let us hear from you.(Illustration by Gary Cook for istock.com)]]>http://www.justmeans.com/Social-Media--Too-Much-Transparency--or-Not-Enough/24244.htmlSat, 31 Jul 2010 22:16:32 GMTMarcia Stepanek Worried that there might be too much information about you online? Microsoft researcher and social media expert danah boyd says it's better to worry that there may not be enough."The material that is being put up online is searchable by anyone, and it is being constantly accessed -- out of context and without any level of nuance," boyd told attendees of the Supernova conference on business innovation in Philadelphia on Friday. "That kind of spotlight on people can be deeply devastating, and a ty Read Full Article ]]> Worried that there might be too much information about you online? Microsoft researcher and social media expert danah boyd says it's better to worry that there may not be enough."The material that is being put up online is searchable by anyone, and it is being constantly accessed -- out of context and without any level of nuance," boyd told attendees of the Supernova conference on business innovation in Philadelphia on Friday. "That kind of spotlight on people can be deeply devastating, and a type of exposure that may not be beneficial to society."Put simply, boyd said, "we can't divorce information from interpretation ... or we risk grave inaccuracy." Case in point: boyd said that she and her research team came across the online record of a woman that lists her arrest on charges of sodomy against a minor. "I think everybody would think, just by seeing this bit of information, that this person is not somebody we would want anywhere near us," boyd said. "But when I tell the story about a 17-year-old in Georgia who was arrested because she was forced into having sex with a 15-year-old classmate in school and now has a permanent record of sodomy against a minor, we then have a very different image of what's going on."Okay, so who gets to decide whether the information we see about ourselves and others online is (or isn't) complete? That's where it gets really uncomfortable, boyd says. We don't have complete control. [According to algorithmic data, boyd said, some profiles of her list her as a truck driver, presumably "because of all the Motel 8s I stay at" as she travels across country doing field research, she says.] "(Anyone) can put together massive amounts of dossiers on people, but where are the ethics and responsibilities around doing this? ...Journalists have had an interesting and long-standing discussion about ethics and privacy but that same concern doesn't necessarily pervade the blogging culture," boyd said. "People who don't see themselves as journalists now have the same rights and the technology to speak really loudly."A big part of the problem, boyd says, is that people can't agree on a definition of privacy. "We don't know what we're talking about (when we use the term), companies don't know what they're talking about and the media don't know," she said. But boyd took a stab at it:"What I have found from talking to a lot of people is that privacy is about understanding a social situation and how information will flow -- and then making decisions that will recognize this. ...People scream 'privacy fail' when they feel they've lost control of the context of what is being said; when they feel as though the system has told them the information will flow one way but then they find out it will flow differently ... and it's also important to realize that people see privacy as something related to the different actors they care about -- or don't (such as parents or other local authority figures like teachers, college admissions officers, employers and social influencers). I promise you that come fall, we will be debating what notions of privacy we care about as we think about regulation."Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do?, shared the Supernova stage with boyd on the subject and agreed that society lacks consensus over what privacy is. "What forces our fears about privacy are very important to deal with," Jarvis said, " ...but the social Web is (triggering) Gutenberg-like changes here, so we don't know where this is all headed."For more on the evolving privacy debate, see my earlier privacy posts, Google Oogled, Activists Launch Petition Drive for Facebook Users' Bill of Rights and Radical Shock.What do you think? Is there too much information about you or your company online or not enough? Let us hear from you.(Illustration: istock.com)]]>http://www.justmeans.com/VCs--Dead-or-Alive/24147.htmlSat, 31 Jul 2010 12:11:56 GMTMarcia Stepanek Should we start putting venture capitalists on the endangered species list? Judging by some of the talk on conference panels held this week at Stanford University and The Wharton School, one might be tempted to start counting.Thanks to the rising power of the Web and social networks, the theory goes, traditional VCs are no longer the "must-have" middlemen they used to be for early-stage start-ups. Sure, they're still valued -- especially by established start-ups and social enterprises looking to Read Full Article ]]> Should we start putting venture capitalists on the endangered species list? Judging by some of the talk on conference panels held this week at Stanford University and The Wharton School, one might be tempted to start counting.Thanks to the rising power of the Web and social networks, the theory goes, traditional VCs are no longer the "must-have" middlemen they used to be for early-stage start-ups. Sure, they're still valued -- especially by established start-ups and social enterprises looking to scale. But is VC money needed as much now to launch a company, when the Web and burgeoning new social networks can put you directly in touch with a spurt of new angels, small-fund investors and high net-worth individuals now streaming into deals at the seed stage -- and at far less the cost? [Early-stage VC Guy Kawasaki put it more bluntly last week, asking a panel at the Stanford Summit: "Are VCs necessary anymore?"]Consider some recent riffs on the question, from panelists at both the Stanford Summit and Friday's Supernova conference at Wharton in Philadelphia:* Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio: "Starting a company now, you definitely don't need nearly as much capital. There's a ton of capital and you don't need to take it. There will continue to be a shake-out in the VC world, in my opinion, in the next 10 years."* Barry Silbert, founder and CEO of Second Market, an online auction site for non-cash assets: "There's a lot of talk about how the venture industry is too big and I think it's fair to say that's true. The venture industry is shrinking and I think that is healthy; the good venture capitalists will continue to add value, but what's changing now is that you can get capital -- up to $5 million -- from lots of different sources like seed funds and angel networks and even high net-worths (individuals). Before, you had to rely almost entirely on venture funds."* Josh Kopelman, First Round Capital, a seed-stage venture fund: "The power of networks has changed start-ups and how entrepreneurs both conceive of ideas and get them funded. The Internet and open and closed networks have made a big change in terms of entrepreneur's access to funding and is reshaping the ecosystem that is there today. It used to be you had to go to a VC and the VC would fund you and the press would write about you. ... Ten or 15 years ago, Upside magazine and Red Herring were the two sources that covered startups and there was not much interaction among or between startups. ... Today that's fundamentally changed. The Net has created open networks, networks of local entrepreneurs and others, and the ability of startups now to gain visibility has really changed, too, thanks to the Web. The power is much more in the hands of entrepreneurs than in the hands of investors today. There are different gatekeepers in the system."* Kopelman: "Entrepreneurs now have the ability to connect directly to funding sources, whether through (social networks) or through new geographic networks or the new Angel List which just launched as a tool for new companies to get connected to top angels. These and (new venture firms specializing in funding early stage start-ups, like) the Y Combinators -- all of those -- are leveraging closed and open networks (like Angel List, Yelp, Dreamit Ventures and Techstars) to reach venture capitalists. These are new tools entrepreneurs have at their disposal now; ten or 15 years ago, you didn't have that. It was all through personal relationships or getting exposure at conferences like Demo, which was then one of the only places to get attention. Now, blogs and social media are really disrupting that. Networks are now very powerful for the discovery of new talent."What do you think? How is the power of the traditional VC changing as a result of the Web and social networks? Let us hear from you.]]>http://www.justmeans.com/Six-New-Rules-for-Social-Enterprise-Start-ups/24003.htmlThu, 29 Jul 2010 19:02:37 GMTMarcia Stepanek Start-up CEOs featured at this week's Stanford Summit in Silicon Valley say it's cheaper than ever to launch a social enterprise. Here are their Top 6 bits of advice for new entrepreneurs in today's fickle start-up climate:1) Don't let the economy dictate when to start. "The best time to start a company is when you, as a person, feel you don't have a choice but to start a company," says Mike Lee, co-founder of Tapulous, a start-up that creates social apps for the iPhone. "It doesn't matter wheth Read Full Article ]]> Start-up CEOs featured at this week's Stanford Summit in Silicon Valley say it's cheaper than ever to launch a social enterprise. Here are their Top 6 bits of advice for new entrepreneurs in today's fickle start-up climate:1) Don't let the economy dictate when to start. "The best time to start a company is when you, as a person, feel you don't have a choice but to start a company," says Mike Lee, co-founder of Tapulous, a start-up that creates social apps for the iPhone. "It doesn't matter whether there's a recession happening or if zombies are attacking. " Adds Doug Knopper, CEO and co-founder of FreeWheel: "The time is right when you have a good product, have a good team, and are ready to give it your all."2) It's cheaper than ever to start a new company; seize the day. You don't need as much capital to start a company today as you did, say, 10 years ago. Infrastructure costs are way down; customer acquisition costs also are starting to tumble, says Treb Ryan, CEO of OpSource, a cloud-hosting startup. "Customer acquisition costs used to be the killer for start-ups," Ryan says. "You'd get the product ready and out the door for $1 million but then, you'd need $30 million in sales and marketing costs to get people to buy it. That, I think, is changing. Buying patterns are changing, even for business customers. You can now use the immediacy of the Internet and apply it to business customers, too, and that is going to bring down costs for companies even further."3) Keep your day job. Barry Silbert, founder andCEO of SecondMarket, an