Ready to leave the company fold but don't want the door to hit you on the way out? Here's a guide to making a graceful exit.
From: Fast Company Issue 93 April 2005 Page 91 By: Michael A. Prospero
"I'm 40 years old, and I've worked in corporate America since I was 21," says Lisa Ellerton, who had climbed her way up through the insurance business until she was the worldwide operations leader for Royal & SunAlliance. One day, Ellerton asked her sister and her sister's friends why they didn't ever take time for themselves to go to the gym. The Orange County, California, denizens were all looking for something that was convenient but that didn't make them feel guilty for leaving their kids for the StairMaster.
In doing so, she joined the ranks of those who ditched the corporate life in favor of their own startup. Dropping out connotes '60s-ish notions of Timothy Leary and Easy Rider, but it's not quite that simple and doesn't come in convenient pill form. Making the transition from glass buildings, 401(k)s, and dental plans to a much more unpredictable but potentially more rewarding life involves planning, finesse, and a little luck. By the time Ellerton's first studio opens this summer, it will have been nearly three years since she envisioned it, most of that time spent working for the Man.
Tune in to ideas around you
Breaking out of the corporate grind starts with an idea, and the good news is that ideas abound in the work environment. Jason Finger and Paul Appelbaum's company started with a growling stomach. The two law-school buddies were regularly toiling away in their respective first-year associates' jobs and debating the merits of chicken lo mein versus pepperoni pizza when comparing the takeout options near their midtown Manhattan offices. Looking at the jumble of menus in their desks, and the hassle of remembering which client to bill, the two stumbled on the idea that would become SeamlessWeb Professional Solutions, an online food-delivery service for law firms, bankers, and so forth.
"We understood who the clients were, we understood who the users were," Finger says. During the cold January when he and Appelbaum were completing their plans, he couldn't help but smile every time an associate complained about venturing outside in the cold and rain for lunch, "because I knew that we could help people out with a real problem."
It was confidence in this idea -- or chutzpah -- that led Finger, just five months into his first job out of law school and $100,000 in debt, to leave a career in law behind. "A lot of entrepreneurs actually get their ideas for their business while working at a company," says Herminia Ibarra, a professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD and author of Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career (Harvard Business School Press, 2003). "They see a need that's not met." Finger has long since paid off his student loans -- and SeamlessWeb's 2004 revenue hit $50 million.
Take an idea out the door with you
Sometimes your corporate overlord hands you an exit strategy that's better than any severance package. Terry Moloney and Doug Dyer developed an idea for their employer that turned into their escape pod. Dyer, the vice president of wireless for Warner Bros. Online, hired Moloney to come up with content for the latest generation of high-speed, high-bandwidth mobile phones. "We thought, 'Why not put together a film concept that lends itself to small chunks?' " says Moloney. While the brass didn't express much interest, Moloney and Dyer didn't want their idea of original video content for mobile devices to die. Warner Bros. "wasn't playing in that space," says Moloney. "We decided, 'Let's just start this company.' " The two took their final bows at Warner in December, "and sort of took the concept with us," he says, starting MoPho last January. Opportunities for cherry-picking abound -- assuming, that is, that you know the difference between an orphaned idea and industrial espionage -- in the tech world, pharmaceuticals, and even consumer products. What would be a mere single for a big company can be a startup's home run.
Work nine to five -- then from five to two
Once you decide to make a move, there's inevitably a pause before you can follow your muse. Corporate dropouts concede that one of the most difficult things is to maintain the same level of enthusiasm for the job you're about to leave as the venture you're about to start. The little things, such as staying a bit later to finish a project or going out for drinks with coworkers, tend to fall by the wayside. Ian and Shep Murray, brothers who left the worlds of public relations and advertising to start a whimsical clothing company called Vineyard Vines, admit that clock-watching became the norm. "You work your job from nine to six, and all you want is for six o'clock to come so you can work on your business," he says. "That's when our day began."
Of course, it's not unnatural for achievers to wonder if they can pull off doing both the day job and the dream indefinitely. "Can we enjoy the security of six-figure-plus law-firm jobs and start a business on the side?" Finger asked himself. Ultimately, though, he realized that "the only way things get done is if you give it 100%. And if we tried to balance working at the law firm and the business, neither one would get a fair shake."
Corporate dropouts forget that the relationships they've built are part of an entire career story that they take with them. It's important they speak with their employer when going through the transition.
Turn on the warning lights
Dropouts also need to manage their exits carefully. "They sort of forget that these relationships they've built, the positions they've held, are part of an entire career story that they take with them," says Lisa MacKenzie, who left what was then Cunningham Communication in 1993 to start her own marketing firm. "So it's incredibly important for them to have a conversation with their employer when they're going through the transition."
Graceful exits aren't just a matter of honor -- or even of keeping doors open. They're good business. MoPho's Dyer keeps in touch with the people he used to work with because, he admits, his company could be using Warner Bros. content in the future. Plus, he adds, "You don't want to mess with the 900-pound gorilla." SeamlessWeb's Finger gave his law firm ample warning before he left, fully aware that his fledgling business idea depended on 900-pound gorillas like his employer as clients. Finger first presented his business plan to a senior partner as a friend's idea. Three months later, he again broached the subject, adding that he was thinking of leaving the firm. The soft sell worked, and he was able to circulate the plan in the firm, which ultimately became a beta client. In fact, the partner's initial enthusiasm was "one of the impetuses for us going through with it," says Finger.
Coworkers are a constituency that must be managed as well. Ellerton was already well into her fitness-club plan when she took a job with Arch Insurance Group in October 2003 to help overhaul its IT infrastructure, a post she accepted with the understanding that she planned to leave in a year's time to pursue her idea. But Ellerton "didn't advertise [her short horizon] within the company," she says. "I didn't offer it upfront, because what I was doing in the company was not incredibly popular." She knew that if she were viewed as a short-termer, her work might have been met with more resistance. "I still treat it today as if I'll be here for a career," she says.
Who are you?
Dropping out brings with it trepidation -- and not just with finances. "There's very much the identity that goes along with being part of a corporation, and that's a little scary to give up and wear workout clothes all day," says Ellerton. That's why it helps to have a partner. While Ellerton will be doing her yoga alone, SeamlessWeb's Finger and Appelbaum, MoPho's Dyer and Moloney, and the Murray brothers of Vineyard Vines all made tandem leaps. In the weeks leading up to their departure, Shep Murray would call Ian several times a day pretending he'd quit. When Shep actually gave notice, Ian understandably didn't believe him. When Shep finally did, though, Ian went straight to his boss and did the same. For the brothers, scraping by, even failing at their own thing, was no worse than toiling in quiet desperation. Says Ian: "There's always going to be a job out there if you're coherent and can put a sentence together."
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Monday, February 27, 2006
SIX PRINCIPLES FOR 21st CENTURY LEADERS
Six Principles for 21st Century Leaders
By Prasad Kaipa
In my 15+ years of work with organizations and senior executives, I have found six principles, derived from spiritual literature, to be quite helpful in coaching executives to become successful in these times of great change. These six principles are interdependent and describe a cycle that when followed can help you develop new competencies and achieve higher levels of success.
The essence of these principles is self-knowledge. The more you practice the principles, the better you begin to know yourself.
Clarity of Intention
Intention is critical to achieving success. You may have an idea of the results you want and the direction you're heading when you take on a project, but most often you lack clarity about your goal, let alone knowledge of how to measure success if you achieve it.When the intention is not clear, attention drifts and leads to confusion. In such circumstances, you often end up compromising your own efforts and receive less than what you desire or even deserve. Without a crystal clear intention, you rarely experience a sense of accomplishment even if your more general intentions are fulfilled.To increase your clarity of intention, ask yourself the following questions:
What is it that I really want?
What evokes passion and joy in my heart?
How passionately do I feel about it?
What am I willing to give up (sacrifice) to achieve the desired goal?
If I have more than one intention, which one should I first attempt? These questions bring to the surface some of your assumptions and passion, helping you to prioritize your intentions (and hence your actions). Finally, exploring your intention creates a pathway to discovering your unique purpose in life. When you are aligned with what you want at head, heart and gut level, chances are your actions are also aligned, and you increase the likelihood of achieving the results you're seeking.
Constant practice helps you to stay focused on what you want until you get it.
Awareness
Awareness is of two kinds: self-awareness and the awareness of the world around you. When you develop self-awareness – of both your competencies and weaknesses, you gain a better understanding of who you are and what you want, and equally important a clear picture of who you're not and what you don't want. Developing a deeper awareness of where others are coming from and remembering that you're also a player in creating the situation, you may be able to relax and become interested in others and their point of view.Awareness is dynamic. It is about continually being vigilant against complacency. You need to continually and dynamically reassess where you are with respect to where you were and where you want to go.There are four mental processes that act as enemies to awareness.
Personal Expectations and Standards
Everyone has their own set of standards and internal expectations. You pick them up from people whom you respect and like the most. Whatever their standards are, you attempt to live up to them even though your competencies and passion might not allow you to reach those expectations and meet those standards you unconsciously picked up. Only by becoming aware of those standards can you do something about them.
False / Incorrect Knowledge
You sometimes assume things about yourself and others that are plainly not true. Because you didn't face any challenges when you first assumed them, you sometimes take it for granted that they must be true. And if you get some proof that you might be right in one extreme condition, you may think that your assumptions are universally true. This is the source of your misidentified and incorrect knowledge. Once you have such knowledge, you rarely verify that in the real world and it becomes a block to awareness.
Wild Imagination (and attachment to it)
There is time for dreaming and fantasizing, and there is time for focusing and getting things done. Unfortunately, imagination can at times be so seductive that you're unwilling to accept that it is fantasy–not reality–and then it becomes a block to awareness.
Memory of Past Successes and Failures
Faulty memory can also trap you into believing that your memory is right and the new data is wrong. And often past successes are bigger blocks to awareness than past failures. Of course, failure is a stepping stone to success if you can learn from it, but it is not commonly done.
Developing and practicing awareness requires becoming mindful of your own thoughts, feelings and body sensations. They give you early warning signals if you pay attention. You can become aware of your own thought processes by using reflective or contemplative practices, writing a journal regularly and continual examination of your intentions. Most awareness is tacit, but you can learn to pay better attention to your body signals, pains and pleasures, and energy shifts. They tell you to slow down your actions and reflect on the meaning of those body signals. The more aware you are of yourself, the sharper your senses become in observing your surroundings.
Empathy
While clarity of intention and awareness set you onto the path to success, empathy and compassion helps you to gain the support of others.Empathy is the foundation for emotional intelligence. By being kind and empathetic, you allow yourself to build lasting relationships with your colleagues, employees and customers. When the situation has conflicts and divisiveness, the attitudes of warmth and affection can diffuse the tension. At that point, it is possible to become open to the idea of further exploration for an amicable solution.The practice of empathy requires demonstrating openness, mutual respect and trust in your relationships. Deep listening–not just to the words but the meaning behind the words–is the foundation for an empathetic relationship. Sharing from the heart and feeling the pain of others nurtures relationships. Empathy begets more empathy and is the source of a creative partnership.
Appreciation
While empathy opens the door, appreciation welcomes you in. By appreciating and acknowledging others, you increase their state of happiness. They, in turn, reciprocate and contribute happiness back to you and others they touch. Appreciation is also about self-acceptance, as you can only appreciate others to the extent that you can appreciate yourself.
