NEWSGOVERNMENT & SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Business can't solve every problem. Not even social business. Those of us who live in democracies sometimes have to recognize the necessary messiness of building consensus and role up our hands to participate in electing people we think will best represent our interests. A new tool from the Personal Democracy Forum is designed to make it easier for us to get real answers about real questions from our candidates.

The 10Questions project is a platform that is meant to update the civic debate using the tools of the era. The project is a collaboration with Google and YouTube and is supported by funding from the Knight Foundation.

Basically the way it works is that, over the next week, citizens will be able to upload the questions that matter most to them in the context of specific election campaigns. Anyone can vote for or against certain questions. For example, I just voted up a question in the CA governor race about how the candidates would handle the likely possibility of legalized marijuana. Hey, I live in San Francisco...this is (legitimately) a local economic issue.

At the end of the voting period, the 10 questions that the community has decided are most important are presented to the candidates, who then respond point-by-point via video. The same community who voted on which questions to ask then can vote about whether or not the candidate actually answered the questions. This creates an extremely public review process in which candidates are being judged not only on the quality of their answer but on their instinct towards obfuscation or truth telling.

The project is not meant to be a cure-all to the challenges that face political participation in this country. It is not a solution for low voter turnout or the relentless money machine that drives the political calendar. What it is is an attempt to make the technology of the era work better for average citizens.

Indeed, what's most interesting in some ways to me is that fact that the project is driven not by some novel technology, but instead by a clever combination of interface and intent. The interface weaves together video with crowdsourced voting, and makes the whole thing effortless by allowing you to sign in with your Google ID. The intent, of course, is where the real power lies, and the idea of getting direct responses to your pressing questions is what the Personal Democracy Forum is betting with bring people to the site.

The tool is a reminder that the point of communication technology tends to be more about amplifying the opportunity for real dialogue than it is about upending it. 10Questions is, if anything, a return to a stalwart element of Town Hall democracy that has been easy to lose in the television era.

Voting is open until Thursday. Check it out at 10Questions.com.

Photo credit: Screenshot from 10Questions.

Supercool School Principal (as in a founder of the company and school administrator) Bjorn Lasse Herrmann believes: “If people learn enough they can solve any problem.” So he created a way for people to learn very easily and in a socially connected network. Supercool School makes it easy for anyone to start a school; in fact, you can “start a free school in 60 seconds.” The founders of Supercool School realized that people aren’t just looking for good content, but they want a community of people to connect with who are interested in the same topic. Bjorn says, “The social experience of Supercool School creates chemistry and leads to a lot of informal ways of learning."

The platform actually started as a facebook application and now stands on its own, retaining the social networking feel. As one of their first schools, Startup School reached more than 2100 entrepreneurs in 130 countries and attracted over 1400 people to “like” them on facebook. Joseph Nganga, a social entrepreneur from Kenya says “I have learnt a great deal from other entrepreneurs – both experienced and in the start up phase. Startup School has enabled me to network with a variety of professionals who have helped me think through my own business, plan for its needs and better pitch to investors and partners.”

LocaleMotive, another emerging informal education platform with a social component, aims to help students “Study Socially. Check-In Locally.” While it hasn’t launched yet, students can expect a free study tool that will have features of project management software and feel like social gaming. Parents, schools, and teachers can view the progress of one student or an entire classroom.

As someone who resonates with Henry David Thoreau’s statement: “I was not born to be forced; I will breathe after my own fashion,” I appreciate the innovation and informal nature of these startups. They bring more practicality to academia, which appeals to me. Some of us (all, I would argue) were not made to sit in a chair attached to a desk or the grown up version of that with our ankles shackled to cubicles. Socially networked, innovative—maybe even fun, dare I say—education makes sense.

To remain relevant, education has to embrace and integrate social networking and I think its best that those innovations come from the private sector. (As a side note, how in the world did “Government on facebook” get 19,000 people to like it?) I’m curious to see how the formal education sector and accreditation bureaucracy will challenge, embrace, and change these informal education resources. Maybe we can, like Bjorn believes, solve some bureaucratic problems with education—entrepreneur style.