online auction site for assets not readily convertible into cash, says that you don't need to give up your day job to get your start-up off the ground. "A lot of people are talking about starting companies to change the world and disrupting the status quo versus starting a business just to make amoney," says Silbert, "and that's a good thing now. It takes such little capital now to start a business, to get a prototype out there and test it. It used to be you had to go out there and raise money on a business plan and you'd run the huge risk of failing pretty miserably. Now you can start a company on the side while you keep your full-time job; you can try something at night; code something on the off-hours and get it out to market."4) Tap VCs more for their social capital than their cash. Venture capital funds are winding down and some firms are not raising new capital. "There's a lot of talk about how the venture industry is too big and I think it's fair to say that's true," adds Silbert. "You can get capital now, up to $5 million now, from lots of different sources like seed funds and angel networks and even high net-worths (individuals). Before, you had to rely almost entirely on venture funds." Are VC's becoming obsolete? No, says Lee. "It's getting cheaper to start a company and there's less need for VC funding but rather than make the VC extinct, don't just look to VCs for money anymore," Lee says. A good VC who can be a great board member, a great mentor and a good friend, adds Silbert, and is "easily worth whatever dilution you're going to take on the front end."5) Go global sooner. It's cheaper than ever. Doug Knopper, CEO of FreeWheel, says that thanks to Skype and social computing, "the world is getting a lot smaller."Knopper says it's easier and cheaper to have multiple offices in multiple countries. [See my earlier post for Justmeans on "micro-multinationals" here.] "When we started the company a few years ago, my cofounder said she wanted to build a development team in China, and so she did," Knopper says. "And from Day One, we have had a 24/7 marketing and a sales team in China. I can call her on a 415 number, we Skype and we're just constantly communicating. You couldn't do that 10 years ago."6) Cool trumps cash as a recruiting tool. "Money is no longer the No. 1 recruiting tool, for the first time in history," says Lee. "People do great stuff because they want to do great stuff -- not just make money. If you come to them and say, let's make lots of money, they will most likely turn you down. People now want to work in a cool place, with cool people, doing cool things." Okay, but what about stock options? Much more valuable, say start-up CEOs. But beware, adds Chris Barbin. Nowadays, companies have to sell themselves, too. "I think employee prospects are smarter today than they used to be. They want to see a plan. They ask better questions. It's not like they want to read your six-page business plan. But they want to know the company actually has a vision, has a strategy and great key operating metrics."Got any pointers to add? Let us hear from you.]]>http://www.justmeans.com/Social-Media--8-New-Ways-to-Make-Waves/23428.htmlSat, 24 Jul 2010 15:05:23 GMTMarcia Stepanek As the "do-good" conference season sputters and slows in the mid-summer heat, here are eight new social media tips and takeaways from the recent National Conference on Volunteering and Service in New York:* Message shorter. There is one big "missing" in the use of social media, says Twitter co-founder and Chairman Jack Dorsey. Too many groups get their messaging wrong, he says. "You're more successful if you focus on simplifying your message," he told NCVS conferees. "Make sure the message is in Read Full Article ]]> As the "do-good" conference season sputters and slows in the mid-summer heat, here are eight new social media tips and takeaways from the recent National Conference on Volunteering and Service in New York:* Message shorter. There is one big "missing" in the use of social media, says Twitter co-founder and Chairman Jack Dorsey. Too many groups get their messaging wrong, he says. "You're more successful if you focus on simplifying your message," he told NCVS conferees. "Make sure the message is in as few words as possible."* Get analytical. Many nonprofits, social enterprises and social service organizations don't have a good sense of analytics, Twitter's Dorsey adds. "Ask yourself: Where are we today? Where do we mark today and where do we plan to go? If you don't know where you're coming from or going to, it's hard to figure out if anything is actually moving or not inside your organization. On the outside, your members and supporters want status updates. They want to know -- before they throw money over the wall -- that you're making progress. It's very, very important to constantly show a sense of momentum and a sense of movement. It can be as simple as updating people in a simple message."* Compete harder. Sure, collaboration is all the buzz and today's holy grail. But Joe Rospars, a founder of Blue State Digital and on the social media team that put President Obama in the White House, says that for him, two questions come into play for organizations having trouble mobilizing people -- especially "during these in-between times between crises and big moments." His advice? Make sure you're adequately communicating "not only the reasons people should be involved in your cause -- but also why people should choose your organization over another fighting for the same cause." Rospars says most groups get the first part right but miss the second.* Work harder. Your supporters want to help but they don't want to phone it in -- nor want you to do that, either. "Oftentimes, signing a petition isn't enough to ask," says Rospars. For some people, it's too insignificant. People know when their time is being wasted, Rospars says -- "when things are being phoned in by the staff who aren't thinking about things very deeply." Rospars says if you lose your enthusiasm, so will the people you're trying to engage. "Even on the worst, most busy days, it pays to remember that your responsibility is to the people out there who only have an hour to give," Rospars adds. "Don't waste their time. Make it worthwhile. People will know the difference if you're passionate and urgent and authentic about engaging them."* Get clear on ROI. "The term, ROI, is widely misused," says social media marketing strategist Paul Gillen. "It's a financial metric. It's not a number of followers, or number of page views, or number of unique visitors. Those things are results, not returns. A return is a financial metric." But don't despair. According to Gillen, anything that can be expressed as a result can be expressed as a financial metric. Next time you're asked what the value is of raising your organization's visibility, do a standard marketing study called a "lift study," Gillen says. "If you have historical data that says that the last time your organization's visibility increased by 5 percentage points, the amount of giving increased 20 percentage points, then that is an ROI," Gillen says. "You can say that if this social media campaign to boost visibility succeeds in raising your visibility by 5 percentage points as determined by a lift study, then you can expect X amount of return for each speaking engagement. It's all in the math."* Measure the dollar value of your donors. To see how much money a member or a donor is worth over the course of their lifetimes, says Gillen, take the total value of giving to your organization in a year and divide it by the total number of members/donors during that same time period. "If you can draw X number of new members as a result of a social media campaign, you can say that the campaign will yield a specific lifetime value," Gillen says. "When you start to think in those terms, ROI becomes much easier to forecast."* Measure the dollar value of your followers. Look at the total number of visits to your Web site per tweet stream over a given period, then look at the percentage of those visitors that converted into donors and the value of their donations over any given amount of time. Says Gillen: "Move all of that back up the spreadsheet and see that the value of a follower is, let's say, 2.5 cents. It's a matter of mapping the numbers that you use to see the impact they have on your bottom line."* Push or pull leaders into the pool. Don't keep social media in a corner. Make it everybody's business, starting at the top. According to Twitter's Dorsey, organizational leaders need to be participating in social media use every day, to make it a part of the culture. "Your leader will make mistakes and will learn from them but what's most significant is that he or she is sharing the learning curve and the lessons throughout the organization," Dorsey says. "Assigning someone else to look at social media can only go so far; it won't speak to the spirit of what your organization is trying to bring to the world." Dorsey also said that leaders must be willing to try new things themselves, both in their personal lives and in their organizational leadership. "It's an attitude and a willingness to jump in that makes all the difference," says Dorsey. "A leader's passion is clear and contagious. Don't shut out the leader or underestimate his or her power, both outside and inside the organization."Got some tips to add? Let us hear from you!(Illustration: istock.com)]]>http://www.justmeans.com/New-Survey--Fewer-Social-Entrepreneurs-Come-From-Nonprofit-Sector/23415.htmlSat, 24 Jul 2010 11:18:31 GMTMarcia Stepanek A survey of social entrepreneurs by Echoing Green, the New York-based social enterprise investment nonprofit, suggests that there are four emerging trends in the social enterprise field:* Many social entrepreneurs want to tackle the world's most difficult problems early in their career. About 55 percent, or slightly more than half, of some 1,200 semifinalists for Echoing Green fellowships in social entrepreneurship since 2007 have identified themselves as being younger than 35.* Social entrepren Read Full Article ]]> A survey of social entrepreneurs by Echoing Green, the New York-based social enterprise investment nonprofit, suggests that there are four emerging trends in the social enterprise field:* Many social entrepreneurs want to tackle the world's most difficult problems early in their career. About 55 percent, or slightly more than half, of some 1,200 semifinalists for Echoing Green fellowships in social entrepreneurship since 2007 have identified themselves as being younger than 35.* Social entrepreneurs are blurring the lines between the nonprofit and for-profit experience and are often "serial entrepreneurs." There was a 15 percent decrease over 2008 in the number of Echoing Green semifinalists who have worked in the nonprofit and government sectors. Thirty-seven percent of the 300 semifinalists this year have founded another organization and 71 percent of those organizations are still in existence.