Self-acceptance accelerates the process of self-development. Unfortunately, most people rarely appreciate who they are and what they receive. Appreciation is not flattery, but rather a genuine acknowledgment of a person's contribution. Honest appreciation lets others know that you honor and respect who they are. It also boosts morale and amplifies what gave rise to that appreciation in the first place. Make it a ritual every day to find something positive that you have done or some contribution that you have made to others. Even if the work you have done has not yet produced the desired result, appreciate the steps you have taken so far. Similarly, appreciate what others do in their struggle to achieve the results they want. Be authentic when you give such feedback. Then you and the other person can discuss how to improve the efforts and get the desired results later on.
Stretching Beyond Your Own Limits
Your free will to take actions that stretch you beyond your comfort zone gives you the ability to change the course you're on. To do this, your intentions must be clear, active and flexible. In this stretch mode, you become immensely creative and passionate. Without such passion, you wouldn't even attempt to stretch in the first place.
Yes, stretching beyond your own perceived limits requires risk-taking, and people are naturally uncomfortable about taking risks and facing the possibility of failing. So-called 'failures' often create mental blocks and boundaries, most of which are self-imposed. By learning to stretch beyond your comfort zone, you begin to break through these mental barriers and discover your untapped potential. When you know that you're appreciated and not judged, you have an easier time to stretch beyond your limits.
To practice the principle of stretching the limits, find opportunities to learn and be vulnerable. Vulnerability does not mean being weak. It is about being in the state of not knowing and hence being open to learning. Your ability to learn is directly proportional to your ability to be vulnerable.The key is to be willing to fail and then ask questions instead of making assumptions. Practice telling the truth when you're not sure of what the implications may be.
Doing this serves to create an environment of nurturing and caring in which other people can also let their guard down and discover themselves to be bigger than they ever imagined.
Letting Go of What Doesn't Work
While the first five principles can get you to the edge of success, success eludes those who do not know when to let go and move on. By learning to let go of your old mindsets, you begin to discover new possibilities and new approaches. Letting go doesn't mean giving up; it means not worrying about the result while continuing to perform the action. That posture gives you the freedom to act in a relaxed yet focused manner and frees you to be more natural in order to bring out the best in yourself.
Letting go is also about flexibility and good judgment. When you know what to let go of and when to do so, you can take responsibility for what you can hold onto and for how long you must do so.The Cycle of the Six PrinciplesIntention provides the direction and focus for your actions. Awareness gives you the capacity and intelligence to go after your goal.
Empathy helps you to build partnerships with others, and appreciation is the key to motivation and productivity. Stretching beyond your perceived limits helps you to grow and meet challenges, and letting go of your attachments assures not only success but also accomplishment. And when you succeed in what you have undertaken, it is time to go back and clarify your intentions all over again as you set new goals. By practicing these six principles with self-awareness you can achieve not only success, but also self-discovery.
Prasad kaipa is the principal of The Kaipa Group, an executive leadership and business transformation consultancy.
Copyright © 2006 by Corporate Training Magazine Inc.All rights reserved.
"We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears."-François de la Rochefoucauld, French writer, 1613-1680
By Prasad Kaipa
In my 15+ years of work with organizations and senior executives, I have found six principles, derived from spiritual literature, to be quite helpful in coaching executives to become successful in these times of great change. These six principles are interdependent and describe a cycle that when followed can help you develop new competencies and achieve higher levels of success.
The essence of these principles is self-knowledge. The more you practice the principles, the better you begin to know yourself.
Clarity of Intention
Intention is critical to achieving success. You may have an idea of the results you want and the direction you're heading when you take on a project, but most often you lack clarity about your goal, let alone knowledge of how to measure success if you achieve it.When the intention is not clear, attention drifts and leads to confusion. In such circumstances, you often end up compromising your own efforts and receive less than what you desire or even deserve. Without a crystal clear intention, you rarely experience a sense of accomplishment even if your more general intentions are fulfilled.To increase your clarity of intention, ask yourself the following questions:
What is it that I really want?
What evokes passion and joy in my heart?
How passionately do I feel about it?
What am I willing to give up (sacrifice) to achieve the desired goal?
If I have more than one intention, which one should I first attempt? These questions bring to the surface some of your assumptions and passion, helping you to prioritize your intentions (and hence your actions). Finally, exploring your intention creates a pathway to discovering your unique purpose in life. When you are aligned with what you want at head, heart and gut level, chances are your actions are also aligned, and you increase the likelihood of achieving the results you're seeking.
Constant practice helps you to stay focused on what you want until you get it.
Awareness
Awareness is of two kinds: self-awareness and the awareness of the world around you. When you develop self-awareness – of both your competencies and weaknesses, you gain a better understanding of who you are and what you want, and equally important a clear picture of who you're not and what you don't want. Developing a deeper awareness of where others are coming from and remembering that you're also a player in creating the situation, you may be able to relax and become interested in others and their point of view.Awareness is dynamic. It is about continually being vigilant against complacency. You need to continually and dynamically reassess where you are with respect to where you were and where you want to go.There are four mental processes that act as enemies to awareness.
Personal Expectations and Standards
Everyone has their own set of standards and internal expectations. You pick them up from people whom you respect and like the most. Whatever their standards are, you attempt to live up to them even though your competencies and passion might not allow you to reach those expectations and meet those standards you unconsciously picked up. Only by becoming aware of those standards can you do something about them.
False / Incorrect Knowledge
You sometimes assume things about yourself and others that are plainly not true. Because you didn't face any challenges when you first assumed them, you sometimes take it for granted that they must be true. And if you get some proof that you might be right in one extreme condition, you may think that your assumptions are universally true. This is the source of your misidentified and incorrect knowledge. Once you have such knowledge, you rarely verify that in the real world and it becomes a block to awareness.
Wild Imagination (and attachment to it)
There is time for dreaming and fantasizing, and there is time for focusing and getting things done. Unfortunately, imagination can at times be so seductive that you're unwilling to accept that it is fantasy–not reality–and then it becomes a block to awareness.
Memory of Past Successes and Failures
Faulty memory can also trap you into believing that your memory is right and the new data is wrong. And often past successes are bigger blocks to awareness than past failures. Of course, failure is a stepping stone to success if you can learn from it, but it is not commonly done.
Developing and practicing awareness requires becoming mindful of your own thoughts, feelings and body sensations. They give you early warning signals if you pay attention. You can become aware of your own thought processes by using reflective or contemplative practices, writing a journal regularly and continual examination of your intentions. Most awareness is tacit, but you can learn to pay better attention to your body signals, pains and pleasures, and energy shifts. They tell you to slow down your actions and reflect on the meaning of those body signals. The more aware you are of yourself, the sharper your senses become in observing your surroundings.
Empathy
While clarity of intention and awareness set you onto the path to success, empathy and compassion helps you to gain the support of others.Empathy is the foundation for emotional intelligence. By being kind and empathetic, you allow yourself to build lasting relationships with your colleagues, employees and customers. When the situation has conflicts and divisiveness, the attitudes of warmth and affection can diffuse the tension. At that point, it is possible to become open to the idea of further exploration for an amicable solution.The practice of empathy requires demonstrating openness, mutual respect and trust in your relationships. Deep listening–not just to the words but the meaning behind the words–is the foundation for an empathetic relationship. Sharing from the heart and feeling the pain of others nurtures relationships. Empathy begets more empathy and is the source of a creative partnership.
Appreciation
While empathy opens the door, appreciation welcomes you in. By appreciating and acknowledging others, you increase their state of happiness. They, in turn, reciprocate and contribute happiness back to you and others they touch. Appreciation is also about self-acceptance, as you can only appreciate others to the extent that you can appreciate yourself.
Self-acceptance accelerates the process of self-development. Unfortunately, most people rarely appreciate who they are and what they receive. Appreciation is not flattery, but rather a genuine acknowledgment of a person's contribution. Honest appreciation lets others know that you honor and respect who they are. It also boosts morale and amplifies what gave rise to that appreciation in the first place. Make it a ritual every day to find something positive that you have done or some contribution that you have made to others. Even if the work you have done has not yet produced the desired result, appreciate the steps you have taken so far. Similarly, appreciate what others do in their struggle to achieve the results they want. Be authentic when you give such feedback. Then you and the other person can discuss how to improve the efforts and get the desired results later on.
Stretching Beyond Your Own Limits
Your free will to take actions that stretch you beyond your comfort zone gives you the ability to change the course you're on. To do this, your intentions must be clear, active and flexible. In this stretch mode, you become immensely creative and passionate. Without such passion, you wouldn't even attempt to stretch in the first place.
Yes, stretching beyond your own perceived limits requires risk-taking, and people are naturally uncomfortable about taking risks and facing the possibility of failing. So-called 'failures' often create mental blocks and boundaries, most of which are self-imposed. By learning to stretch beyond your comfort zone, you begin to break through these mental barriers and discover your untapped potential. When you know that you're appreciated and not judged, you have an easier time to stretch beyond your limits.
To practice the principle of stretching the limits, find opportunities to learn and be vulnerable. Vulnerability does not mean being weak. It is about being in the state of not knowing and hence being open to learning. Your ability to learn is directly proportional to your ability to be vulnerable.The key is to be willing to fail and then ask questions instead of making assumptions. Practice telling the truth when you're not sure of what the implications may be.
Doing this serves to create an environment of nurturing and caring in which other people can also let their guard down and discover themselves to be bigger than they ever imagined.
Letting Go of What Doesn't Work
While the first five principles can get you to the edge of success, success eludes those who do not know when to let go and move on. By learning to let go of your old mindsets, you begin to discover new possibilities and new approaches. Letting go doesn't mean giving up; it means not worrying about the result while continuing to perform the action. That posture gives you the freedom to act in a relaxed yet focused manner and frees you to be more natural in order to bring out the best in yourself.
Letting go is also about flexibility and good judgment. When you know what to let go of and when to do so, you can take responsibility for what you can hold onto and for how long you must do so.The Cycle of the Six PrinciplesIntention provides the direction and focus for your actions. Awareness gives you the capacity and intelligence to go after your goal.
Empathy helps you to build partnerships with others, and appreciation is the key to motivation and productivity. Stretching beyond your perceived limits helps you to grow and meet challenges, and letting go of your attachments assures not only success but also accomplishment. And when you succeed in what you have undertaken, it is time to go back and clarify your intentions all over again as you set new goals. By practicing these six principles with self-awareness you can achieve not only success, but also self-discovery.
Prasad kaipa is the principal of The Kaipa Group, an executive leadership and business transformation consultancy.
Copyright © 2006 by Corporate Training Magazine Inc.All rights reserved.
"We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears."-François de la Rochefoucauld, French writer, 1613-1680
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
NEW BOOK , RIGHT TIMING: PING
Ping: A Frog in Search of a New Pond by Stuart Avery Gold
"While Ping's dreams got bigger, the pond got smaller."
In the tradition of Who Moved My Cheese? Here is a parable about change, overcoming obstacles, and making a leap of faith.
This simple, inspirational tale follows the journey of Ping, a frog in search of a new pond, preferably one good for long-distance jumping. Along the way he meets Owl, an insightful teacher who shares his wisdom, encouraging Ping to take an inner journey before pursuing his goal.
Ping represents everybody who has encountered a setback, needs to take a risk, or is struggling with the challenges of change -- that is to say, he is all of us. Owl is the mentor who helps him find meaning and leap to new heights. The adventure they embark on together is both engaging and revealing.
"While Ping's dreams got bigger, the pond got smaller."
In the tradition of Who Moved My Cheese? Here is a parable about change, overcoming obstacles, and making a leap of faith.