Photo credit: Shaylor

Silicon Valley is a place invested with incredible myth and aspiration. It is the place of hacker-kids-turned-billionaires. It is a place where last generation's industry Goliath's are upended by the next generation's Davids. The story of the place is particularly important to governments around the world who look to the region as an economic dynamo and seat of innovation. But what does it take to create a 'Silicon Valley?'

This question is actually the subject of a lot of thinking and writing. Startup guru and UC Berkeley professor Steve Blank has given a talk called "Hidden in Plain Sight: The Secret History of Silicon Valley," which takes the story back to WWII. Guy Kawasaki, former Apple evangelist and many-times startup book author wrote a post in 2006 called "How to Kick Silicon Valley's Butt" in which he breaks it into the pieces that other places can replicate and those they can't. Y Combinator founder Paul Graham wrote an essay called "How to Be Silicon Valley" in which he argues that it's all about getting a concentration of the right people in a common spot.

For many, this is more than just an academic exercise. Around the world, countries are dealing with young populations and too few job opportunities -- a toxic mix. In these places, the attempt to create a version of Silicon Valley is not about vanity, but about opportunity.

Over the weekend, entrepreneur, scholar, and TechCrunch writer Vivek Wadhwa wrote a post about Russia's attempt to encourage an ecosystem of venture capital, seed investment and technology entrepreneurship. Wadhwa has been (and remains) skeptical of the push, but in a surprise was invited to see the country's progress first hand. In reporting back from his trip, he provides 6 steps for creating a Silicon Valley in Russia. While the piece was written specifically with Russia in mind, these tips have application around the world. Here are the points, reinterpreted for the global audience.

The New York Times has been giving startups some serious love lately, from recent Thomas Friedman op-ed's to yesterday's article reporting on new research that suggests that startups are the most important vehicle for job creation in the American economy. The study has important implications for everything from tax policy to education.

In the story of the United States, both entrepreneurship and small business have almost mythic importance. The country was of course, founded by business and civic entrepreneurs who risked everything for the chance at a better life and a better government in a new world. Small businesses have a prominence that derives not only from their economic impact, but for the fact that they seem to be the place where Americans can claim the freedom and independence promised in the American Dream.

But this mythology matters beyond its inspiration for the masses. Policymakers are charged with creating regulatory frameworks that lead to more businesses and more job creation. Put another way, they're tasked with understanding where myth meets reality and designing policy structures that enable more economic growth. People who advocate for policies friendly to small business are quick to point out that 2/3 of new jobs are created by firms with under 500 employees.

In August, the National Bureau of Economic Research published a research paper that made some important suggestions about where new jobs really come from. In short, the report suggests that the size of companies does not matter when it comes to job creation -- what matters is age. The research suggests that most job creation occurs in the early years of new companies.

Why does this matter? It matters from a policy perspective because the things that establishes small businesses care about are often different than the things that startups care about. Creating policies and structures that enable ecosystems which promote entrepreneurship and new venture creation is a task wholly distinct from supporting small business.

The article mentions a few examples of where government policy aimed at promoting job creation through small businesses don't help startups very much. Programs to spur bank lending, for example, don't matter terribly to startups who are primarily financed through equity investment (which effectively means selling a portion of their company, rather than incurring debt). Another example is the focus on individual income taxes -- something the small business sector in general cares a lot about, but which your average startup and its early employees care far less about. Instead, startup ecosystems are worried about things like a rise in capital gains tax, which could reduce incentives for early stage investors.

Mythology matters. The stories we tell about ourselves and our society create the aspiration that catalyzes new careers and companies. But data matters as well. And when it comes to policy, data matters even more. The government should not turn its back from policies which help small businesses, but this data also suggests that it shouldn't assume that those policies are the vehicle which will create the jobs of the future.

Photo credit: star5112

September is the month that business, school, and real-life kicks into gear for many who had enjoyed the last gasp of August summer. Important articles this week range from the education access funding to the problem of regulatory frameworks for startup growth to the comparative generosity of global citizens.

The Most Generous Countries on Earth: The Gallup World Giving Index recently released data about the most giving countries. The USA comes in at number 5. The criteria used by Gallup includes charitable giving, time spent volunteering, and willingness to help strangers. It's hard to draw too much from the limited amount of info here, but it is interesting nonetheless.