* Social entrepreneurs are on the forefront of the trend to build for-profit/nonprofit social enterprises. This year, more than 37 percent of the 300 Echoing Green semifinalists structured their new ventures as hybrid organizations -- nonprofit/for-profit enterprises aimed at simultaneously fulfilling public duties and developing commercial markets for their activities. That's up 20 percent over 2007. Meanwhile, also since 2007, the total number of semifinalists structuring their organizations as nonprofits decreased by nearly 20 percent.* Many social entrepreneurs are compelled to create social enterprises because of their personal experiences. Almost 40 percent of Echoing Green semifinalists since 2007 identify themselves as members of the communities they plan to serve.How does your experience track or divert from these survey findings? Let us hear from you.]]>http://www.justmeans.com/First-Social-Innovation-Fund-Grants-Announced/23267.htmlThu, 22 Jul 2010 16:53:06 GMTMarcia Stepanek The national Social Innovation Fund announced its first list of grantmaking partners today, a group of 11 nonprofit organizations and social enterprises that will help distribute some $123 million in public and private dollars to catalyze social innovation.Overseen by the Corporation for National and Community Service, the SIF and its choice of grantees clearly reflects a preference for experience over experimentation. The grantmakers chosen as recipients of the Fund's first outlay are predomina Read Full Article ]]> The national Social Innovation Fund announced its first list of grantmaking partners today, a group of 11 nonprofit organizations and social enterprises that will help distribute some $123 million in public and private dollars to catalyze social innovation.Overseen by the Corporation for National and Community Service, the SIF and its choice of grantees clearly reflects a preference for experience over experimentation. The grantmakers chosen as recipients of the Fund's first outlay are predominantly those with extensive track records in moving the needle on social problems, measuring results and proving what works. The grantees -- described in an SIF press release as being "experienced innovators" -- will help distribute their grant awards to programs aimed at improving public health, lifting people out of poverty and closing the youth achievement gap in low-income rural and urban communities.Today's announcement had been anticipated for months amid speculation over the direction of the new national fund. Would it favor front-line grantees running experimental programs in the social innovation space, or would it prefer tried-and-true organizations that would help to scale existing nonprofits and proven social enterprises? The SIF's choice of the latter, safer route was explained by SIF Director Paul Carttar as being part of a longer-term strategy to establish a new layer of smaller grant-makers across the country."Over the long-term, the SIF will contribute to the development of the grant-making infrastructure that supports the work of high-impact nonprofit organizations and will inform other federal, state and local efforts to address social challenges," Carttar said in a news release this morning.In May, First Lady Michelle Obama said the SIF had received more than 70 applications for its first round of grants. In a Justmeans post on that news conference, Obama said: "The challenges we face today are bigger and more complex than ever and solving them will require all of us to contribute our ideas and pool our resources like never before -- one investment, one project, and one pioneering community at a time. Addressing the greatest challenges of our time cannot depend solely on what happens in Washington, and thank God it cannot. If we're going to go beyond the status quo, if we are going to transform lives and lift up communities, we will need good ideas and successful programs in every single corner of this country."Included in the list of grantees are:Jobs for the Future, Inc. and its National Fund for Workforce Solutions initiative received a 2-year, $7.7 million grant to expand their targeted training and technical assistance to at least 23,000 low-income people over the next three years and matching their skills to the needs of more than 1,000 employers. The grant is intended to place disadvantaged workers into full-time jobs.The Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City -- Mayor Mike Bloomberg's public-private aid initiative -- received $5.7 million in a one-year grant to replicate five effective anti-poverty programs originally piloted by New York City's Center for Economic Opportunity in eight more urban areas.National AIDS Fund -- Received $3.6 billion in a one-year grant to improve health outcomes for at least 3,500 low-income people living with HIV/AIDS. This program will work with the White House to implement its national HIV/AIDS strategy and offer lessons in reducing barriers to care for a broad range of people living with the virus and other chronic diseases.New Profit Inc. received $5 million in a one-year grant to collaborate with innovative youth nonprofits -- including Year Up, College Summit and iMentor -- to help them expand their reach in working with students to help them stay on the path from high school to college and productive employment.The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation received $10 million in a one-year grant to combine large grants, strategic business planning, rigorous evaluation and fundraising to boost the scale and impact of up to 10 youth development organizations in communities of need across the U.S.Venture Philanthropy Partners, social entrepreneur Mario Morino's venture philanthropy fund and investment group, received $4 million in a two-year grant to create a network of effective nonprofit organizations in the Washington, D.C. area that will team up to address the education and employment needs of low-income and vulnerable youth aged 14-24. Subgrantees already identified include Year Up National Capital Region and the Latin American Youth Center.Go here for a complete list of grantees. What do you think? Will this help spawn more social enterprise and innovation? Let us hear from you.]]>http://www.justmeans.com/Tweets-Like-Us/22775.htmlSun, 18 Jul 2010 16:25:52 GMTMarcia Stepanek New research into what our Google queries and tweets say about us in cyberspace shows that we're a pretty divided lot online. [No big surprise, right? We're divided offline, too.]What's new, though, is that we can now tell, just from visualizing the knowledge we seek on Google and the hashtags we frequent on Twitter, what unites us -- and what it is about the echo-chambers of today's identity politics that keeps us all arguing so much to begin with. Skeptical? Let's have a look.Near to your brow Read Full Article ]]> New research into what our Google queries and tweets say about us in cyberspace shows that we're a pretty divided lot online. [No big surprise, right? We're divided offline, too.]What's new, though, is that we can now tell, just from visualizing the knowledge we seek on Google and the hashtags we frequent on Twitter, what unites us -- and what it is about the echo-chambers of today's identity politics that keeps us all arguing so much to begin with. Skeptical? Let's have a look.Near to your browser? Go to Google Suggest and click on "Web search." Type in the word, "why." Thanks to an "auto-suggest" feature that this (and many other) search engines now use, just typing in the word "why" produces a list of suggested, presumably popular completions. Today's list? "Why did I get married?" is the most popular question, followed by "Why is the sky blue?" and "Why do dogs eat grass?" ["Why don't you love me?" also ranks right up there with "Why did I leave Astoria?"]Humorous? Yes, and according to a new data visualization tool called Web Seer from Flowing Media, a startup cofounded by ex-IBMers Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg, searches like these also give the Web-curious "a little peek into our collective souls," says Viegas. "Exploring this Web Oracle can be quite revealing of society's fears, curiosities and prejudices."Ah, but we're just getting started. Let's now type in the question: "Why doesn't he...?" The results I got were: "call me" and "like me" and "ask me out." And sure enough, typing in the question, "Why doesn't she...?" gets you similar completions. The differences, though, are the most telling. Men tended to complete with "call me back?" and "just leave?" and "like me anymore?" while women appeared to be more interested in why he didn't "text back" and "want a relationship."Viegas says deeper gender divisions start to surface when it comes to family issues. If you type in the question, "Is my daughter...?" you're most apt to get "pregnant" or "a virgin" or "gifted" or "austistic." If you type in the question, "Is my son...?" you're most likely to get "gay" or "on drugs." Says Wattenberg: "If you play around with this for a while, you start to see a portrait of people's anxieties and I think, ultimately, a very clear gender division in society."When applied to politics, the exercise becomes even more interesting. "Are Republicans...richer than Democrats?" and "evil?" and are Democrats "socialist?" and "communists?" According to a Web Seer analysis, people asking political questions seem to be very confused about party differences. But again, what they appeared to agree upon was even more revealing. A Web Seer analysis shows that people Googling in this way agree that both Republicans and Democrats are "retarded" and "morons" and "destroying America" -- in other words, most of the people who query "Google Suggest" about U.S. politics are similarly, deeply skeptical about the effectiveness and the integrity of either party.But that's just for starters. Consider Twitter. Viegas and Wattenberg did an analysis of Twitter trending topics over the 2010 Memorial Day weekend; hashtags during that time period included a range, from #wordsbeforedeath to #oilspill. The pair analyzed whether trending topics differed by race. After analyzing the photographs of those tweeting in those tagged conversations, Viegas and Wattenberg said they discovered that blacks and whites were mostly equally involved in some conversations but not others. In this case, whites and blacks were about equally involved in a conversation about #wordsbeforedeath -- but overwhelmingly segregated on the conversations having to do with #cookout and #oilspill."Cookout hashtag tweets were overwhelmingly being written by black authors and #oilspill tweets were overwhelmingly being written by white authors," said Viegas. The point here? "It's not to think, wow, there's racial segregation on the Web," Viegas said. "We sort of knew that; the Web is a reflection of real life. The point here is that this level of segregation is just one click away from the Twitter home page and it's happening in the trending topics. The fact that you can look at trending topics and be immersed in conversations that are so separate from one another is something to keep in mind."Beyond simply insightful, these kinds of real-time "focus group" data visualizations are starting to be used by political groups, as well as by nonprofit causes seeking new supporters and social enterprises in search of some target markets or potential trouble spots beyond those which may seem obvious.Got any insights of your own to share? Let us hear from you.]]