This simple, inspirational tale follows the journey of Ping, a frog in search of a new pond, preferably one good for long-distance jumping. Along the way he meets Owl, an insightful teacher who shares his wisdom, encouraging Ping to take an inner journey before pursuing his goal.
Ping represents everybody who has encountered a setback, needs to take a risk, or is struggling with the challenges of change -- that is to say, he is all of us. Owl is the mentor who helps him find meaning and leap to new heights. The adventure they embark on together is both engaging and revealing.
PING
Excerpt from Ping: A Frog in Search of a New Pond
Prologue
What matters is that you believe the following tale is true.
Personally, back at the beginning I had my doubts. And who wouldn't have some doubts when they first find out that the adventures described in these pages are, in point of fact, the transformative journey belonging to one of the pond's most enduring creatures . . . a frog.
Now for those of you who have just rolled your eyes, please don't be put off -- there is so much to learn. Despite the many bad things going on here on planet Earth, there are many good things happening too. And one of them is that there are still stories that can thrill the spirit and soar the soul.
This is one of those stories.
Long before you and long before me, long before there was the quicksilver of WiFi, broadband, streaming video, DVD, and VCR, long before there was television, movies, radio, and even books, there were stories that entertained, educated, motivated, and inspired. And while some stories passed down through the centuries were meant to soothe and calm and perhaps put the listener to sleep, this is a traveler's tale, meant to awaken the way within, showing the true purpose of the life journey is far more than a mere traveling to survive. Here is your invitation to leap at life's opportunities as shown through the heroic actions and revealing insights of one Ping the frog.
To verify this story I interviewed dozens of people, Asians and Westerners, Tibetan lamas and Zen masters, Burmese teachers and Taoist practitioners, cramming notebooks full before setting ink to paper. Some of the interviews took me to Japan, and some to China, and some to certain sages here in the United States. But alas, only a few knew Ping's remarkable tale, and fewer still could recount it from beginning to end. After all, this took place some time ago.
But the story still haunted me and I was still hopeful, so I spent many more months conducting research until, finally, blessedly, I was able to nail down an accurate record of the facts, which is how I can come to you vouching for this story's authenticity. And whether any of my efforts were worth it, is, of course, up to you to decide. After all, if history has taught us anything, it's that some stories are for telling. And some stories are for believing.
And the story of Ping the frog?
Well, that is a story forever . . .
Copyright © 2006 Stuart Avery Gold
Prologue
What matters is that you believe the following tale is true.
Personally, back at the beginning I had my doubts. And who wouldn't have some doubts when they first find out that the adventures described in these pages are, in point of fact, the transformative journey belonging to one of the pond's most enduring creatures . . . a frog.
Now for those of you who have just rolled your eyes, please don't be put off -- there is so much to learn. Despite the many bad things going on here on planet Earth, there are many good things happening too. And one of them is that there are still stories that can thrill the spirit and soar the soul.
This is one of those stories.
Long before you and long before me, long before there was the quicksilver of WiFi, broadband, streaming video, DVD, and VCR, long before there was television, movies, radio, and even books, there were stories that entertained, educated, motivated, and inspired. And while some stories passed down through the centuries were meant to soothe and calm and perhaps put the listener to sleep, this is a traveler's tale, meant to awaken the way within, showing the true purpose of the life journey is far more than a mere traveling to survive. Here is your invitation to leap at life's opportunities as shown through the heroic actions and revealing insights of one Ping the frog.
To verify this story I interviewed dozens of people, Asians and Westerners, Tibetan lamas and Zen masters, Burmese teachers and Taoist practitioners, cramming notebooks full before setting ink to paper. Some of the interviews took me to Japan, and some to China, and some to certain sages here in the United States. But alas, only a few knew Ping's remarkable tale, and fewer still could recount it from beginning to end. After all, this took place some time ago.
But the story still haunted me and I was still hopeful, so I spent many more months conducting research until, finally, blessedly, I was able to nail down an accurate record of the facts, which is how I can come to you vouching for this story's authenticity. And whether any of my efforts were worth it, is, of course, up to you to decide. After all, if history has taught us anything, it's that some stories are for telling. And some stories are for believing.
And the story of Ping the frog?
Well, that is a story forever . . .
Copyright © 2006 Stuart Avery Gold
INTEGRITY TOP OF MIND IN 2005
For 1/10/06
From Iconoculture's Research Desk
What was top of mind for Americans in 2005? The word we were noodling on most? Tsunami? Nope; that was number 6. Filibuster? Number 4. Fact is, among the 7 million people who hit Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, the most sought-after word veered much closer to the heart of our national conscience. According to M-W.com, we were most curious about "Integrity."
It's not the first time the daily news has sent Americans scrambling for definitions - in 2004, the most popular was "blog." But with integrity, we can't help wondering, were Americans really clueless about the word's meaning, or did they just need a refresher? Or perhaps they thought there were new shades of integrity for politicians, sports heroes and even the media? Contends Merriam Webster president John Morse, "I think the American people have isolated a very important issue for our society to be dealing with" (AP 12.10.05.)
We've seen the quest for integrity driving people's behaviors, too. In fact, it shows up in five of Iconoculture's Macrotrends. We've reported on ethics-seeking business leaders, professional sports teams, and even the CIA struggling to amp their organizational integrity, and move the needle on public perception. With this stir of I-word interest, we're not expecting mass recitations of a dictionary-perfect definition. But when it comes to evaluating people, companies, products, or whatever, we're betting most consumers know integrity when they see it.
From Iconoculture's Research Desk
What was top of mind for Americans in 2005? The word we were noodling on most? Tsunami? Nope; that was number 6. Filibuster? Number 4. Fact is, among the 7 million people who hit Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, the most sought-after word veered much closer to the heart of our national conscience. According to M-W.com, we were most curious about "Integrity."
It's not the first time the daily news has sent Americans scrambling for definitions - in 2004, the most popular was "blog." But with integrity, we can't help wondering, were Americans really clueless about the word's meaning, or did they just need a refresher? Or perhaps they thought there were new shades of integrity for politicians, sports heroes and even the media? Contends Merriam Webster president John Morse, "I think the American people have isolated a very important issue for our society to be dealing with" (AP 12.10.05.)
We've seen the quest for integrity driving people's behaviors, too. In fact, it shows up in five of Iconoculture's Macrotrends. We've reported on ethics-seeking business leaders, professional sports teams, and even the CIA struggling to amp their organizational integrity, and move the needle on public perception. With this stir of I-word interest, we're not expecting mass recitations of a dictionary-perfect definition. But when it comes to evaluating people, companies, products, or whatever, we're betting most consumers know integrity when they see it.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
TOP 10 STORIES OF 2006
The Top 10 Stories of 2006
By David Bathstone
You don't expect easy answers from the WAG. So I chose not to review the top stories of 2005. Any hack can do that. It's much more fun to feature what I project will be front page news in 2006. Ok now, look deep into the crystal ball...
1) More Boomers will stay on the job Fully 43% of the workforce is eligible to retire in the next ten years according to Business Week. But I anticipate that many boomers will want to stay engaged at work. In equal fashion, companies will beg boomers to delay their retirement as experienced managers and skilled workers become more scarce. Imagine...gray will be hip again.
2) Shareholders with a conscience will make waves General Motors could not ignore Kurt Kerkorian in 2005 when he took nearly 10% stake in GM and took target at its dysfunctions. With less toned muscles, expect a rising swell of social investors to use shareholder leverage to lobby management to make changes. Example: Green Century Capital Management, formed to put equity behind environmental ideals, owns shares of ConocoPhilips and ExxonMobil with the intention to keep management at the respective oil companies accountable.
3) The reason Y Companies will be eager to discover what drives 20-somethings today. It's not just how much generation Y spend, but how much they influence what other people spend - one in three consumer dollars according to one UK study. If I may cut to the chase, Generation Y cares about experiences, participation, and living for the Now. Delayed gratification does not resonate for a generation with an uncertain future.
4) White collar workers will tread water...and grow restive In 2005 corporate profits grew nearly 15 percent from the previous year. That is twice the pace of growth in compensation for employees. And what growth there has been in compensation has mostly concentrated at the top of the management food chain. Put simply, the salaries of most white collar workers are treading water, growing roughly at the same rate as inflation. While jobs were being cut, white collar workers kept quiet. As the economy grows, expect more boldness.
5) Corporate investment gets its groove back One financial theme dominated business over the past four years: cost-cutting. That trend will change in 2006. Capital spending will increase dramatically, especially in the areas of research-and-development and technology capacity. A survey of CFOs conducted by Barron's business review shows that 66% of CFOs plan to increase capital spending in 2006 by and average of 9% above 2005. Nearly half of the CFOs plan to increase their R&D investments. Caveat: Don't expect these investments to lead to a big jump in new jobs.
6) Healthcare benefits will stay sick More companies will demand that employees take control of their health care spending in much the same way employees took over management of their retirement funds. Healthy young people are ideally suited for these plans; of course, they are not the ones who usually need health care. I anticipate more corporate executives to join a growing movement of health care reform activists. Unfortunately lobbyists have bought the farm already, and the sheep won't say a bleating thing. Sadly, I expect nothing to change in 2006...only rising frustration.
7) Sweating out sweatshops Last April, Nike, Gap and Patagonia joined with five other clothing retailers and six grassroots anti-sweatshop groups to form the Joint Initiative on Corporate Accountability & Workers' Rights. The project establishes a single set of labor standards for apparel factories around the globe. Although a living minimal wage for each locale still may be far off, history is moving toward more universal guidelines. That trend will gain more momentum in 2006.
8) Ma Bell may have to live in a shoeTraditional telecom companies are in deep trouble. I am turning to the cable company for my high-speed internet access. I make most of my U.S. calls on cell phone, and I use Skype for my international calls. I may even get a Skype phone this year and then the cost of my calls will approach zero. I am THIS close to dropping phone service into my home. I don't see a glimmer of hope for the telcos.
9) Excessive executive pay...enough already Shareholder activists will target excess executive pay big time in 2006. Nearly 90 percent of institutional investors believe that U.S. executives are vastly overpaid, according to the survey results of a recent study by Watson Wyatt Worldwide. The final straw may be the latest exposé that many U.S. companies are secretly reimbursing executives for taxes they incur on salary, perks, and stock awards. Governing boards are starting to understand that executive greed damages employee morale and shareholder return. Expect a spate of boardroom conflicts.
Redefining retirementWritten by Carl Dierschow on 2006-01-04 17:56:39
Thanks for the great column, David, but I'd be even more courageous with your first prediction. I think we're on the verge of completely redefining the word "retirement". I see many older workers who have left full time employment, and now have shifted their focus to different kinds of contributions to society. If they need to work a bit to make some cash, fine, but that's no longer their focus. These people are incredibly valuable, but they're not "retired" in the traditional sense. They've learned that there's huge value (to themselves, and to others they care for) can come from following their passions. Which may well mean moving out of the traditional "workforce".
Everything ChinaWritten by Sarah Bell Haberman on 2006-01-04 11:51:47
In response to your top stories of 2006, I thought you would be interested in letting your readers know about this informative business radio series on China: American Public Media's "Marketplace" announced an ambitious series of live broadcasts from China Jan. 9-20, 2006, covering China through the stories of everyday Chinese citizens who each in their own way are influencing the global economy. Host Kai Ryssdal will present all three Marketplace shows with teams broadcasting from Shanghai, Chongqing (the world's largest city with 31 million people), and other locations throughout the country. Please contact me if you're interested in covering the broadcast, posting the information on your Web site and/or interviewing Ryssdal when he returns from China in late January. The following news release provides more information, including a summary of program topics. Sarah Bell Haberman (612-372-6441)
Employee OwnershipWritten by Wade Hudson on 2006-01-04 11:47:46
In the current Mother Jones Gar Alperovitz writes, "More people are now involved in some 11,500 companies wholly or substantially owned by employees than are members of unions in the private sector." I predict that this trend will continue, hopefully including firms that are controlled by employees on the basis of one person, one vote.
