Investing in People Over Ideas

One of the best things about working with undergraduates is that I get to scheme, design, and execute new ideas with some of the most brilliant, talented people in the world. Sure, they don't have "skills" in an "I went to a school to get a certificate for a skill" sort of way, and they don't have a ton of experience, but the undergraduate setting is the last time, usually, when brilliant folks from a million different perspectives are concentrated in one place for an extended period of time.

The success that I've had in things that I've done has largely been routed in the teams that I've been able to bring together around a specific mission. This seems not just to be my experience, but a general rule. Great people are essential to greatness, in business, nonprofit work, or anything else. At a discussion a few weeks ago, the founder of Virgance Steve Newcomb gave "hire great people" as his key advice for building a great company. A few days ago, "What Should I Do With My Life?" author Po Bronson reiterated the importance of helping great people find their right places in a Fast Company article.

But the question becomes how you rethink investment to focus on people, rather than ideas? If its the idea (expressed in the business plan) that will eventually make they money (or the change), but its the people who make ideas work (or not), is it possible to create new settings where the priority of the capital investments is on the people?

Ooga Labs is an interesting model of this in the web tech world. Ooga brings together incredibly talented software engineers and designers, works on a number of products simultaneously, and pays for its own operations by building businesses around their most promising ideas. Their starting point is getting the right people in the room:

We really don't care about your degrees. We don't really care what programming languages you know...For us, this is about building a culture, not just a company. From great culture & people we will create great products which produce happy customers which produce financial success. Most companies start the opposite way -- by figuring out a way to make money and then making their people & culture an afterthought. We look to Apple, Disney in the 30's, Toyota, Pixar, Southwest Airlines, and HP-in-the-60's as our cultural models. We communicate openly and honestly, and enforce a strict no-assholes policy. The organization is very flat -- everyone works directly with the CEO at some point during every month.

The question for me is, as always, what's in the special sauce? What is it that makes it possible for something like Ooga to be successful. And based on the answer to that question, what pieces of it can be taken to the world of social change?

All Day Buffet, who I mentioned the other day as an Echoing Green semifinalist, thinks they have an answer. I think that there's a lot of great ways to bring incredible talented people together in order to explode their creativity and mutual capacity. I just wonder if its possible to take those settings - conferences, trainings, even mutual working spaces like The Hub - and turn them into a financially viable business model focused on investing in people. I'm really excited to see what the ADB folks come up with. If they've really got something, that's where we should all put what's left of our money.