>http://www.justmeans.com/Who-s-Your-Mayor-Philanthropy-Meets-Foursquare/22365.htmlFri, 16 Jul 2010 08:41:18 GMTMarcia Stepanek Blanketing BART stations in San Francisco since mid-June are public service ads urging passers-by to use their cell phones to "drill the oil industry." Another Twitter campaign? Guess again. Think Foursquare, the new mobile social network which a number of nonprofits are using to drum up some money and a crowd of supporters -- online and off.Earthjustice, a nonprofit public interest law firm in the Bay Area, is asking BART riders to "check in" with them on Foursquare. For every check-in, one of Read Full Article ]]> Blanketing BART stations in San Francisco since mid-June are public service ads urging passers-by to use their cell phones to "drill the oil industry." Another Twitter campaign? Guess again. Think Foursquare, the new mobile social network which a number of nonprofits are using to drum up some money and a crowd of supporters -- online and off.Earthjustice, a nonprofit public interest law firm in the Bay Area, is asking BART riders to "check in" with them on Foursquare. For every check-in, one of Earthustice's major donors is pledging $10 to help the nonprofit's attorneys fight environmental pollution. So far, so good. The campaign, in just a few weeks, has raised more than $10,000 for the cause, says Ray Wan, the marketing manager for Earthjustice. "We're really getting some amazing buzz from this," he says. "It's an easy way for people to help us work for a better environment."It's not the first nonprofit to think about using Foursquare to raise funds and awareness. [For the uninitiated, Foursquare is a location awareness application that people use on their phones to check in at various locations throughout major cities all over the world. People who check in this way earn points, join friends and unlock goodies as they go. The person with the most check-ins at one place become that venue's 'mayor.' Businesses already using Foursquare to lure new customers to their venues award those who come most often with discounts and free goods. Nonprofits are still experimenting.]At the Brooklyn Museum, chief technology officer and social media maven Shelley Bernstein has begun using the mobile social network to boost the personal dialogue between the museum's staff and the people who visit the museum, live in the neighborhood, and patronize the site. On Foursquare, people leave "tips" at venues they like -- bits of advice so that other people know what to expect when they go there. "Many of our staff are essentially local experts, so we've queried them to compile tips to the wealth of options that exist in our local neighborhood, Prospect Heights," Bernstein says on the museum's Foursquare page. "So now, as people explore our area, the Brooklyn Museum staff help them along in their journey pointing out the joys of pancakes at Tom's Restaurant or the killer wine selection at Abigail's."Bernstein is working to establish venue pages for the museum's exhibitions and permanent collections. "People could check in at the galleries they visit -- American Identities, The Dinner Party, Egypt Reborn, etc., and become the mayor of not just the museum but of their favorite installation within the greater whole." The goal, of course, is to get more people to visit the museum -- via a Brooklyn Museum "badge" that gets unlocked after a certain number of visits, rewarding people for multiple visits. Writes Bernstein: "As simply as I can put this, Foursquare is about place and identifying yourself through that. it is a celebration of the visitor--the people who crossed the river, who made it in the door and decided to identify themselves with us, right here."Another nonprofit, Naperville, Ill.-based Big Love Little Hearts, which works to help children born with congenital heart defects, also has been experimenting successfully with Foursquare. Last April, the nonprofit's volunteers were asked to add the following "tip" to 600 Foursquare locations: "1 in 100 children are born w/ a heart defect. Pulse-Ox screening saves lives - you can too! Check in with the hashtag #100x100." Organizers embedded a link in that "tip" on Foursquare that drove people to the nonprofit's Web site.Seven hours into the campaign, a donor said she would contribute $1 for every person who checked in. Within 12 hours of launching the campaign, the hashtag had been used 11,703 times, and the donor was so impressed, she ended up giving the nonprofit $25,000. The nonprofit used Foursquare again as part of a campaign to get supporters to check in (or contact) their Illinois lawmakers to push for legislation to help people with congenital heart defects. "And one last nugget," says chief organizer Estrella Rosenberg, "is that this was all free."How is your nonprofit or social enterprise using Foursquare to raise awareness, boost patronage, or raise money for a cause? Let us hear from you about what works and what doesn't so far.[Illustration: istock.com]]]>http://www.justmeans.com/Getting-People-to-Care--4-Tips-for-Social-Innovators/22114.htmlSat, 10 Jul 2010 18:25:10 GMTMarcia Stepanek Okay, so you're a change agent at a traditional company or nonprofit organization -- or you're a social entrepreneur who has just started a social enterprise. You've got your seed funding and a rock-solid business plan. So now what? How do you inspire people, from your CEO to rural farmers to consumers, to "do good" (or at least better) for society?Don't laugh. How to get people to care more about "doing good" is one of the hottest new topics making the rounds of this year's social innovation co Read Full Article ]]> Okay, so you're a change agent at a traditional company or nonprofit organization -- or you're a social entrepreneur who has just started a social enterprise. You've got your seed funding and a rock-solid business plan. So now what? How do you inspire people, from your CEO to rural farmers to consumers, to "do good" (or at least better) for society?Don't laugh. How to get people to care more about "doing good" is one of the hottest new topics making the rounds of this year's social innovation conferences. Referred to more clinically as "the neuroscience of change," the topic popped up for the first time last spring, at the Skoll World Forum in Oxford, then again last month at the recent National Conference on Volunteering and Service -- and then again this past week, at the annual Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado.Whether inspiring consumers toward fair trade, persuading corporate executives to care more deeply about labor practices, or empowering women in a rural village, the challenge to influence behavior is a tough one, indeed.Neuroscientists, including Chris Frith, a professor of neuropsychology at London's University College, say that based on the circuitry of our brains and the emotional responses that direct our behavior, there is some practical knowledge that can be used by social innovators to be more effective in changing hearts and minds.Here are four quick pointers about the people you're trying to influence (with apologies to conference presenters):They/We Are Not Different. Neuroscientists say our brains have an "us-versus-them" default; individuals have a tendency to think they are special, or different. We all stereotype others, whether consciously or not, as a sort of primal safety mechanism; we tend to frame the world in terms of people who belong to our "in group" and those who do not. To be more effective in building support for change, social entrepreneurs need to hone in on the similarities they share with their constituents -- and emphasize what common traits and values their constituents share with each other. Key are storytelling initiatives or strategic interactions that show donors and higher-ups that they're not much different than the people your "do-good" efforts are attempting to serve.They/We Have Choices. How you frame the challenges you face is key in gaining support for your work. For example, 600 people are on a deserted island and are hit by a deadly flu. You have a life-saving vaccine. The catch? You can give people two options. Option 1: You have 200 doses of the vaccine and can give it to 200 people, guaranteeing their recovery. Option 2: You can try a new vaccine on all 600 people with a one-third chance it will save them all. Most people will choose Option 1. But if you frame the dilemma differently -- that Option 1 will kill 400 people and save only 200 lives, most people will choose Option 2. Stress positive outcomes.They/We Are Not Helpless. Donors, people in need and frustrated social entrepreneurs can confuse frustration with a feeling of helplessness -- the sense that, in the face of challenge, nobody can really make a lasting difference. To avoid this, draw up clear goals along with a list of steps required to achieve them. Set deadlines. Start measuring your progress. Broadcast your accomplishments. Measuring incremental change sets up a continuous improvement loop. Also key? Invite the people you're trying to serve to be part of the process. Train them how to measure results incrementally. As long as there is knowledge of impact, the "we are helpless" syndrome won't stand a chance.They/We Are Not Smarter. Neuroscientists on recent panels refer to stagnant thinking that tends to challenge donors and executives, who have self-wired their brains with data and categorizations. New thinking that challenges these categories tends to be dismissed or downplayed -- not so much because it is bad or good, but rather because it falls outside the categories that most people have already built for themselves to cope with their everyday challenges and to compensate for what they think they do well or poorly. The antidote? Don't ask people to take action. Instead, create situations in which people are expected to act in a certain way unless they take decisive action to behave otherwise. If they opt out, then reach out again, rinse and repeat. [See the previous bullet point, "They/We Are Not Helpless."]These are just four tips from the pros -- and maybe they're intuitive. What could you add to their short list?