By David Bathstone
You don't expect easy answers from the WAG. So I chose not to review the top stories of 2005. Any hack can do that. It's much more fun to feature what I project will be front page news in 2006. Ok now, look deep into the crystal ball...
1) More Boomers will stay on the job Fully 43% of the workforce is eligible to retire in the next ten years according to Business Week. But I anticipate that many boomers will want to stay engaged at work. In equal fashion, companies will beg boomers to delay their retirement as experienced managers and skilled workers become more scarce. Imagine...gray will be hip again.
2) Shareholders with a conscience will make waves General Motors could not ignore Kurt Kerkorian in 2005 when he took nearly 10% stake in GM and took target at its dysfunctions. With less toned muscles, expect a rising swell of social investors to use shareholder leverage to lobby management to make changes. Example: Green Century Capital Management, formed to put equity behind environmental ideals, owns shares of ConocoPhilips and ExxonMobil with the intention to keep management at the respective oil companies accountable.
3) The reason Y Companies will be eager to discover what drives 20-somethings today. It's not just how much generation Y spend, but how much they influence what other people spend - one in three consumer dollars according to one UK study. If I may cut to the chase, Generation Y cares about experiences, participation, and living for the Now. Delayed gratification does not resonate for a generation with an uncertain future.
4) White collar workers will tread water...and grow restive In 2005 corporate profits grew nearly 15 percent from the previous year. That is twice the pace of growth in compensation for employees. And what growth there has been in compensation has mostly concentrated at the top of the management food chain. Put simply, the salaries of most white collar workers are treading water, growing roughly at the same rate as inflation. While jobs were being cut, white collar workers kept quiet. As the economy grows, expect more boldness.
5) Corporate investment gets its groove back One financial theme dominated business over the past four years: cost-cutting. That trend will change in 2006. Capital spending will increase dramatically, especially in the areas of research-and-development and technology capacity. A survey of CFOs conducted by Barron's business review shows that 66% of CFOs plan to increase capital spending in 2006 by and average of 9% above 2005. Nearly half of the CFOs plan to increase their R&D investments. Caveat: Don't expect these investments to lead to a big jump in new jobs.
6) Healthcare benefits will stay sick More companies will demand that employees take control of their health care spending in much the same way employees took over management of their retirement funds. Healthy young people are ideally suited for these plans; of course, they are not the ones who usually need health care. I anticipate more corporate executives to join a growing movement of health care reform activists. Unfortunately lobbyists have bought the farm already, and the sheep won't say a bleating thing. Sadly, I expect nothing to change in 2006...only rising frustration.
7) Sweating out sweatshops Last April, Nike, Gap and Patagonia joined with five other clothing retailers and six grassroots anti-sweatshop groups to form the Joint Initiative on Corporate Accountability & Workers' Rights. The project establishes a single set of labor standards for apparel factories around the globe. Although a living minimal wage for each locale still may be far off, history is moving toward more universal guidelines. That trend will gain more momentum in 2006.
8) Ma Bell may have to live in a shoeTraditional telecom companies are in deep trouble. I am turning to the cable company for my high-speed internet access. I make most of my U.S. calls on cell phone, and I use Skype for my international calls. I may even get a Skype phone this year and then the cost of my calls will approach zero. I am THIS close to dropping phone service into my home. I don't see a glimmer of hope for the telcos.
9) Excessive executive pay...enough already Shareholder activists will target excess executive pay big time in 2006. Nearly 90 percent of institutional investors believe that U.S. executives are vastly overpaid, according to the survey results of a recent study by Watson Wyatt Worldwide. The final straw may be the latest exposé that many U.S. companies are secretly reimbursing executives for taxes they incur on salary, perks, and stock awards. Governing boards are starting to understand that executive greed damages employee morale and shareholder return. Expect a spate of boardroom conflicts.
Redefining retirementWritten by Carl Dierschow on 2006-01-04 17:56:39
Thanks for the great column, David, but I'd be even more courageous with your first prediction. I think we're on the verge of completely redefining the word "retirement". I see many older workers who have left full time employment, and now have shifted their focus to different kinds of contributions to society. If they need to work a bit to make some cash, fine, but that's no longer their focus. These people are incredibly valuable, but they're not "retired" in the traditional sense. They've learned that there's huge value (to themselves, and to others they care for) can come from following their passions. Which may well mean moving out of the traditional "workforce".
Everything ChinaWritten by Sarah Bell Haberman on 2006-01-04 11:51:47
In response to your top stories of 2006, I thought you would be interested in letting your readers know about this informative business radio series on China: American Public Media's "Marketplace" announced an ambitious series of live broadcasts from China Jan. 9-20, 2006, covering China through the stories of everyday Chinese citizens who each in their own way are influencing the global economy. Host Kai Ryssdal will present all three Marketplace shows with teams broadcasting from Shanghai, Chongqing (the world's largest city with 31 million people), and other locations throughout the country. Please contact me if you're interested in covering the broadcast, posting the information on your Web site and/or interviewing Ryssdal when he returns from China in late January. The following news release provides more information, including a summary of program topics. Sarah Bell Haberman (612-372-6441)
Employee OwnershipWritten by Wade Hudson on 2006-01-04 11:47:46
In the current Mother Jones Gar Alperovitz writes, "More people are now involved in some 11,500 companies wholly or substantially owned by employees than are members of unions in the private sector." I predict that this trend will continue, hopefully including firms that are controlled by employees on the basis of one person, one vote.
Friday, February 03, 2006
GOOD COMPANY INC
Good Company, Inc.: Bono's Red Revolution
Consumers with a conscience will soon have a new choice when looking for guilt-free shopping opportunities. American Express, Gap, Giorgio Armani and Converse are joining forces with Bono to sell their wares under the Product Red brand and dedicate some of the proceeds to fighting HIV/Aids in Africa. The initiative is expected to raise tens of millions in the next 18 months for programs targeted on women and children, but is also part of a revolution in marketing that other companies will study closely.
Product Red will be launched in the UK next month with an Amex credit card that contributes 1 per cent of what is spent up to $8,800 and 1.25 per cent on anything more. It will be followed by Gap T-shirts made in Lesotho, wraparound Emporio Armani sunglasses with a Red logo, Converse sports shoes made with African cloth and further products to be announced.
...Product Red [allows retailers] to bathe in the halo effect of Bono's star status and the satisfaction of doing good in Africa. And rather than spend millions on conventional advertising, the companies involved hope that customers will flock to them through the buzz generated by the campaign (including the free media coverage).
Consumers with a conscience will soon have a new choice when looking for guilt-free shopping opportunities. American Express, Gap, Giorgio Armani and Converse are joining forces with Bono to sell their wares under the Product Red brand and dedicate some of the proceeds to fighting HIV/Aids in Africa. The initiative is expected to raise tens of millions in the next 18 months for programs targeted on women and children, but is also part of a revolution in marketing that other companies will study closely.
Product Red will be launched in the UK next month with an Amex credit card that contributes 1 per cent of what is spent up to $8,800 and 1.25 per cent on anything more. It will be followed by Gap T-shirts made in Lesotho, wraparound Emporio Armani sunglasses with a Red logo, Converse sports shoes made with African cloth and further products to be announced.
...Product Red [allows retailers] to bathe in the halo effect of Bono's star status and the satisfaction of doing good in Africa. And rather than spend millions on conventional advertising, the companies involved hope that customers will flock to them through the buzz generated by the campaign (including the free media coverage).
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
CORPORATE WATCHDOG RADIO
1/17/2006
Press release from: Corporate Watchdog Radio
Corporate Watchdog Radio Launches Podcast
Already broadcast on radio stations from Alaska to Vermont, Corporate Watchdog Radio holds companies accountable for their social, environmental, and economic impacts
(CSRwire) Corporate Watchdog Radio (CWR), a half-hour show broadcast twice monthly, is a new hybrid radio show and podcast launched using both platforms simultaneously. Freely accessible on the internet, on broadcast radio, and through the iTunes Music Store, Corporate Watchdog Radio is designed for financial professionals, corporate social responsibility activists, and investors concerned about the social ethics and environmental impact of the corporations in their portfolios. CWR exposes corporate wrongdoing and applauds businesses that do the right thing.
The program investigates how corporate malfeasance can adversely impact the well-being of people and the planet, and commends companies making healthy financial returns by supporting social and environmental progress. With its lively dialogue and interview format, CWR teams journalist Bill Baue with environmental attorney and filmmaker Sanford Lewis. Baue and Lewis bring a wealth of investigative, legal, and reporting experience to the matter at hand. Lewis, a leading national expert on corporate disclosure to investors on environmental and social liabilities, has represented shareowners and activists for over 23 years, and has produced films on corporate accountability issues. Baue has covered socially responsible investing (SRI) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) for SocialFunds for half a decade.
Together, they analyze hot topics and breaking stories, and interview experts who are holding corporations accountable in traditional and innovative ways. On the latest show (available January 18) Lewis interviews Glenn Evers, a former DuPont scientist, and Attorney Alan Kluger, who is suing DuPont regarding Teflon. Evers, who worked for DuPont for more than 20 years, recently flagged concerns regarding health and environmental impacts of Dupont products used to coat fast food wrappers. Kluger has filed a $5 billion lawsuit against Dupont over the alleged toxicity of Teflon coated cookware. While the Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, and other mainstream media outlets have only skimmed the surface of this story, CWR distinguishes itself by offering in-depth exploration of impacts and implications--including the potential public health hazards the chemical PFOA poses in ubiquitous products such as paper wrapping for microwave popcorn, fast food, and pizza.
Lewis is himself a representative of DuPont Shareholders for Fair Value, a group of DuPont shareholders including Amalgamated Bank, United Steelworkers and others concerned about the financial impacts on DuPont of PFOA, the controversial chemical believed to be a breakdown byproduct of Teflon cookware and many DuPont stain- and grease-repellent treatments. Recent editions of CWR include interviews with Cristobal Bonifaz, lead lawyer in the ongoing lawsuit against ChevronTexaco for the environmental destruction of the Ecuadorian rainforest, and reports from Dow Chemical activist Diane Wilson, author of An Unreasonable Woman, just prior to her arrest at a Tom Delay fundraiser in Houston.
Corporate Watchdog Radio is produced for broadcast on Northampton, Massachusetts-based low power FM community station Valley Free Radio, a Pacifica network affiliate. Other radio stations broadcasting CWR include The Journey Radio webcasting from St. Louis, Missouri; WOOL-LP in Southern Vermont; WRCT in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; KWMD in Anchorage, Alaska; and WRFU in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. Additional radio stations can pick up CWR from the Pacifica Audioport website or from the CWR website, http://corporatewatchdogmedia.org.
Visit the CWR website http://corporatewatchdogmedia.org to subscribe to the low-traffic listserve for announcements when new programming is posted. The webcast and audio archive is available through the website http://corporatewatchdogmedia.org, or as a podcast feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/CorporateWatchdogMedia and by searching Corporate Watchdog Media on the iTunes music store.