Making the Grade: This Matthew Bishop piece in The Economist discusses how loans for education may be the next version of microfinance to make it big. He discusses up-and-coming organizations like Enzi -- who are experimenting with loans correlated to a percentage of future income -- and Vitanna, as well as pondering the potential of Kiva's entry into the student loan market. Watch this space in the coming months.

Startup Visa Interviews at O'Reilly Gov 2.0: This speech and interview combo posted by Brad Feld, a venture capitalist based in Boulder, CO and one of the leaders of the Startup Visa movement, provides great background on the push. In short, the goal is to create a class of visa specifically designed for immigrant entrepreneurs who wish to build their companies and create jobs in the USA.

Schools: The Disaster Movie: I expect that education reform will be one of the most talked about issues in our field over the next year. This is in part due to the fact that the field is so ripe for disruption, and that more and more startups are being created to tackle it. But it is also in part because the filmmaker behind "An Inconvenient Truth" is back with a much-anticipated film about the deplorable state of American schools. Early reports have suggested that Teacher's Unions come out looking pretty bad, which will be sure to poor additional fuel on an already intense flame.

Instead of IPOs, Startups Look to Be Acquired: Tomorrow I will publish a piece about new evidence that suggests that startups are the most important economic engine of job creation in the United States. This piece reinforces the point I make then about how economic policy designed to promote small business and bank reform is not necessarily the same -- in fact can be down right opposite -- for policy needed to allow startups to flourish. This piece shows how both too much and too little regulation has ruined the market for technology IPOs, impacting job creation and the venture industry as a whole.

Photo credit: Schlüsselbein2007

Nine years ago today, the United States of America was fundamentally and irrevocably changed. When the towers fell, they brought with it not only the lives of thousands of innocents, but the unspoken barrier that many of our citizens thought separated America from the chaos and turmoil of the world.

In the almost decade since, the world has shifted, as well. Two American-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are the most notable example, but the geopolitical readjustment has impacted people far beyond that, from Muslim refugees now stuck with less chance than ever before of asylum offers in countries allied with the US, to your average global traveler who faces more restrictions and suspicion than ever before.

The first decade after September 11th has been, unfortunately, characterized by war. One in direct response to the attacks, and one that had been waiting impatiently in the on-deck circle of neoconservatives for the right opportunity. Yet war and violence are a strange phenomena. They bring out the worst in people, yes, but very often also the best. Violence strips us so bare -- to our fragile, mortal core -- that it can create a rare and unique sense of common condition.

While it would be easy to view the September 11th story as violence that begat violence, there is another story, as well. For a huge number of people, 9/11 was the catalyst that shifted the way they thought about the world -- and more importantly, the need for them to be involved in making that world a better place. For members of the Millennial generation, the attack -- and even more, its response -- were a massive prod to think differently about how we were going to assert our voice and ideas.

Much of this activity was not simply tangentially inspired by 9/11, but had a direct overlap with the issues of religious intolerance and war churned up by the attack. An example is the Interfaith Youth Core, an organization started by Eboo Patel and a number of other Chicago-based interfaith advocates. While their push for religious pluralism started a number of years before the bombings, the attacks created a cultural context in which their programs -- which bring together young people of varied faith backgrounds to participate in common service and learn from one another -- became even more important.

Other innovators have focused on another consequence of the last decade: the increased number of veterans, many of whom are dealing with the physical and emotional scars of multiple tours of duty. The Mission Continues is an organization founded by a team of brilliant veterans who saw men and women who had performed heroically come back to a society not properly prepared to use their talents. The Mission Continues helps wounded veterans build careers of service.

The historian in me thinks that the first decade after September 11th will be remembered as a dark time, filled with violence and turmoil. The optimist in me thinks that the next decade will be remembered as a time of increasing promise, when we began to shake off the collective instinct towards retribution and rebuild towards a sane and just 21st century.

And when I survey the incredible, massive, incalculable shift in sentiment and feeling of purpose among young people today, the rationalist in me thinks that the decade after that will be remembered as the decade where we finally lived up to not just the technological but ethical promise of an interconnected world.