(Illustration by Mark Strozier for istock.com)]]>http://www.justmeans.com/Social-Enterprise-Model-Nabs-Another-Win/22048.htmlSat, 10 Jul 2010 11:59:12 GMTMarcia Stepanek The popularity of social enterprises -- businesses with a social mission -- is growing. But are they legal? The drive to make them so inched another step forward on Friday, with North Carolina becoming the latest state to endorse for-profit business structures that make social benefit their primary focus.So far, six other states and two Indian tribes have legalized L3Cs, or low-profit, limited liability companies -- Vermont, Michigan, Illinois, Wyoming, Maine, Utah, and the Crow Indian Nation an Read Full Article ]]> The popularity of social enterprises -- businesses with a social mission -- is growing. But are they legal? The drive to make them so inched another step forward on Friday, with North Carolina becoming the latest state to endorse for-profit business structures that make social benefit their primary focus.So far, six other states and two Indian tribes have legalized L3Cs, or low-profit, limited liability companies -- Vermont, Michigan, Illinois, Wyoming, Maine, Utah, and the Crow Indian Nation and the Oglala Sioux Tribe.L3Cs are run like regular businesses and are profitable but their primary aim is to provide a social impact. L3Cs can attract various types of investors, as well as accept social investments from philanthropic foundations in the form of program-related investments, mission-related investments, loans and guarantees. L3Cs were created to bridge the gap between nonprofit and for-profit investing by providing a structure that facilitates investments in socially beneficial, for-profit ventures while simplifying compliance with IRS rules for so-called "program investments."So far, many foundations support the L3C structure because it allows them to invest in such for-profit social enterprises and make loans to them -- much as they do now with public charities and nonprofit organizations. Proponents of L3Cs also say they can help to revitalize and realign many types of low-profit businesses that already have a social purpose -- whether newspapers or affordable housing centers -- with a mission of community service.The creator of L3Cs, Robert Lang, the CEO of the Mary Elizabeth & Gordon B. Mannweiler Foundation and the Founder and CEO of an L3C called L3C Advisors, says the model is aimed at lowering the amount of profit a company needs to make in order to woo diverse investments. "The participation of the foundation, which is seeking high social return but low monetary return, serves as a catalyst for high investor return," says Marc Lane, a Chicago-based attorney who authored Illinois' L3c legislation.Critics of L3C legislation fear L3Cs will upset the traditional nonprofit sector by making it harder for charities to compete for shrinking dollars. Other critics say L3C legislation fails to clearly define what constitutes a "socially beneficial purpose." And there are other problems. The use of foundation grant money by profit-making ventures may require different kinds of reporting and accountability structures, critics suggest.While the L3C form is still fairly new, dozens have been incorporated already and sector analysts predict more widespread adoption over the next couple of years. Current examples of successful L3Cs include CoolPass, which offsets carbon to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It uses a significant portion of its sales to fund its Assisted Home reduction program and to help low-income homeowners with EnergyStar appliances and home upgrades. Another example of an L3C is Radiant Hen Publishing, which partners with nonprofits and companies to publish books that teach social and environmental values, while also incubating new authors and artists and giving back to the community.What do you think, social entrepreneurs? Is it time for more states to ratify L3Cs? Or, is more work needed to make the model more tenable? Let us hear from you either way.]]>http://www.justmeans.com/-quot-BP-Makes-Me-Sick-quot--Drive-Launches-Today/21895.htmlThu, 08 Jul 2010 19:26:53 GMTMarcia Stepanek A coalition of politically progressive online organizers, local bloggers, politicians and other public figures today announced they are spearheading a Tea Party-style, "grassroots" political movement aimed at forcing BP to make clean-up workers wear respirators, so as to protect their health as they work along the Gulf Coast.Called the BP Makes Me Sick Coalition, the group is layering a digital networking campaign on top of more traditional, offline political organizing tactics in hopes of build Read Full Article ]]> A coalition of politically progressive online organizers, local bloggers, politicians and other public figures today announced they are spearheading a Tea Party-style, "grassroots" political movement aimed at forcing BP to make clean-up workers wear respirators, so as to protect their health as they work along the Gulf Coast.Called the BP Makes Me Sick Coalition, the group is layering a digital networking campaign on top of more traditional, offline political organizing tactics in hopes of building a mass movement against BP and those protecting the oil company from more stringent penalties. "We cannot let the denial of protective gear that hurt so many 9/11 clean-up workers happen again with the Gulf clean-up workers," the coalition's Web site reads. Will it work? Organizers are hopeful: some eight hours after announcing itself, the coalition had amassed more than 25,000 digital signatures on a petition urging BP to allow and distribute more protective clothing.The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, the group behind the campaign, counts among its supporters local groups of Gulf fisherman; locally-elected Democratic officials including Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., and national figures like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a co-founder of New York-based Riverkeeper Alliance, an environmental group. The group began organizingtwo weeks ago, after the first media reports of worker illnesses began surfacing. [CBS News issued a report tonight, saying that some 47,000 people helping to clean up the oil spill are at risk of respiratory problems from exposure to toxic fumes.]According to Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., clean-up workers are accusing BP of threatening to fire those who wear their own respirators. BP has not yet issued a public response to the allegations, nor has confirmed or denied the report.Forrest Brown, senior organizing fellow at the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, told the Daily Kos Web site earlier today that the drive is using blogs, social networks, Twitter, and offline Meetups to translate local concern over the health issue into action.The coalition's announcement isn't the first hint of worker anger: media reports about respiratory problems among clean-up crews have been surfacing for weeks. But the campaign is among the first to attempt using social media to bridge the gap between public awareness of a problem and political mass action to resolve it.What do you think? Could efforts such as these amass enough public support so as to force BP to start issuing respirators to workers? Or do you think this effort will end up being a political football that will perpetuate more talk than action? Let us hear from you.]]>http://www.justmeans.com/Water-Scarcity-There-s-a-Game-for-That--Too/21493.htmlMon, 05 Jul 2010 07:48:29 GMTMarcia Stepanek Over the last couple of years, there has been a surge in the number of video game developers who would rather design for social problem-solving than entertainment (Think Grand Theft Auto meets the electric car).That's good news for the rest of us: video games have finally begun to shed their one-size-fits-all reputation for blood and bombast; behavioral experts now agree that so-called "games for good"(whether about water shortages, the global oil markets or a family's struggle in the aftermath Read Full Article ]]> Over the last couple of years, there has been a surge in the number of video game developers who would rather design for social problem-solving than entertainment (Think Grand Theft Auto meets the electric car).That's good news for the rest of us: video games have finally begun to shed their one-size-fits-all reputation for blood and bombast; behavioral experts now agree that so-called "games for good"(whether about water shortages, the global oil markets or a family's struggle in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina)can teach empathy to those who play them -- a prerequisite for collaborative problem-solving.But the really good news here? Demand for such "social issues" games is rising, too -- thanks in part to the federal government, which is starting to view them as a new and effective catalyst for education and civic engagement. Kumar Garg, of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, says there are hundreds of games now being commissioned across multiple agencies, with more demand certain to continue, at least for the next couple of years. "Society is becoming more social given the social networking technologies before us," Garg told a recent Games for Change Festival in Manhattan. "How can we channel today's rising levels of collaborative social interaction into social problem-solving? Games can be that bridge to more civic engagement."Garg said the most aggressive new demand for interactive games is coming from the Army, the Department of Education and public health agencies seeking to catalyze public action around complex social problems and skills training.Here are three of the newest games out this summer:The Riverbed. This one is about water scarcity; its synopsis says, "water IS the new oil. According to the United Nations, a shortage of clean water is a root cause of poverty, social instability and even war." So what's so fun about that? Developer Mary Wharmby wraps a murder mystery around it to make the sleuthing an interactive -- and educational - experience. Wharmby said she got the idea for the game 15 years ago while writing an academic paper about the Aral Sea in central Asia, which has lost 75 percent of its mass since 1960. Said Wharmby: "This game is a mystery that asks players, who killed the environmentalist? As you solve this, you realize there's a deeper mystery, which is, who killed the river? All suspects are based on character archetypes who have a stake in real-life water scarcity situations -- fishermen, politicians, farmers, engineers. By the end of this game, you've solved the murder and brought this person to justice. But you also have restored the river. For each suspect you eliminate, you get a chance to undo his or her environmental damage."Fate of the World. Due out in September, Fate of the World is the latest offering from the British husband-and-wife team of Gobion and Hannah Rowlands. Their social enterprise, Red Redemption, co-developed an earlier game called Climate Change with the BBC; that game was used in 2007 and 2008 by the World Economic Forum in Davos to help train CEOs in the effects of climate change under various scenarios. The couple's latest offering takes scenario play to a different level. "Players have a choice," Hannah says. "They can either save the world or burn it down, depending on their use of various scenarios covering the next 200 years." The game's synopsis says it all: "After another decade of inaction, the governments of the world wake up to a planet in chaos. The first impacts of climate change, population growth, resource over-exploitation and species loss have struck and a global organization has been created to respond. You are that response. Will you help the whole planet or will you be an agent of destruction?"That both games are about environmental "crimes" is no accident. Hannah is a climate modeling expert with an Oxford degree; Gobion had been working as a forensic psychologist in the UK by day and