Press release from: Corporate Watchdog Radio
Corporate Watchdog Radio Launches Podcast
Already broadcast on radio stations from Alaska to Vermont, Corporate Watchdog Radio holds companies accountable for their social, environmental, and economic impacts
(CSRwire) Corporate Watchdog Radio (CWR), a half-hour show broadcast twice monthly, is a new hybrid radio show and podcast launched using both platforms simultaneously. Freely accessible on the internet, on broadcast radio, and through the iTunes Music Store, Corporate Watchdog Radio is designed for financial professionals, corporate social responsibility activists, and investors concerned about the social ethics and environmental impact of the corporations in their portfolios. CWR exposes corporate wrongdoing and applauds businesses that do the right thing.
The program investigates how corporate malfeasance can adversely impact the well-being of people and the planet, and commends companies making healthy financial returns by supporting social and environmental progress. With its lively dialogue and interview format, CWR teams journalist Bill Baue with environmental attorney and filmmaker Sanford Lewis. Baue and Lewis bring a wealth of investigative, legal, and reporting experience to the matter at hand. Lewis, a leading national expert on corporate disclosure to investors on environmental and social liabilities, has represented shareowners and activists for over 23 years, and has produced films on corporate accountability issues. Baue has covered socially responsible investing (SRI) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) for SocialFunds for half a decade.
Together, they analyze hot topics and breaking stories, and interview experts who are holding corporations accountable in traditional and innovative ways. On the latest show (available January 18) Lewis interviews Glenn Evers, a former DuPont scientist, and Attorney Alan Kluger, who is suing DuPont regarding Teflon. Evers, who worked for DuPont for more than 20 years, recently flagged concerns regarding health and environmental impacts of Dupont products used to coat fast food wrappers. Kluger has filed a $5 billion lawsuit against Dupont over the alleged toxicity of Teflon coated cookware. While the Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, and other mainstream media outlets have only skimmed the surface of this story, CWR distinguishes itself by offering in-depth exploration of impacts and implications--including the potential public health hazards the chemical PFOA poses in ubiquitous products such as paper wrapping for microwave popcorn, fast food, and pizza.
Lewis is himself a representative of DuPont Shareholders for Fair Value, a group of DuPont shareholders including Amalgamated Bank, United Steelworkers and others concerned about the financial impacts on DuPont of PFOA, the controversial chemical believed to be a breakdown byproduct of Teflon cookware and many DuPont stain- and grease-repellent treatments. Recent editions of CWR include interviews with Cristobal Bonifaz, lead lawyer in the ongoing lawsuit against ChevronTexaco for the environmental destruction of the Ecuadorian rainforest, and reports from Dow Chemical activist Diane Wilson, author of An Unreasonable Woman, just prior to her arrest at a Tom Delay fundraiser in Houston.
Corporate Watchdog Radio is produced for broadcast on Northampton, Massachusetts-based low power FM community station Valley Free Radio, a Pacifica network affiliate. Other radio stations broadcasting CWR include The Journey Radio webcasting from St. Louis, Missouri; WOOL-LP in Southern Vermont; WRCT in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; KWMD in Anchorage, Alaska; and WRFU in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. Additional radio stations can pick up CWR from the Pacifica Audioport website or from the CWR website, http://corporatewatchdogmedia.org.
Visit the CWR website http://corporatewatchdogmedia.org to subscribe to the low-traffic listserve for announcements when new programming is posted. The webcast and audio archive is available through the website http://corporatewatchdogmedia.org, or as a podcast feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/CorporateWatchdogMedia and by searching Corporate Watchdog Media on the iTunes music store.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
ZENTREPRENEUR LEADERS
FILLING THE VOID
Introducing the Fast Company/Monitor Group Social Capitalist Award winners--25 entrepreneurs solving the world's toughest problems with creativity, ingenuity, and passion.
Because they can't stand a vacuum.
From: Issue 102 January 2006 By: Cheryl Dahle
The entrepreneurial mind abhors a vacuum. Market failures, unmet demand, even the maddening lure of a blank napkin--all beckon as explicit invitations to invent. What defines an entrepreneur (as well as an entrepreneurial organization) is that relentless problem-solving approach, not the specifics of the problem itself.
2006 Social Capitalist Awards
25 Entrepreneurs Who Are Changing the World
We typically associate such ingenuity with the transformation of problems into lucrative, shareholder-enriching companies. But the entrepreneurs you'll meet in this story are responding to a different sort of void. It could be the absence of medical diagnostic labs in the developing world, which is driving one organization to create a portable, disposable lab that fits on a plastic card. Or it's the empty shelves of a Nepalese children's library, which inspired another man to start an education juggernaut, building nearly as many new libraries each week as Starbucks opens latte-slinging storefronts.
These problems might exist outside the traditionally defined realm of business, but the solutions are elegant, creative, and entrepreneurial to their core. They're at the heart of the third annual Social Capitalist Awards, a joint effort by Fast Company and Monitor Group, the global consulting firm, to seek out and evaluate the cream of entrepreneurial organizations in the social sector.
Like their counterparts in the profit-driven world, our 25 winning organizations--winnowed from 278 nominations with the help of 43 experts--are masters at envisioning products and services that don't yet exist, marshaling resources, and crafting solutions that deeply affect their customers. The results these nonprofit organizations deliver hinge on business acumen and often reflect strategies that their for-profit brethren would do well to imitate.
Earl Martin Phalen, the founder of winner BELL (Building Educated Leaders for Life), came face-to-face with his inspiring vacuum while still a student at Harvard Law School. Phalen and several classmates volunteered for a mentoring program in Roxbury, Massachusetts. He remembers telling the kids, most of them from low-income African-American and Latino families, that anything was possible, including going to college. But when he and his law-school buddies sat down to help the students with homework, they realized the kids were years behind academically. "We left there really devastated," he says.
Phalen, an African-American born into the state's foster-care system, decided to do something about it. With a grant of $12,500 and a promise from his adoptive parents to cover his rent if he went broke, he launched BELL, a rigorous after-school and summer program for kindergarten through sixth grade, out of his Boston living room in 1992. Today, the organization serves about 7,000 kids in four cities. Eighty-two percent of them read at grade level or better, despite having started the program typically more than a year behind in reading skills. Phalen's key insight--the need for a tightly knit web of volunteer mentors, parents, tutors, and teachers to support kids--was derived from his own experience. "That drives me," he says. "To know that somebody [supported] me, and all of a sudden, it took my life from going to jail to going to Yale."
Our winners live in that opportunity gap, in the liminal space between jail and Yale. They know that they are always just one investor, or one good idea, or one great execution plan away from making a difference in a world measured in lives changed. (And they measure that difference with a rigor that would make a bean-counter proud.)
What follows is a look at the compelling solutions that organizations like BELL have invented, refined, and scaled to stunning effect, and the impact they produce on the ground for individuals and communities. Ultimately, these Social Capitalists offer a different model for harnessing creativity. They also offer a seed of hope that the world's most intractable social problems will yet find their match in the inexorable drive of the entrepreneur.
Fixing Failed Markets
Some of the world's direst needs for technological invention go unmet because the people who would benefit are poor. PATH, based in Seattle, confronts that market failure by driving low-cost technology for the developing world through partnerships with companies, governments, and other nonprofits. Not only a Social Capitalist winner, PATH was also selected by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, a partner in our competition, as an Outstanding Social Entrepreneur.
PATH's simple, life-saving solutions, such as clean birthing kits and disposable vaccination syringes that prevent reuse, belie the diligence and expertise required to produce these sorts of solutions routinely. In Zambia, where malaria causes 40% of deaths among children under age 5, PATH is part of a $35 million partnership to broaden use of simple malaria-prevention techniques such as insecticide-treated bed nets. "We think that if we can take the existing malaria-prevention tools to scale, we could reduce deaths by as much as 75% in the next three to five years," says PATH president Christopher Elias.
Then there is the "lab on a card" project, which promises one day to let health workers in poor nations diagnose the cause of a fever or diarrhea within minutes by injecting a few drops of bodily fluid into a credit-card-sized test kit. Originally funded for defense purposes to address bioterrorism, the technology is perfect for diagnosis in the developing world, which lacks labs with multimillion-dollar equipment and where patients typically can't wait overnight (or days) at a clinic for a diagnosis.
The card employs "microfluidics," which miniaturizes the necessary chemical reactions, making the process both faster and possible with tiny sample amounts. PATH has worked with a company called Micronics Inc., the University of Washington in Seattle, and Washington University in St. Louis to adapt the technology to illnesses common in the developing world and to redesign the card so it can withstand harsh storage and transport conditions. Field trials are expected within two years.
Across the globe, Phalen's BELL program is addressing a market failure of a different sort: a lack of consistent educational support for low-income kids in the United States. What makes the program so successful? Many students stick with it from kindergarten through sixth grade, getting seven years of mentoring, academic support, and exposure to positive role models during critical development years. Volunteer mentors, who include doctors, lawyers, and community leaders, reflect students' own cultural backgrounds. The program divides students into clusters of eight to maximize individual attention. And the screening process for teachers and tutors is extremely rigorous.
The results: All 20 of the students in BELL's first class went on to college. And on a personal level, there are stories like that of Robert Berryman II, a third grader at Mattahunt Middle School outside Boston. Robert has mild autism, as well as attention-deficit disorder and delayed speech skills. He entered the program at BELL two years ago--and in the time since, his father, Robert Sr., has noticed drastic changes.
"He's opened up more," Berryman says. "Before, he wouldn't talk. Now, you have to say, 'Robert, wait a minute please.' " Robert, wearing a bright white polo shirt and a grin, still has some speech troubles, but he is eager to answer questions, looking a visitor directly in the eye. "I like doing homework," he says, adding that his favorite school activity is tackling the narrative "story problems" in math class.
Berryman marvels as he watches his son. "Specialists, they say this isn't the same child," he says.
Crafting Elegant Solutions
Heifer International was founded in 1944 by a former relief worker who began sending milk cows overseas to give hungry people devastated by war a source of ongoing sustenance rather than a handout: "Not a cup, but a cow" was the idea. In the more than 60 years since, it has evolved into a powerful, integrated, and rapidly growing development model that promotes ecologically sound agricultural strategy, poverty alleviation, and gender equity in 50 countries by giving families livestock (or the means to buy it) and teaching them how to use that gift to enhance their livelihoods.
Key to Heifer's success is the requirement that each family "pass on the gift" by giving the offspring of an animal to another needy family. On average, that gift is passed on for more than six livestock generations, helping lift entire communities out of poverty, says Tom Peterson, Heifer's vice president of communications and marketing. "We visited a village in Mexico in the mid-1990s where Heifer had done some work a decade earlier," he recalls. "And this community was still passing on the gift. We met the man who had been given the original cow, and by then, he had 17 cows and a small dairy-farm business."
Before any project begins, or any animal or seed is donated, Heifer first requires a proposal from a group that already has organized for change. When floods caused by El Ni–o wiped out crops near the Portoviejo River valley in northwest Ecuador in 1998, Emilio Posligua Salvatierra and others from his community needed aid to rebuild. But the group had to conceive a plan and get the community to support it.
Posligua Salvatierra, then 25, admits that "at first, not everyone wanted to be involved. Many thought we were crazy." You can hardly blame them. The plan included unfamiliar ideas such as the implementation of "geomembranes," a woven mesh designed to prevent land erosion. Plus, as with all new projects, Heifer mandated that aid recipients agree to farm organically and commit to community improvement. Seven years later, though, Posligua Salvatierra's organization has grown to include 250 families and offers literacy programs and health seminars in addition to technical training on farming.