Photo credit: leppre

The financial crisis has not, thus far, cast a clear death blow to Milton Friedman's idea that the only responsibility businesses have to society is to maximize profits. That said, the last couple years have seen a steady mainstreaming of "social entrepreneurship," particularly within vertical industry categories such as Fair Trade. I believe both the verticalization and mainstreaming of the field will continue, creating a higher need than ever before to understand just what the broader designation of "social entrepreneurship" has to offer.

Social entrepreneurship tends to refer to the space in which companies and nonprofits use market and business objectives to achieve social aims. While there is some debate about whether the term refers exclusively to one legal business model over another, the core point for most of the people I tend to agree with is that "social ventures" as opposed to regular for-profit entities have an explicit focus on solving some social or environmental problem and maximizing social or environmental good alongside (or sometimes even at the expense of) pure, short-term profit maximization.

In this way, it is different from corporate social responsibility, which at its best is about giving back, improving employee culture and conditions, and reducing environmental impact. The difference is the fact that social entrepreneurship suggests that there is a core social or environmental value created every day by the products or services at the center of the very business. This does not mean that social ventures are "better" than non-social ventures -- there are lots of great companies that simply happen not to focus on solving social problems and which are still wonderful employees, community members, and philanthropists -- but it does mean they are different.

Social entrepreneurship is, however, a slightly weird field, in the sense that it is not an industry, but a term which applies to a number of (sometimes unrelated) industries, and a similar approach to business that places a social or environmental value at the center of the mission. Most people come into contact with the broader field of social entrepreneurship through one of the industries that it touches.

I think there are a few clear examples of  these "vertical" fields that connect with the larger banner of social entrepreneurship that have gotten increasingly mainstream over the last few years. Cleantech is perhaps the most obvious, becoming one of the most invested in areas of venture capital ($1.9 billion was invested in Cleantech companies in the first quarter of 2010 alone). Microfinance is another clear example. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Grameen Bank founder Muhammed Yunus and the explosive popularity of Kiva are two of the more important historical moments for the prominence of social entrepreneurship, and the recent IPO of SKS could be another. Fair Trade, Organic and Local Food movements are all racing to the mainstream, as well.

Being based in Silicon Valley, I'm particularly interested in industry verticals that can attract tech talent to start new companies. I think we're going to see big booms in education startups (see: Udemy, Enzi, Grockit, DonorsChoose, Supercool School) and I hope that many will learn to work within instead of solely outside the current education system. Healthcare seems like an obvious area that mixes social good with the potential for immense profit, but there are still too few web tech companies working on the issue, a problem that programs like Hacking 4 Health are trying to redress. And although they are a little bit different in terms of their potential for financial gain, there also seems to be a mini wave of "government 2.0" startups (see: Code for America, CitySourced, Gov2.0 Summit) that are trying to change the way municipal services are deployed and how governments interact with citizens.

It makes sense that social entrepreneurship would mature into verticals like this: startups need accumulated bodies of knowledge and connections to be successful, and ultimately, what works in Fair Trade may not work in Education. At the same time, I think the common element of trying to maximize a social or environmental good takes as much managerial discipline as deploying a successful revenue model, and for that, the broader field of social entrepreneurship has much to offer.

Photo credit: Chuck “Caveman” Coker

For the last two weeks, the philanthropy blogosphere has been humming with near constant chatter about the Social Innovation Fund and a might-have-been controversy around the selection process for its first intermediary grantmaking partners. I've stayed entirely out of the fray because, frankly, I wasn't sure what to think.

Now that a little time has transpired and more information has come to light, it's easier to track the trajectory of the conversation. I think the story is ultimately a success for the field, in that the right sort of pressure for transparency opened up more and better information. In terms of keeping the tone of the debate where it needed to be, huge credit needs to go to Sean Stannard-Stockton, whose Tactical Philanthropy blog has been the smartest and most informative throughout.

Here's a chronology of the SIF controversy:

July 23 -- Wise Picks? Commentators Weigh In on the Social Innovation Fund Grants: In July, the Social Innovation Fund released its selected intermediary partners -- the funders responsible for matching and then distributing the $50m authorized for the fund by the Serve America Act.