tinkering with game development at night.Climate Change was the couple's first project together, made partly in the couple's kitchen. "I have been making games in various forms since I was 10," Gobion says, "but the satisfaction you get when you make a game that matters is huge, and these next 200 years are really critical to humanity. I felt disconnected at first from the issue of the environment. Games are a way to connect people personally to any number of social problems."Participatory Chinatown. Players assume the role of one of 15 virtual residents of Boston's Chinatown district, all working around language difficulties and differing income levels to secure jobs, find affordable housing and discover new places to socialize. "This project is really an intervention into the community," says Eric Gordon, a new media professor at Emerson College in Boston who received a MacArthur Digital Media and Learning grant to develop the game, which debuted May 3. "Participatory Chinatown is a new way of engaging the democratic process," he says. "I think what we've done is innovate the town hall meeting by bringing in gaming, by bringing in social networking. I think we can change the way that decisions are made -- as well as the way groups get together, collaborate, form political alliances and do the dirty work of democracy." Gordon says that game is targeted to teens as well as to seniors. "We are trying to foster inter-generational collaboration," Gordon says. "The game is not designed for gamers but for those with no gaming experience and those with some."What do you think? Games-for-change attempt to foster "empathetic learning" -- putting players into the "shoes" of others so as to teach them new perspectives and solutions to global challenges. How effective do you think games might be in bringing about behavioral change in the streets or in the boardroom?Let us hear from you.(Illustration: Scene from Riverbed)]]>http://www.justmeans.com/Corporate-Social-Media-Leaders-Share-Fears--Tips--Rewards/20985.htmlWed, 30 Jun 2010 12:59:11 GMTMarcia Stepanek Corporate social media? If that's not an oxymoron at your company or social enterprise, then social media can be scary, difficult stuff -- requiring a ton of courage and patience to deploy effectively, a panel of corporate social media strategists for Target, PepsiCo, Gap and Facebook said today in New York."It's very, very scary," Claire Lyons, PepsiCo's corporate brand program manager, told a packed room of nonprofit and CSR activists attendingthe last day of the 2010 National Conference on Vo Read Full Article ]]> Corporate social media? If that's not an oxymoron at your company or social enterprise, then social media can be scary, difficult stuff -- requiring a ton of courage and patience to deploy effectively, a panel of corporate social media strategists for Target, PepsiCo, Gap and Facebook said today in New York."It's very, very scary," Claire Lyons, PepsiCo's corporate brand program manager, told a packed room of nonprofit and CSR activists attendingthe last day of the 2010 National Conference on Volunteering and Service. Social media represent "a huge shift in the way companies operate," she said, "because they [social media] shift the locus of control of a brand, which was always controlled by brand managers, and blows it up. ... It is changing the whole way that brand architecture is considered."Lyons, one of the lead architects of the company's Pepsi Refresh campaign, said she finds social media exciting. But using social media to engage is "very different. ...We really don't have control" of the conversation, she said. Yet the rewards of engaging employees and stakeholders with social media can make the risks worthwhile, she added."This [social media] is a total quality management feedback loop par excellence."Target also had some huge misigivings at first, said Jill Pete, a member of Target's national community relations team. At first, she said, it was very hard to simply "step back, listen and not react to what was being said" on the company's Facebook page. "We were hesitant to step into this realm, especially Facebook, because Facebook's power is dialogue," Pete said. But the risk has paid off. The company's decision to stay quiet and listen has been "a huge step for us because we'd been seeing some stuff on there that was inaccurate and we really wanted to correct it right away," she said. Turns out, Pete said, the company didn't have to. "All inaccuracies so far -- all of them -- are corrected" by Target's Facebook followers, usually no more than two or three days after an inaccuracy has been asserted, she said. "It's testing our strength as a brand," said Pete. "If you're strong, you listen -- and you learn."Joshua Rahn, New York Director of Facebook, shared an anecdote of how early Pepsi traffic on Facebook included one comment that simply made the statement: "I hate Pepsi but I love Coke." This triggered a swirl of internal communication, he said -- "the lawyers had a field day" -- but before Pepsi could make a decision about how to handle it, one of the company's Facebook followers quietly posted a short note telling the detractor "that if he didn't like Pepsi, to go to Coke, instead and provided the link." End of story."Before Facebook and Twitter," Rahn said, "people still bad-mouthed products. They always will. You will never be able to control for that. Never. But now, you have the opportunity to hear them do so and shape those opinions."In other highlights, panelists agreed that companies and organizations should:* Get clear on "who owns social media" inside the organization. "Don't make the person who owns social media a second-class citizen," said Facebook's Rahn. "Your social media person shouldn't be a person who sits in on every third meeting and has no authority and no independent power. This should be a person who has a voice. Where should the person sit? In your marketing team but they have to be able to make decisions." Rahn cited Starbucks as a good example of a company that "gets it" about social media's internal role, putting its social media team in marketing but giving it autonomy "and the same amount of say as its TV team."* Consider setting up a private, branded employee social network. Abby Frost, manager ofemployee engagement and community partnerships at Gap, said Gap has launched Sketchbook ["our employee Facebook," Frost explains]. On that social network, she said, employees share the highs and lows of the workplace experience, share team projects and communicate socially. Recently, Frost organized an "Ultimate Happy Hour" on Sketchbook, which consisted of a video contest among employees to celebrate the company's 48th anniversary last year. She said prizes were given out to the best employee stories and participation on the network remains high. So do employee retention rates. Said Facebook's Rahn: "As much as companies think of using social media to raise awareness, they also need to be thinking of creating engagement around it."* Remember that ROI rules. But don't look for magic. Facebook's Rahn said that far too many companies, in their efforts to create a social media strategy, waste too much time trying to get something ready for release. "These are companies that need to consider their 'return on energy' instead," Rahn said. Gap's Frost agreed. "You need to move fast, not perfect," she said.* Be clear that social media are a must for employee retention. If companies have hired you to craft their social media strategy but won't let you use the tools on the job, then you need to speak up -- or go somewhere else, Rahn said. Target's Pete said Millennials expect to be able to use social media on the job. "If you encourage your employees to engage online, they will engage in your favor; if employees see how you're connecting online and see how effective it is, they will become your biggest ambassadors," she said. "But if you don't let them engage, you may lose them." Rahn called it "social retention."Erik Darby, vice president of business development for The Experience Project, which just launched TwitCause -- a new offering that helps companies engage Twitter users in their pet causes -- offered attendees "5 Things Your Corporation Needs to Know About Social Media." Here they are, briefly:1. Know why you're going into social media. "Just going for fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter is not going to cut it," Darby says.2. Know what ROI metrics you're measuring.3. Be consistent with your social media engagement. "Don't expect to see results if you send out a tweet once a week," he says.4. Be human. "Don't exploit your audience; care about them. Ask their input on things."5. Go where your audience is. "Build it and they will come isn't true anymore," Darby says. "If you're a pet company, for example, don't just do Facebook. Go where your customers are. Go on Dogster."Okay corporate and nonprofit social media types. It's your turn. Got any pointers to add?]]>http://www.justmeans.com/TEDxOilSpill--XPRIZE-Announces--10-Million-Clean-Up-Challenge/20679.htmlMon, 28 Jun 2010 12:11:23 GMTMarcia Stepanek A much-anticipatedTEDxOilSpill gathering kicked off today in Washington, the 70th day of the Gulf oil crisis, with repeated urgings by speakers for stepped-up nationwide efforts to both cap and clean up the spill.Just before the gathering broke for lunch, Francis Beland, VP of Prize Development for the X PRIZE Foundation, announced the organization will be launching a special "challenge contest" that will divvy up some $10 million in prize money among those who come up with the best ideas for cl Read Full Article ]]> A much-anticipatedTEDxOilSpill gathering kicked off today in Washington, the 70th day of the Gulf oil crisis, with repeated urgings by speakers for stepped-up nationwide efforts to both cap and clean up the spill.Just before the gathering broke for lunch, Francis Beland, VP of Prize Development for the X PRIZE Foundation, announced the organization will be launching a special "challenge contest" that will divvy up some $10 million in prize money among those who come up with the best ideas for cleaning up the Gulf Coast's waters and shoreline. "This will be a special prize, not exactly like the others we give," Beland said. He urged entrepreneurs to email him directly with their cleanup ideas and their input about how to further structure the contest. Beland says he hopes to officially launch the contest within the next two weeks and asked people to email him at francis@xprize.org.The announcement, for which no further details were immediately available, is the latest effort to spur greater levels of civic action around the spill. "Most people don't understand the issues that led to this happening," conference organizer Nate Mook, 28, told CNN over the weekend. "The spill has brought to the forefront a lot of things that have been on the sidelines for a long time" such as "the problems with our oceans, how important the marine ecosystem is, where we are getting our energy and what we are putting at risk."Mook and co-organizer Dave Troy, 38, both DC tech entrepreneurs, said they began organizing the event four weeks ago to