In nearby Cotacachi, Luis Alfredo Haro, 77, and his wife, Rosa, 63, have received Heifer loans and technical training to expand and improve their small farm. They have bought guinea pigs and materials to build a pen. In return they agreed to plant alfalfa to feed the animals, then use their manure for fertilizer. The guinea pigs are sold at the local market. The bargain has worked out well. The increase in crop yield is crucial in helping the Haros feed themselves, their daughter, and her 12 children. Rosa describes Heifer's role in her family's survival succinctly: "We never thought we could get this kind of help," she says. "If it weren't for Heifer, we'd have nothing at all."
Trafficking in books rather than livestock, First Book has built a similarly elegant model that has put more than 35 million children's books into kids' hands since its founding in 1992. Its technology-driven distribution channel uses donated warehouse space and exploits inefficiencies in the publishing industry to deliver cheap or free children's books to more than 15,000 community-based literacy programs, while delivering real value and even profits to its corporate partners.
The organization's most recent innovation is First Book Marketplace, a Web site that connects publishers to the buying power of its network of nonprofits. First Book arranges and purchases whole press runs of children's books, which it then sells at discounted rates--and earns between 20 and 50 cents per book sold. Publishers get both access to new consumers and guaranteed sales up front. "There's profit, the books are nonreturnable, and it gives us market penetration in a market that we hardly touched before," says Susan Katz, president and publisher of HarperCollins Children's Books, who says she anticipates selling several hundred thousand books through Marketplace each year. "What's not to like?"
First Book cofounder and president Kyle Zimmer expects that Marketplace will eventually generate 30% of her organization's total revenue. She's planning expansion on other fronts as well. First Book is reaching out to the rest of the 300,000 literacy groups not already in its network through an online registry in hopes of expanding its customer base. It's all about filling more of that void. "Eighty percent of preschools serving this population of children do not have age-appropriate books," Zimmer says. "It's a whole new pie in terms of consumer market for us to serve and connect with our corporate partners."
Tuning a Social Change Engine
If there is one thing social entrepreneurs know, it is the power of entrepreneurship to unleash human potential. New Community Corp. was founded in Newark, New Jersey, in the wake of the 1967 riots, which killed 23 people, caused $15 million in damages, and left the city's central ward in tatters. Originally focused just on providing low-income housing, New Community has extended its reach to virtually every aspect of life: education, housing development, job training, senior services--it even runs a popular jazz club. Teaming up with local businesses and universities, New Community is the city's ninth-largest private employer.
Homeless with a 4-year-old daughter in 1998, Renee Wilson, 44, initially came into New Community's fold through Harmony House, a transitional program providing shelter, job training, and child care. About three years ago, she became interested in nursing while reading up on diseases when a friend who was HIV-positive became progressively sicker. "That's when my heart really went out," she says. Starting off as a certified nursing assistant for New Community's nursing home, she realized she eventually wanted to become a registered nurse.
Now living in her own apartment with her daughter, Wilson admits that through the nursing program, she has become a different person. "I was a spoiled brat. I grew up in one of the best homes, went to college for two and a half years, but somewhere along the line, I got sideswiped. Thank God I made it back."
Accion international a founder of the microfinance movement, helps the poor become entrepreneurs. It has built a network of microlending institutions, many of which it founded. These self-sustaining lenders provide poor clients with loans as small as $100 to start businesses.
In Los Olivos, a suburb north of Lima, Peru, rapid change is under way. On a hot day in October, the sun beats down from a bleached-out sky. Unpaved roads are lined with cement block houses in various stages of construction. People build as they have money to buy supplies, so unfinished buildings stand as testaments to their ambition.
Edelmira Epifania, 55, is a resident of Los Olivos and a customer of Mibanco, a microfinance institution in ACCION's network with more than 135,000 active borrowers. She has worked all her life, often juggling more than one job. But it wasn't always enough to support her four children, and her husband's construction work wasn't always steady.
So she took out her first loan of 300 nuevo soles (less than $100) with Mibanco eight years ago to buy a food cart and supplies. During the day, she'd sell hamburgers and salchipapas (a dish of cut-up hot dogs mixed with potatoes) before heading to a night job at a hospital. Four and a half years later, she had saved enough money to buy a plot of land and start building a drugstore, Las Boticas 24 Horas. Why a drugstore? "There wasn't one around at the time," she says. "I wanted to be the first."
Today, Epifania runs Las Boticas 24 Horas with occasional help from her children. She sleeps in the back room, and there's a bell outside to signal when a customer comes calling, at whatever hour. Most of the money she earns goes into paying for the college education of her children.
Years ago, Epifania's father had his own cart, selling fruits and vegetables off the side of the road, and his income was barely enough to get by, let alone to send his children to college or own a business. Asked what her father, now deceased, would think about her owning a store, she blushes, her eyes dropping low, a wide smile breaking out.
When she looks up again, tears well up as she says, "He'd have been very happy."
Reporting by Alyssa Danigelis, Jena McGregor, Michael A. Prospero, and Jennifer Vilaga.
The Top 25 Groups That Are Changing the World
ACCION International
BELL
Calvert Social Investment Foundation
Citizen Schools
City Year
College Summit Inc.
First Book
Grameen Foundation USA
Heifer International
Housing Partnership Network
Jumpstart
Kickstart
New Community Corp.
New Leaders for New Schools
PATH
Pioneer Human Services
Raising a Reader
Rare
Room to Read
Rubicon Programs Inc.
Teach for America
Transfair USA
Unitus
WITNESS
Working Today -- Freelancers Union
Introducing the Fast Company/Monitor Group Social Capitalist Award winners--25 entrepreneurs solving the world's toughest problems with creativity, ingenuity, and passion.
Because they can't stand a vacuum.
From: Issue 102 January 2006 By: Cheryl Dahle
The entrepreneurial mind abhors a vacuum. Market failures, unmet demand, even the maddening lure of a blank napkin--all beckon as explicit invitations to invent. What defines an entrepreneur (as well as an entrepreneurial organization) is that relentless problem-solving approach, not the specifics of the problem itself.
2006 Social Capitalist Awards
25 Entrepreneurs Who Are Changing the World
We typically associate such ingenuity with the transformation of problems into lucrative, shareholder-enriching companies. But the entrepreneurs you'll meet in this story are responding to a different sort of void. It could be the absence of medical diagnostic labs in the developing world, which is driving one organization to create a portable, disposable lab that fits on a plastic card. Or it's the empty shelves of a Nepalese children's library, which inspired another man to start an education juggernaut, building nearly as many new libraries each week as Starbucks opens latte-slinging storefronts.
These problems might exist outside the traditionally defined realm of business, but the solutions are elegant, creative, and entrepreneurial to their core. They're at the heart of the third annual Social Capitalist Awards, a joint effort by Fast Company and Monitor Group, the global consulting firm, to seek out and evaluate the cream of entrepreneurial organizations in the social sector.
Like their counterparts in the profit-driven world, our 25 winning organizations--winnowed from 278 nominations with the help of 43 experts--are masters at envisioning products and services that don't yet exist, marshaling resources, and crafting solutions that deeply affect their customers. The results these nonprofit organizations deliver hinge on business acumen and often reflect strategies that their for-profit brethren would do well to imitate.
Earl Martin Phalen, the founder of winner BELL (Building Educated Leaders for Life), came face-to-face with his inspiring vacuum while still a student at Harvard Law School. Phalen and several classmates volunteered for a mentoring program in Roxbury, Massachusetts. He remembers telling the kids, most of them from low-income African-American and Latino families, that anything was possible, including going to college. But when he and his law-school buddies sat down to help the students with homework, they realized the kids were years behind academically. "We left there really devastated," he says.
Phalen, an African-American born into the state's foster-care system, decided to do something about it. With a grant of $12,500 and a promise from his adoptive parents to cover his rent if he went broke, he launched BELL, a rigorous after-school and summer program for kindergarten through sixth grade, out of his Boston living room in 1992. Today, the organization serves about 7,000 kids in four cities. Eighty-two percent of them read at grade level or better, despite having started the program typically more than a year behind in reading skills. Phalen's key insight--the need for a tightly knit web of volunteer mentors, parents, tutors, and teachers to support kids--was derived from his own experience. "That drives me," he says. "To know that somebody [supported] me, and all of a sudden, it took my life from going to jail to going to Yale."
Our winners live in that opportunity gap, in the liminal space between jail and Yale. They know that they are always just one investor, or one good idea, or one great execution plan away from making a difference in a world measured in lives changed. (And they measure that difference with a rigor that would make a bean-counter proud.)
What follows is a look at the compelling solutions that organizations like BELL have invented, refined, and scaled to stunning effect, and the impact they produce on the ground for individuals and communities. Ultimately, these Social Capitalists offer a different model for harnessing creativity. They also offer a seed of hope that the world's most intractable social problems will yet find their match in the inexorable drive of the entrepreneur.
Fixing Failed Markets
Some of the world's direst needs for technological invention go unmet because the people who would benefit are poor. PATH, based in Seattle, confronts that market failure by driving low-cost technology for the developing world through partnerships with companies, governments, and other nonprofits. Not only a Social Capitalist winner, PATH was also selected by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, a partner in our competition, as an Outstanding Social Entrepreneur.
PATH's simple, life-saving solutions, such as clean birthing kits and disposable vaccination syringes that prevent reuse, belie the diligence and expertise required to produce these sorts of solutions routinely. In Zambia, where malaria causes 40% of deaths among children under age 5, PATH is part of a $35 million partnership to broaden use of simple malaria-prevention techniques such as insecticide-treated bed nets. "We think that if we can take the existing malaria-prevention tools to scale, we could reduce deaths by as much as 75% in the next three to five years," says PATH president Christopher Elias.
Then there is the "lab on a card" project, which promises one day to let health workers in poor nations diagnose the cause of a fever or diarrhea within minutes by injecting a few drops of bodily fluid into a credit-card-sized test kit. Originally funded for defense purposes to address bioterrorism, the technology is perfect for diagnosis in the developing world, which lacks labs with multimillion-dollar equipment and where patients typically can't wait overnight (or days) at a clinic for a diagnosis.
The card employs "microfluidics," which miniaturizes the necessary chemical reactions, making the process both faster and possible with tiny sample amounts. PATH has worked with a company called Micronics Inc., the University of Washington in Seattle, and Washington University in St. Louis to adapt the technology to illnesses common in the developing world and to redesign the card so it can withstand harsh storage and transport conditions. Field trials are expected within two years.
Across the globe, Phalen's BELL program is addressing a market failure of a different sort: a lack of consistent educational support for low-income kids in the United States. What makes the program so successful? Many students stick with it from kindergarten through sixth grade, getting seven years of mentoring, academic support, and exposure to positive role models during critical development years. Volunteer mentors, who include doctors, lawyers, and community leaders, reflect students' own cultural backgrounds. The program divides students into clusters of eight to maximize individual attention. And the screening process for teachers and tutors is extremely rigorous.
The results: All 20 of the students in BELL's first class went on to college. And on a personal level, there are stories like that of Robert Berryman II, a third grader at Mattahunt Middle School outside Boston. Robert has mild autism, as well as attention-deficit disorder and delayed speech skills. He entered the program at BELL two years ago--and in the time since, his father, Robert Sr., has noticed drastic changes.
"He's opened up more," Berryman says. "Before, he wouldn't talk. Now, you have to say, 'Robert, wait a minute please.' " Robert, wearing a bright white polo shirt and a grin, still has some speech troubles, but he is eager to answer questions, looking a visitor directly in the eye. "I like doing homework," he says, adding that his favorite school activity is tackling the narrative "story problems" in math class.
Berryman marvels as he watches his son. "Specialists, they say this isn't the same child," he says.