Early August -- Questions of Transparency Cloud the Social Innovation Fund: The Nonprofit Quarterly published this piece, arguing that the Social Innovation Fund's standards of transparency weren't up to what they should be, or perhaps even what was required by the fact that they were a government agency, using taxpayer dollars.

August 9 -- National-Service Agency Explores More Open Grant Process: Responding to those critiques, the SIF announced it would release the applications of winning intermediaries, but not the rest of the applicants.

August 19 -- Stonewalling at the Social Innovation Fund: This piece by NYU professor Paul Light busted open the conversation from a debate about the general merits of transparency versus opaqueness to something with a far more sinister suggestion -- that the SIF didn't want to release the applications and review ratings to the public because it had selected organizations that were reviewed poorly in early stages because of pre-existing connections with those organizations. Another reviewer, Stephen Goldberg, hit back in the comments accusing Light of making sweeping generalizations and stirring up a hornet's nest with little evidence.

August 20 -- Social Innovation Fund to Release Details About Application Process Amid Questions: The SIF again responded quickly, pledging to release (redacted) comments and reviews of the 11 winning candidates for the fund.

August 21 -- Nonprofit Fund Faces Questions About Conflicts and Selection Procedures: The New York Times picked up the story, outing New Profit as the winning intermediary at the center of Paul Light's criticism, and suggested that the SIF's pledge might not go far enough to satisfy critics.

August 21 -- New Profit's SIF Application: The same day the Times published its piece, New Profit posted its full, non-redacted application. Sean Stannard-Stockton also pointed out that, as of that point, the only evidence of any wrongdoing was a general and unspecific implication in Light's piece.

August 23 -- SIF Publishes Finalist Applications with comments: As promised, the SIF opened up more information about the finalist.

August 24 -- Social Innovation Fund Application Repository: Although the SIF has said it will not make non-winning applications available, Sean decided to collaborate with the Chronicle of Philanthropy to create a repository of those applications voluntarily turned over by organizations. Only Social Venture Partners has participated so far.

August 26 -- How the Social Innovation Fund Selected Grantees: This post on Tactical Philanthropy clearly articulates how the decisions within the SIF were made.

So what do I think about this supposed "controversy?" I think a couple things. First, it increased government transparency, even if marginally, which is a good thing. Second, it highlighted this fields incredible obsession with transparency, which I don't believe is a fundamental requirement of private actors. Third, ultimately, the biggest story was the story itself. I think a comment on Paul Light's original post, written by David Bornstein pretty well sums it up:

What's so disappointing to me, reading this column, and the associated commentary it has generated, is how it reinforces the old narrative that government is unavoidably corrupt. There's a veiled accusation of insider trading, which is unfortunate. I didn't take part in the reviewing process of the SIF, so I can only judge the process by its outcome, which appears perfectly acceptable to me. The winners have demonstrated that they know how to identify organizations that are making headway on major social problems. I suspect that most of your readers here have no clue how well this $50 million will be spent. Sadly, many of them will come away with mistaken the notion that this is another example of government waste or hubris. And that is both unhelpful and untrue.

Photo credit: kevindooley

The general attitude in Silicon Valley about the ability of government to get things done is that, well, it doesn't have the ability to get things done. Ironically, the slow drift towards an evisceration of internet freedom by  internet service providers (ISPs) and their lobbyists -- a drift that most of Silicon Valley is diametrically opposed to -- has been significantly enabled by that prevailing dismissive attitude.

It's not hard to understand why, as a general rule, Silicon Valley would harbor many folks skeptical of Washington. In the web space, steam-rolling builders shape the world in their image (or at least, that's the story that gets told). The nobodies of one day build companies that disrupt historic industries the next. The pace of change is so dramatic and addictive, it's hard to be satisfied at the glacial pace of change that characterizes policy debates.

What many in the Valley forget, however, is that their ability to disrupt industries has had as much to do with historical accident as it has with their own much-vaunted entrepreneurialism.

Net Neutrality is fundamentally about keeping the internet an equal playing field in which all types of content have the same chance to be seen and experienced. Historically speaking, the internet has happened to be a place in which certain types of content are not discriminated against, slowed down, or limited by service providers because of a combination of disincentives and regulatory threat. That has meant that big players have not colluded to cut off the life stream of little players, and it has enabled the disruptive power that looms so large in our mythology.