help people "fill the information void" about the complexity of the disaster.The event, modeled after the annual TED conferences in California but not organized by TED, was held in a downtown theater and livestreamed to an estimated 1 million people watching from their homes or from some 129 Meetup locations across the United States, Asia, Europe and Australia. A team of photographers kicked off the day by sharing images they had collected from the Gulf region for the conference. Their project, called TEDxOilSpill Expedition, included dozens of aerial photographs of the spill as well as images of local residents meeting to vent their anger against BP and the Obama administration. The photographers, who urged more people to gather digital images of the spill and its impact, have put their collection on Flickr; their photographs may be downloaded for free but must give credit to the source.Team leader James Duncan Davidson, TED's conference photographer, described his difficulties getting access to the worst areas affected by the spill. "Air space over the spill is controlled by BP," he said. "We could find only one pilot willing to take me out over the Gulf" -- and when he got there, Davidson added, the air "smelled like you've dumped oil, gas, propane and Windex all over your garage." Team members later told conferees to tell people who want to help to "go make art, go make media, raise money."In other highlights:* Philippe Cousteau, the grandson of the late ocean environmentalist Jacques Cousteau, said the spill's impact is being "enormously under-reported." He said "the cost to wildlife of the spill is very bad. We're only just beginning to get a full picture. ... The estimate now is that for every bird found, there are 10 birds not found." Cousteau, the founder and CEO ofEarthEcho International, a nonprofit, added that governments around the world have "under-invested in oceans for decades. ...We don't really understand the ecosystems in the best of times, much less in times of crisis."* Casey DeMoss Roberts, of the nonprofit Gulf Restoration Network (HealthyGulf.org), told conferees that when she was 17, she lost her father, an oil rig worker, to a typhoon. She said the country is becoming more desperate in its search for oil. "He should never have been out there [looking for oil] in the first place," she said. "How can we stop making human sacrifices for a tank of gas?" Roberts said the spill also is causing coastal wetlands to die at an alarming rate. "In the Gulf, we lose of football field of wetlands every 45 minutes" due to the spill, she said, as containment efforts continue to fail. Long-held cultural traditions in the region also are being affected, she said. The region's annual Shrimp & Petroleum Festival, the oldest festival in Louisiana, is still scheduled for September 2-6, but "I wonder what it will look like this year," she said. Roberts ended her remarks by blaming the federal government, not BP, for doing too little to find alternative energy sources so as to break the nation's dependence on oil. "We can't expect companies that make catastrophic mistakes to stop making them," Roberts said, her voice quavering. "It's time to force our government to think outside the barrel."* Latosha Brown, a native of Mobile, AL and a community organizer there, expressed worry about BP's use of toxic solventsto break up and disperse the oil in the Gulf. "I have yet to meet a fisherman who is supportive of oil dispersants," said Brown. She fears the fishing industry will be "all but wiped out" if the spill is not contained soon, and urged policymakers in the audience to help local residents diversify their economy, retrain workers and encourage entrepreneurs.* Susan Shaw,a marine toxicologist and the founder/director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute, told conferees that she visited the Gulf in May and entered the waters near the spill. Shaw, who is launching an independent, region-wise investigation of the toxic impacts of oil and dispersants on marine life and human health, said she tested herself afterwards for toxins and discovered 113 different compounds and flame retardants in her own blood. Shaw said the dispersants being used by BP to break up the oil on surface waters likely will create serious health problems in humans and marine life; thecombination of oil and the dispersant Corexit, she said, creates an even more toxic cocktail.* Lisa Barry of GrassrootsMapping.org demonstrated the New Orleans-based nonprofit's crowdsourcing project to help citizens produce and collate their own aerial photographs of the spill and its ongoing impact. For more on this project, see Justmeans' June 5 reporton the initiative. "We're collecting images of places that no one ever bothers to photograph, and doing so over time to see the impact," Barry said. "It will help hold authorities responsible and create a public record so people won't forget."The conference continues through today. Watch this space for updates.What do you think? Are you watching the live-stream? Let us hear your takeaways from the day.(Photo, above, from TEDxOilSpill Expedition team collection)]]>http://www.justmeans.com/Google-Oogled--Privacy-Isn-t-Dead---Yet/20377.htmlSat, 26 Jun 2010 07:17:54 GMTMarcia Stepanek In May, Google announced that, for more than three years -- in more than 30 countries -- it had been "mistakenly collecting" personal data from open WiFi networks as its vehicles roamed the streets taking photos for its Street View mapping service. That data could include people's email messages, their passwords and even the logs of their Web site visits.This week, more than 30 state attorneys general announced they will begin examining the lawfulness of Google's actions, though it still isn't c Read Full Article ]]> In May, Google announced that, for more than three years -- in more than 30 countries -- it had been "mistakenly collecting" personal data from open WiFi networks as its vehicles roamed the streets taking photos for its Street View mapping service. That data could include people's email messages, their passwords and even the logs of their Web site visits.This week, more than 30 state attorneys general announced they will begin examining the lawfulness of Google's actions, though it still isn't clear whether Google committed any legal wrongdoing. "At the very least, Google acknowledges that intercepting and gathering people's data was wrong," Connecticut AG Richard Blumenthal told WIRED. "But there may be a need to strengthen and enhance federal and state laws." Meanwhile, the chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau of the Federal Communications Commission has issued a warning to consumers that Google's "behavior" raises important privacy concerns, adding that the collection of WiFi data, "whether intentional or not ... clearly infringes on consumer privacy."In case you haven't been following it, the Google disclosures have triggered one of the biggest public probes of online privacy so far in the digital era. Google, in response to government inquiries and lawsuits, has claimed that it is lawful to use packet-sniffing tools readily available on the Internet to spy on and download payload data from others using the same open WiFi access points. But two months ago, in May, shortly after the FCC and U.S. Justice Department began looking into the Street Maps issue, Google Cofounder Sergey Brin told a Google developer conference his company "screwed up" by improperly collecting the WiFi data. "We screwed up, and I'm not making excuses about it," Brin said. "Trust is very important to us and we're going to do everything we can to preserve it." Brin said the company is "putting more internal controls into place and bringing in third parties to work on this issue, as well." Google also has begun destroying some of the WiFi data it collected for Street View -- in some cases, at the request of governments, including Britain's. But privacy advocates now say Google shold preserve the data and turn it over to governments."The problem here is that there are criminal laws at issue, and there is a real question as to whether Google violated these laws," says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a nonprofit privacy rights group in Washington. "If it did, the evidence is in the information Google collected. Google has tried to minimize the data it collected, calling it snippets or fragments. But that's a determination that needs to be made by a third party, possibly a prosecutor."For one of the most comprehensive overviews of the Street View issue -- including a timeline of the Street View program from its launch in 2007 to Germany's announcement last month that Street View vehicles have been collecting data from WiFi networks -- see EPIC's Web page on the brouhaha.Street View isn't the only Google product that has been drawing recent privacy concerns. Privacy advocates have complained about Google Buzz, the company's new social networking service. EPIC's complaint, filed with the Federal Trade Commission, says Google attempted "to convert the private personal informaton of Gmail subscribers into public information" for the Buzz service. "This change in business practices and service terms violated user privacy expectations, diminished user privacy, contradicted Google's own privacy policy, and may have also violated federal wiretap laws." [Facebook also has come under fire for ongoing problems with its privacy settings, chiefly the lack of control users have over personal information that others have made public about them, including photographs. Another sore spot: Facebook's decision to push users into using its "instant personalization" feature, the company's link to third-party Web sites such as Yelp and Pandora that share users' opinions on shops and tunes.]What do you think? As the Web becomes more "social," should consumers have more of a say in how their personal data is distributed across social networks? [See Radical Shock, a Q&A I had earlier this year with privacy scholar Helen Nissenbaum about the need for new privacy protections that don't care so much about whether data is shared "but whether it's being shared appropriately." See also Justmeans colleague Madeline Ravich's recent piece on this site, Do Facebook's Privacy Violations Qualify as Bad CSR?]Let us hear from you.]]