Crafting Elegant Solutions
Heifer International was founded in 1944 by a former relief worker who began sending milk cows overseas to give hungry people devastated by war a source of ongoing sustenance rather than a handout: "Not a cup, but a cow" was the idea. In the more than 60 years since, it has evolved into a powerful, integrated, and rapidly growing development model that promotes ecologically sound agricultural strategy, poverty alleviation, and gender equity in 50 countries by giving families livestock (or the means to buy it) and teaching them how to use that gift to enhance their livelihoods.
Key to Heifer's success is the requirement that each family "pass on the gift" by giving the offspring of an animal to another needy family. On average, that gift is passed on for more than six livestock generations, helping lift entire communities out of poverty, says Tom Peterson, Heifer's vice president of communications and marketing. "We visited a village in Mexico in the mid-1990s where Heifer had done some work a decade earlier," he recalls. "And this community was still passing on the gift. We met the man who had been given the original cow, and by then, he had 17 cows and a small dairy-farm business."
Before any project begins, or any animal or seed is donated, Heifer first requires a proposal from a group that already has organized for change. When floods caused by El Ni–o wiped out crops near the Portoviejo River valley in northwest Ecuador in 1998, Emilio Posligua Salvatierra and others from his community needed aid to rebuild. But the group had to conceive a plan and get the community to support it.
Posligua Salvatierra, then 25, admits that "at first, not everyone wanted to be involved. Many thought we were crazy." You can hardly blame them. The plan included unfamiliar ideas such as the implementation of "geomembranes," a woven mesh designed to prevent land erosion. Plus, as with all new projects, Heifer mandated that aid recipients agree to farm organically and commit to community improvement. Seven years later, though, Posligua Salvatierra's organization has grown to include 250 families and offers literacy programs and health seminars in addition to technical training on farming.
In nearby Cotacachi, Luis Alfredo Haro, 77, and his wife, Rosa, 63, have received Heifer loans and technical training to expand and improve their small farm. They have bought guinea pigs and materials to build a pen. In return they agreed to plant alfalfa to feed the animals, then use their manure for fertilizer. The guinea pigs are sold at the local market. The bargain has worked out well. The increase in crop yield is crucial in helping the Haros feed themselves, their daughter, and her 12 children. Rosa describes Heifer's role in her family's survival succinctly: "We never thought we could get this kind of help," she says. "If it weren't for Heifer, we'd have nothing at all."
Trafficking in books rather than livestock, First Book has built a similarly elegant model that has put more than 35 million children's books into kids' hands since its founding in 1992. Its technology-driven distribution channel uses donated warehouse space and exploits inefficiencies in the publishing industry to deliver cheap or free children's books to more than 15,000 community-based literacy programs, while delivering real value and even profits to its corporate partners.
The organization's most recent innovation is First Book Marketplace, a Web site that connects publishers to the buying power of its network of nonprofits. First Book arranges and purchases whole press runs of children's books, which it then sells at discounted rates--and earns between 20 and 50 cents per book sold. Publishers get both access to new consumers and guaranteed sales up front. "There's profit, the books are nonreturnable, and it gives us market penetration in a market that we hardly touched before," says Susan Katz, president and publisher of HarperCollins Children's Books, who says she anticipates selling several hundred thousand books through Marketplace each year. "What's not to like?"
First Book cofounder and president Kyle Zimmer expects that Marketplace will eventually generate 30% of her organization's total revenue. She's planning expansion on other fronts as well. First Book is reaching out to the rest of the 300,000 literacy groups not already in its network through an online registry in hopes of expanding its customer base. It's all about filling more of that void. "Eighty percent of preschools serving this population of children do not have age-appropriate books," Zimmer says. "It's a whole new pie in terms of consumer market for us to serve and connect with our corporate partners."
Tuning a Social Change Engine
If there is one thing social entrepreneurs know, it is the power of entrepreneurship to unleash human potential. New Community Corp. was founded in Newark, New Jersey, in the wake of the 1967 riots, which killed 23 people, caused $15 million in damages, and left the city's central ward in tatters. Originally focused just on providing low-income housing, New Community has extended its reach to virtually every aspect of life: education, housing development, job training, senior services--it even runs a popular jazz club. Teaming up with local businesses and universities, New Community is the city's ninth-largest private employer.
Homeless with a 4-year-old daughter in 1998, Renee Wilson, 44, initially came into New Community's fold through Harmony House, a transitional program providing shelter, job training, and child care. About three years ago, she became interested in nursing while reading up on diseases when a friend who was HIV-positive became progressively sicker. "That's when my heart really went out," she says. Starting off as a certified nursing assistant for New Community's nursing home, she realized she eventually wanted to become a registered nurse.
Now living in her own apartment with her daughter, Wilson admits that through the nursing program, she has become a different person. "I was a spoiled brat. I grew up in one of the best homes, went to college for two and a half years, but somewhere along the line, I got sideswiped. Thank God I made it back."
Accion international a founder of the microfinance movement, helps the poor become entrepreneurs. It has built a network of microlending institutions, many of which it founded. These self-sustaining lenders provide poor clients with loans as small as $100 to start businesses.
In Los Olivos, a suburb north of Lima, Peru, rapid change is under way. On a hot day in October, the sun beats down from a bleached-out sky. Unpaved roads are lined with cement block houses in various stages of construction. People build as they have money to buy supplies, so unfinished buildings stand as testaments to their ambition.
Edelmira Epifania, 55, is a resident of Los Olivos and a customer of Mibanco, a microfinance institution in ACCION's network with more than 135,000 active borrowers. She has worked all her life, often juggling more than one job. But it wasn't always enough to support her four children, and her husband's construction work wasn't always steady.
So she took out her first loan of 300 nuevo soles (less than $100) with Mibanco eight years ago to buy a food cart and supplies. During the day, she'd sell hamburgers and salchipapas (a dish of cut-up hot dogs mixed with potatoes) before heading to a night job at a hospital. Four and a half years later, she had saved enough money to buy a plot of land and start building a drugstore, Las Boticas 24 Horas. Why a drugstore? "There wasn't one around at the time," she says. "I wanted to be the first."
Today, Epifania runs Las Boticas 24 Horas with occasional help from her children. She sleeps in the back room, and there's a bell outside to signal when a customer comes calling, at whatever hour. Most of the money she earns goes into paying for the college education of her children.
Years ago, Epifania's father had his own cart, selling fruits and vegetables off the side of the road, and his income was barely enough to get by, let alone to send his children to college or own a business. Asked what her father, now deceased, would think about her owning a store, she blushes, her eyes dropping low, a wide smile breaking out.
When she looks up again, tears well up as she says, "He'd have been very happy."
Reporting by Alyssa Danigelis, Jena McGregor, Michael A. Prospero, and Jennifer Vilaga.
The Top 25 Groups That Are Changing the World
ACCION International
BELL
Calvert Social Investment Foundation
Citizen Schools
City Year
College Summit Inc.
First Book
Grameen Foundation USA
Heifer International
Housing Partnership Network
Jumpstart
Kickstart
New Community Corp.
New Leaders for New Schools
PATH
Pioneer Human Services
Raising a Reader
Rare
Room to Read
Rubicon Programs Inc.
Teach for America
Transfair USA
Unitus
WITNESS
Working Today -- Freelancers Union
Friday, January 13, 2006
ETHICAL RADIO LAUNCHES
Information on corporate social responsibility is readily available in print media (such as magazines, websites, and reports) but is much harder to find in audio, the medium that is gaining in relevance with the explosive growth of podcasting and satellite radio.
This week's releases feature an announcement by Business Ethics magazine about the launch of its new one-hour radio program called "Good Company" that broadcasts weekly on Sirius Satellite Radio channel 114. The show, hosted by the magazine's publisher and executive editor Michael Connor in conversation with CSR thought leaders, will feature an interview with Social Investment Forum (SIF) President Tim Smith and Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) Energy and Environment Program Director Leslie Lowe talking about shareowner advocacy this week starting on Thursday, January 12 from 7 to 8 pm Eastern Standard Time (see release for other air-times).
Speaking of shareowner advocacy, ICCR issued a release this past week on five shareowner resolutions ICCR members filed at Wal-Mart, which ICCR Executive Director Sister Pat Wolf characterizes as "a company in need of reform." These resolutions ask the company to address issues ranging from compensation disparity to sustainability reporting to toxic substances in its products to the impacts on public health systems due to the company's insufficient health care benefits.
NESEABuilding Energy Conference & Trade Show7-9 March, 2006,
BostonNESEA hosts Building Energy '06, the Northeast's premier conference and trade show for renewable energy and green building professionals and others eager to learn about "green" building techniques and products. Featuring in-depth workshops on a wide range of topics with leading architects, engineers, designers, product developers, builders, manufacturers, policy makers, planners, educators, utility executives, and green marketers. The trade show offers one-stop shopping for the latest green construction products and services. For more details, click here.
Ethical CorporationBusiness-NGO Partnerships Conference9-10 May, 2006, New York .
Over the two days, presentations from leading companies, NGOs and academics will focus on key strategies proven to build and manage successful Business-NGO partnerships. Participating organizations include Timberland, Visa, Shell, Merck, FedEx, Rainforest Alliance, PETA, Environmental Defense and many, many more! For more information click here.
Cause Marketing Forum Inc.Cause Marketing Forum13 June, 2006, New YorkAt this annual conference, business and nonprofit executives gather to explore how they can build stronger mutually beneficial alliances and celebrate the field's best work at the Cause Marketing Halo Awards. Learn from the experts at The Home Depot, KaBOOM!, Cone Inc., Procter & Gamble, Gifts in Kind International and many more. The year's best opportunity to obtain practical knowledge and develop valuable relationships with others dedicated to doing well by doing good. For more details, click here.
This week's releases feature an announcement by Business Ethics magazine about the launch of its new one-hour radio program called "Good Company" that broadcasts weekly on Sirius Satellite Radio channel 114. The show, hosted by the magazine's publisher and executive editor Michael Connor in conversation with CSR thought leaders, will feature an interview with Social Investment Forum (SIF) President Tim Smith and Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) Energy and Environment Program Director Leslie Lowe talking about shareowner advocacy this week starting on Thursday, January 12 from 7 to 8 pm Eastern Standard Time (see release for other air-times).
Speaking of shareowner advocacy, ICCR issued a release this past week on five shareowner resolutions ICCR members filed at Wal-Mart, which ICCR Executive Director Sister Pat Wolf characterizes as "a company in need of reform." These resolutions ask the company to address issues ranging from compensation disparity to sustainability reporting to toxic substances in its products to the impacts on public health systems due to the company's insufficient health care benefits.
NESEABuilding Energy Conference & Trade Show7-9 March, 2006,
BostonNESEA hosts Building Energy '06, the Northeast's premier conference and trade show for renewable energy and green building professionals and others eager to learn about "green" building techniques and products. Featuring in-depth workshops on a wide range of topics with leading architects, engineers, designers, product developers, builders, manufacturers, policy makers, planners, educators, utility executives, and green marketers. The trade show offers one-stop shopping for the latest green construction products and services. For more details, click here.
Ethical CorporationBusiness-NGO Partnerships Conference9-10 May, 2006, New York .
Over the two days, presentations from leading companies, NGOs and academics will focus on key strategies proven to build and manage successful Business-NGO partnerships. Participating organizations include Timberland, Visa, Shell, Merck, FedEx, Rainforest Alliance, PETA, Environmental Defense and many, many more! For more information click here.