But there is nothing other than the moral suasion of Net Neutrality advocates and the assertion of regulatory power on the part of the FCC that guarantees that any of that remains the case. Indeed, the Net Neutrality conversation is heating up because the economic advantages of creating tiered service in which certain content creators pay to prioritize their services against others are becoming clearer and clearer, exemplified by the fierce and growing battle for mobile affiliation and the increasing bandwidth burden on service providers as more people get on faster landline and wireless connections.

Put another way, the self-policing that so many in Silicon Valley wish to believe works perfectly fine is beginning to rub up against the fact that when startups grow into great big companies, they throw their power around to preserve and grow their piece of the pie, even (or in some cases, especially) if this means strangling the competition before it becomes competitive. Of course, this is anathema to the startups and venture investors whose business is rooted in big wins and disruptive power. The question is who has the power to preserve the balance?

In democratic societies, the answer to that question is: the government. Businesses and nonprofits do not have the power to determine personal or commercial rights and regulations. They can shape norms, but their ability to do so is a soft, not a hard power. The job of government is to codify norms that best benefit large parts of society into rules that create serious disincentives or outright blocks to business approaches that would undermine those norms.

The government's power to assert this influence, however, is entirely determined by how much authority they're given by citizens and key influencers in society. When entire influential groups of people (ahem, the Valley) talk as though government exists only to bother them, it influences how they (and how others watching) behave, and that behavior influences the actual ability of government to be powerful.

This self-fulfilling prophecy is being enacted in the Federal Communication Commission's seeming inability to stem the tide against the forces looking to dismantle Net Neutrality. While some of that is due to the particular decisions and shortcomings of FCC leadership and the weak federal support of their mission, it is also directly related to our hostility toward government in general.

We can't crap all over the idea of government when it doesn't particular matter to us, or when it's creating regulations that are economically disadvantageous to us, and then expect it to have full power to be there to regulate the norms we think are important when they become threatened by people who disagree with us.

This is a delicate line. Certainly this administration and our governing structures in general deserve skepticism, and often frustration.

But if we wish, in those times when we find ourselves on the same side of and needing the unique legislative and regulatory power bestowed upon government, we must assume that government also deserves our engagement, advocacy, and ultimately, our recognition of its importance in maintaining a just, fair, and free society.

Photo credit: David Paul Ohmer

Google. Please. Don't. Do. This.

In a piece that is being disputed by Google, the New York Times broke the news last night that Google and Verizon are poised to announce a deal and a proposal that would effectively allow service providers such a Verizon to create online pay tiers, in which certain content providers who were willing to pay more would receive prioritization and faster speeds.

Since a court decision in April that said that the Federal Communications Commission did not have the authority to determine whether broadband providers could speed up or slow down different types of content for different types of users, consumer advocates have been scrambling to figure out ways to preserve the open, free internet, while telecom lobbyists have been pushing aggressively to undermine net neutrality and create pay tiers that allow content providers who pay more to have an easier time getting their content in front of users.

What this would mean is that incubants in any space such as online video could pay to put any new competitors at a disadvantage in terms of the actual speed and convenience with which someone else could access their content. Practically speaking, it means that a company like Youtube would have a major advantage over any new company like Vimeo, not because their product or user experience was better, but simply because they had paid to be in the fast lane.

This is completely different than the entirely open infrastructure that has characterized the growth of the web thus far. The internet's disruptive power has largely been in the fact that the barriers to entry looked nothing like the old world of television media. On television, there were clear gatekeepers and no one could just produce a show and get it seen by millions of people. On the internet, anyone can create the next big thing because the gatekeepers have fallen by the way side and meritocracy rules. If you have the funniest show, the most interesting blog, eventually people discover it.

It's more than entertainment, however. The lack of global gatekeepers on the internet means that there is more space for opinions and perspectives outside of the mainstream to actually become part of the cultural conversation. Creating a tiered internet in which certain content providers could pay to move their content more quickly dramatically upsets that dynamic.

It also flies in the face of just about everything Google has ever said abou