>http://www.justmeans.com/Activists-Launch-Petition-Drive-for-Facebook-Users--Bill-of-Rights/20228.htmlThu, 24 Jun 2010 20:27:38 GMTMarcia Stepanek An influential group of Silicon Valley tech activists are circulating a 14-point Bill of Rights for social network users across the Web, asking for digital signatures of support. As reported here earlier, the group met last week at the 2010 Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in San Jose to hammer out the document, a response to the ongoing Facebook privacy uproar and Google Buzz's recent release of users' top email contacts.Here's what emerged from that gathering -- aSocial Network Users Read Full Article ]]> An influential group of Silicon Valley tech activists are circulating a 14-point Bill of Rights for social network users across the Web, asking for digital signatures of support. As reported here earlier, the group met last week at the 2010 Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in San Jose to hammer out the document, a response to the ongoing Facebook privacy uproar and Google Buzz's recent release of users' top email contacts.Here's what emerged from that gathering -- aSocial Network Users Bill of Rights:We, the users, expect social network sites to provide us the following rights in their Terms of Service, Privacy Policies and implementions of their system:1. Honesty: Honor your privacy policy and terms of service2. Clarity: Make sure that policies, terms of service, and settings are easy to find and understand3. Freedom of speech: Do not delete or modify my data without a clear policy and justification4. Empowerment : Support assistive technologies and universal accessibility5. Self-protection: Support privacy-enhancing technologies6. Data minimization: Minimize the information I am required to provide and share with others.7. Control: Let me control my data, and don't facilitate sharing it unless I agree first.8. Predictability: Obtain my prior consent before significantly changing who can see my data.9. Data portability: Make it easy for me to obtain a copy of my data.10. Protection: Treat my data as securely as your own confidential data unless I choose to share it, and notify me if it is compromised.11. Right to know: Show me how you are using my data and allow me to see who and what has access to it.12. Right to self-define: Let me create more than one identity and use pseudonyms. Do not link them without my permission.13. Right to appeal: Allow me to appeal punitive actions.14. Right to withdraw: Allow me to delete my account, and remove my data.So far, the petition has gotten more than 200 signatures, but getting the social network companies to support it may be tougher. Google and Twitter have declined to comment on the document and a Google spokesperson said the company already has its own set of posted privacy standards. Facebook, when asked to comment on the principles by the San Jose Mercury News over the weekend, issued a prepared statement. It said that while Facebook shares the goal of ensuring "a safe and trusted environment" for its users, "we don't agree with all of the proposed elements" of the Bill of Rights, including a request by some that would allow users to use pseudonyms.Petition organizers are unfazed. "A networking Bill of Rights is a tool that users can use for education and empowerment," said Jack Lerner, director of the USC Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic and one of the people in the tech group that drafted the document. "Facebook is the 800-pound gorilla right now but that won't necessarily be the case forever." Jon Pincus, a co-chairman of the conference, added that "Facebook, with its 400 million users, likes to describe itself as equivalent to the third-largest country in the world. But what rights do the citizens of that country have? Users of social networks need to know about how some of their rights are being subverted and need to know how to protect themselves."What do you think, readers? Noble pipe dream or the start of something big? Let us hear from you.]]>http://www.justmeans.com/The-Beginning-of-the-End-of--Free-Content--Online/20127.htmlWed, 23 Jun 2010 23:33:48 GMTMarcia Stepanek Here's a new type of social media startup -- Flattr, out of Sweden. It's in private beta at the moment but it's already starting to cause social innovators and entrepreneurs to sit up and take notice. [Micah Sifry, co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, posted a short piece on it tonight on his techPresident blog and says he finds Flattr "intriguing."]He's right. Flattr is a new micro-payment system that would make it possible for people to get paid for what they produce online -- directly Read Full Article ]]> Here's a new type of social media startup -- Flattr, out of Sweden. It's in private beta at the moment but it's already starting to cause social innovators and entrepreneurs to sit up and take notice. [Micah Sifry, co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, posted a short piece on it tonight on his techPresident blog and says he finds Flattr "intriguing."]He's right. Flattr is a new micro-payment system that would make it possible for people to get paid for what they produce online -- directly from the people who consume it. "When you create, there's no good way right now to get money for that content, and when you find something you like, there's no good way to show love for it," Flattr's founders say. "This problem is universal for bloggers and their readers, musicians and their listeners, photographers, film creators, programmers and so on."And its doesn't end there."Before Flattr," the founders say on their site, "the only reasonable way to donate was to use Paypal or other systems to send money to people. The threshold for this has been quite high. People just ignore sending donations if it isn't for a really important cause. Sending a small sum has always been a pain in the ass. Who would ever log in to a payment system just to donate one Euro? And 10 Euros was just too high (a price to pay) for just one blog entry we liked..."Flattr says it's solved the problem. Here's how it works: Once you register on the site, you're asked to put a small sum of money into an account there, which you then use to pay all of the people (or causes) you choose to "flattr" each month. The site lets you both send and receive payments. The idea? You can "flattr" people and they can "flattr" you back. (You can pay people for their content -- if you like it a lot -- and they can pay you for yours.)Says Sifry: "This strikes me as very smart social engineering since it tackles the most obvious obstacle--our propensity to want to get paid, more than pay others, right from the start. In effect, Flattr sets up a worldwide poker game and you have to ante up to play."Here's the YouTube video on Flattr. The site's motto, translated into English from Swedish, says: "Many small streams will form a large river." What do you think?Could this new "social micro-payment" idea help to bridge the so-called 'social action gap' (between talk and action) for many causes? Could it help to close the 'payment gap' for creators of online content and spark new levels of entrepreneurial activity? Let us hear from you.]]>http://www.justmeans.com/Fat-v--Lean-Startups--Which-are-Better/20050.htmlWed, 23 Jun 2010 17:13:27 GMTMarcia Stepanek The uber-venture capitalist Fred Wilson, of Union Square Ventures in Manhattan, told a group of tech entrepreneurs last month that "arguing for lean startups in front of a Web crowd is like arguing for smaller government in front of a bunch of Republicans." Not much argument there, right?But what is best for social innovation startups? Should they start out with a lot of cash or keep their funding to a minimum? Opinion is starkly divided.Wilson, for his part, keeps insisting that lean is better, Read Full Article ]]> The uber-venture capitalist Fred Wilson, of Union Square Ventures in Manhattan, told a group of tech entrepreneurs last month that "arguing for lean startups in front of a Web crowd is like arguing for smaller government in front of a bunch of Republicans." Not much argument there, right?But what is best for social innovation startups? Should they start out with a lot of cash or keep their funding to a minimum? Opinion is starkly divided.Wilson, for his part, keeps insisting that lean is better, regardless of what kind of startup you are. "The success rate of fat companies versus lean ones is stark," he told people attending last month's TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York. "I have invested in about 100 software-based companies since 1993-94 -- social and otherwise --and I have never, not once, been successful with an investment in a company that raised a boatload of money before it found traction and product/market fit...That's how Geocities did it. That's how Twitter did it. That's how Zynga did it. That's how every single one of my Top 20 Web investments in my career did it."Okay, but what if you're a startup that needs a lot of capital just to get a seat at the table? There are some opportunities and ideas that can't be tackled with "lean," argues Ben Horowitz, cofounder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, a $300 million venture fund based in Silicon Valley. (Horowitz previously was the CEO of Loudcloud/Opsware, which he founded with Marc Andreessen and sold to HP for $1.6 billion.) "Lean theory is a good tactic but as an operational theory, it has a few holes."Here's what Horowitz argues:* Lean startup theory presumes you know when you've achieved product-market fit. "This, however, is often quite unobvious," Horowitz told the TechCrunch crowd. Consider Apple. "Apple's iPod did not sell 1 million units until two years after it was launched. Compare this with the iPhone, which sold 1 million units in its first three days. At what point did the iPod have product/market fit and at what point should Apple have invested in the mini and the nano? By lean startup theory, maybe not for a while -- but that would have been incorrect," Horowitz says.b) Lean startup theory presumes that once you have product/market fit, you cannot lose it. "This also is not the case," says Horowitz. Consider Netscape. It had product/market fit on the browser but lost it when Microsoft eliminated the market for browsers. "We were doing $250 million in revenue per year at the time but at that point ... we had to regain product/market fit and didn't have the luxury of taking the time to do it in a 'lean start-up' way," Horowitz says. "We ended up building the server product line from zero to $600 million in two years by applying what might be referred to as the fat methodology."And third? Lean startup theory presumes there is no competition. "So what happens if, prior to achiving product/market fit -- and prior to building the product that you believe that everyone wants -- a very scary competitior emerges?" He said VMware had this issue, but thanks to "fat cash theory," the software startup was able to double its head count each year to take the market ahead of competitors like Microsoft.So why is this lean v. fat debate considered important--and increasingly so in social innovation circles? Horowitz says he worries that "a lot of entrepreneurs are harming their companies by avoiding some really important things that cost money" -- like a sales force or top production talent. But even more worrisome? Horowitz says he sees some entrepreneurs avoiding the really big ideas. "Every day, somebody comes into our office from Harvard or Stanford or MIT -- including brilliant computer scientists -- and they pitch us on very small ideas, and this is tragic," Horowitz says. "...Building a company is really hard so you might as well build something important, something that will change the world. If being lean is a way to reach your goal, then fine. But if your goal requires being fat, then remember that big can be beautiful, too."What do you think? Is the lean-is-meaner mantra stifling innovation?]]>