Cause Marketing Forum Inc.Cause Marketing Forum13 June, 2006, New YorkAt this annual conference, business and nonprofit executives gather to explore how they can build stronger mutually beneficial alliances and celebrate the field's best work at the Cause Marketing Halo Awards. Learn from the experts at The Home Depot, KaBOOM!, Cone Inc., Procter & Gamble, Gifts in Kind International and many more. The year's best opportunity to obtain practical knowledge and develop valuable relationships with others dedicated to doing well by doing good. For more details, click here.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
THE EIGHT FOLD PATH
The eight sections of the Path are not intended to be cultivated in the order they are given and the perfection of one stage is not required before another is begun. They must be regarded as a complete whole, requiring progress in all the sections. e practise and develop as we are able and progress in any section will lead to success in others. In it's entirety, the Eightfold Path, leads to the cultured mind, for when it is brought under control are we able to conquer greed, ill-will and delusion.
RIGHT UNDERSTANDING
Is the complete and perfect knowledge of the Four Noble Truths and their inter-relationship with each other.
RIGHT THOUGHTS
Are those free from lust, greed and desire; those free from hatred or ill-will'; those free from crueltly, unkindness or revenge. In the last analysis, it is the thoughts which promote our deeds and if the thinking is promoted to a high level of our deeds and actions will automatically respond. Thinking is the action of the mind and can cause bad karma just as much as physical deeds.
RIGHT SPEECH
Is the control of the tongue by right thought. Withholding oneself from untruthful, deceitful or harsh speech and from gossip or idle talk. In it's positive aspect, it means to speak kindly and with tenderness to others; to be modest in referring to oneself and abstain from self-exaltation.
RIGHT ACTION
Is not to take the lefe of any living creature; not to indulge in improper sex relations; not to steal the property of another. In it's fullest sense, it means to perform deeds which do not cause suffering of oneself and others.
RIGHT LIVELIHOOD
Is to avoid occupations, hobbies or trades which cause or lead to suffering for other beings. This would include those which do not permit the practice of right action. A disciple of the Buddha should not obtain his or her living by deceit, trickery, or usury. They should avoid the trade in arms and death-dealing weapons, flesh, intoxicating drinks and drugs or living beings. The guiding principle of Buddhism is to work for the happiness and welfare of mankind and not for it's sorrow.
RIGHT EFFORT
Is the endeavour we make to live a moral and blameless life. The Four Right Efforts are; to avoid evil not yet existing, to overcome evil which already exists, to develop good not yet exisiting, and the effort to preserve the good already developed.
RIGHT MINDFULNESS
Is to be constantly vigilant over our thoughts, speech, and actions. It is easier for us to do wrong when we are careless and thoughtless. We must cultivate an alertness of mind, which in controlling our conduct, will establish harmony and not discord.
RIGHT CONCENTRATION (or meditation)
Of all the gems of the Buddha's Teaching, this is the one of the greatest brilliance. Meditation is fairly new to the West but it has been known for thousands of years in the East. Already, however there are many who have discovered it's worth and the wonderful bliss of contentment it gives. It is unsurpassed as the means of obtaining the peace of mind which the wise are seeking to supplant the chaotic existence of modern living.
Concentration and meditation are synonymous in Buddhist Philosophy. Meditation is not, as some believe sitting quiet and letting the mind wander with the hope that some superior, or hereto unrevealed wisdom, will drift in. Buddhist meditation is the exact opposite. After the Buddhist apprentice has learned to it still and relaxed for a reasonable period, he/she learns to develop "one pointedness of mind". This means, training it to concentrate on one subject only, without jumping from idea to idea, like a monkey jumping from tree to tree.
The goal of most religions is either vague, ill-defined or without appeal to the modern mind. Heaven and Hell, Paradise and Purgatory, are the prducts of man's primitive past and served to account for mysteries which could not otherwise be explained. None of these concepts occur in Buddhist philosophy.
Scientific discoveries and advancing knowledge are playing havoc with legendary beliefs. As these, and many other ideas, crumble before the onslaught of science, we, observe, the astounding fact that the Dhamma (Buddha teachings), in spite of its ancient origin, is being vindicated. We are finding , more and more, that the discoveries over the last decade, were taught by the Buddha more than twenty-five centuries ago.
This however, will not surprise those who understand the profound depth of the phenomena of Enlightenment, or that the Buddha when He attained it, had insight into the facts of life which would naturally conform to the knowledge which science has unravelled.
The Buddha explained that, in simple language, that if we fulfill the obligations of morality, we would overcome the continual horror of rebirth. This morality is the Noble Eight Fold Path which leads to the end of greed, hatred and delusion. This is the goal and the Buddhists call it Nibbana, we call it Nirvana. It is not only a place where people go when they die or a land of departed spirits. It is a state of utter tranquility of the mind which we can enjoy in this life, leaving no conditions which will give rise to a new birth.
Buddhism, or the Buddhist way of life, may be described as, good conduct brought about by mind development and training and leading to Perfect Peace!
RIGHT UNDERSTANDING
Is the complete and perfect knowledge of the Four Noble Truths and their inter-relationship with each other.
RIGHT THOUGHTS
Are those free from lust, greed and desire; those free from hatred or ill-will'; those free from crueltly, unkindness or revenge. In the last analysis, it is the thoughts which promote our deeds and if the thinking is promoted to a high level of our deeds and actions will automatically respond. Thinking is the action of the mind and can cause bad karma just as much as physical deeds.
RIGHT SPEECH
Is the control of the tongue by right thought. Withholding oneself from untruthful, deceitful or harsh speech and from gossip or idle talk. In it's positive aspect, it means to speak kindly and with tenderness to others; to be modest in referring to oneself and abstain from self-exaltation.
RIGHT ACTION
Is not to take the lefe of any living creature; not to indulge in improper sex relations; not to steal the property of another. In it's fullest sense, it means to perform deeds which do not cause suffering of oneself and others.
RIGHT LIVELIHOOD
Is to avoid occupations, hobbies or trades which cause or lead to suffering for other beings. This would include those which do not permit the practice of right action. A disciple of the Buddha should not obtain his or her living by deceit, trickery, or usury. They should avoid the trade in arms and death-dealing weapons, flesh, intoxicating drinks and drugs or living beings. The guiding principle of Buddhism is to work for the happiness and welfare of mankind and not for it's sorrow.
RIGHT EFFORT
Is the endeavour we make to live a moral and blameless life. The Four Right Efforts are; to avoid evil not yet existing, to overcome evil which already exists, to develop good not yet exisiting, and the effort to preserve the good already developed.
RIGHT MINDFULNESS
Is to be constantly vigilant over our thoughts, speech, and actions. It is easier for us to do wrong when we are careless and thoughtless. We must cultivate an alertness of mind, which in controlling our conduct, will establish harmony and not discord.
RIGHT CONCENTRATION (or meditation)
Of all the gems of the Buddha's Teaching, this is the one of the greatest brilliance. Meditation is fairly new to the West but it has been known for thousands of years in the East. Already, however there are many who have discovered it's worth and the wonderful bliss of contentment it gives. It is unsurpassed as the means of obtaining the peace of mind which the wise are seeking to supplant the chaotic existence of modern living.
Concentration and meditation are synonymous in Buddhist Philosophy. Meditation is not, as some believe sitting quiet and letting the mind wander with the hope that some superior, or hereto unrevealed wisdom, will drift in. Buddhist meditation is the exact opposite. After the Buddhist apprentice has learned to it still and relaxed for a reasonable period, he/she learns to develop "one pointedness of mind". This means, training it to concentrate on one subject only, without jumping from idea to idea, like a monkey jumping from tree to tree.
The goal of most religions is either vague, ill-defined or without appeal to the modern mind. Heaven and Hell, Paradise and Purgatory, are the prducts of man's primitive past and served to account for mysteries which could not otherwise be explained. None of these concepts occur in Buddhist philosophy.
Scientific discoveries and advancing knowledge are playing havoc with legendary beliefs. As these, and many other ideas, crumble before the onslaught of science, we, observe, the astounding fact that the Dhamma (Buddha teachings), in spite of its ancient origin, is being vindicated. We are finding , more and more, that the discoveries over the last decade, were taught by the Buddha more than twenty-five centuries ago.
This however, will not surprise those who understand the profound depth of the phenomena of Enlightenment, or that the Buddha when He attained it, had insight into the facts of life which would naturally conform to the knowledge which science has unravelled.
The Buddha explained that, in simple language, that if we fulfill the obligations of morality, we would overcome the continual horror of rebirth. This morality is the Noble Eight Fold Path which leads to the end of greed, hatred and delusion. This is the goal and the Buddhists call it Nibbana, we call it Nirvana. It is not only a place where people go when they die or a land of departed spirits. It is a state of utter tranquility of the mind which we can enjoy in this life, leaving no conditions which will give rise to a new birth.
Buddhism, or the Buddhist way of life, may be described as, good conduct brought about by mind development and training and leading to Perfect Peace!
THE FOUNDATION OF RIGHT LIVING
Since the Four Noble Truths form such an important basis of the Buddhist life, we should study them seriously and not be deceived by their apparent simplicity. In the study of Buddhism, a mere superficial glance or even the learning and repitition of words is useless unless it leads us to deep understanding. A boy can learn the Four Noble Truths in ten minutes yet it may take thousands of lives before there is real understanding. Buddha stressed the importance or real understanding when he said; "It is through not understanding, not penetrating four things, that I, disciples, as well as you, have wandered so long through the long round of rebirths. What are these four things? They are, the Noble Truth of Suffering; the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering the Noble Turth of the Origin of Suffering; the Noble Truth of the Cure of Suffering; the Noble Truth of the Path which leads to the End of Suffering."
The First Noble Truth of the Universal Nature of Suffering.
We understand this truth when we awaken to the realization that sorrow and suffering is one of the principal characteristics of life. All living beings (human or animal) are subject to the ever present danger of pain and suffering, without exception. There are no guaranteed condiitons of happiness, peace or security. At any hour, or even any moment, we are likely to become victims.
What can be classified as suffering? Birth, death, old-age; hunger, thirst,heat and cold; abnormal functioning of the body, disease, sickness and accidents. All these are suffering.
To be separated from the people we love or to live with unpleasant and difficult people; mental worry, anxiety, anguish, grief, woe and despair; not to obtain the objects of our desires; dwelling in unfit or uncongenial surroundings or having unpleasant employment or mental or physical ill-health of ourselves or of those we love; suffering endured by those to whom we are attached.
Suffering must be viewed in it's correct perspective. It has attended us in the past, envelopes us in the present and will be with us in the future-----unless we take active steps to escape it.
The Second Noble Truth is the Origin of Suffering.
In this we learn of the desires and emotions which are the factors causing suffering, either in this life or a subsequent one. They include greed; attachment to or infatuation with people, ideas or objects; the failure to obtain or satisfy our desires; the unhappiness and disgust which comes from these people, ideas or objects, sooner or later. Restlessness, ambition, self-exaltation, pride, vanity, delusion, craving; the belief that the ego, or personality, is a permanent soul or entity.
The failure to learn from our past experiences; forgetting the tragedies of life by losing them in a round of artificial pleasures; insufficient self-control, immoderate living; anger, ill-will, hatred and irritability; bad habits, sexual excess; and putting reliance in others. In the past and in the present, all these and many more, are the cause o suffering.
The Third Noble Truth Is the Extinction or Cure of Suffering.
The threshold of understanding is reached when we realize that suffering can be brought to an end. The Path of the Buddha leads to this very goal. Suffering, although accepted by so many, is not without a remedy. Once the mind is awakened to the existence and causes, we are on the road to conquering them. Just how far we are prepared to go along the Path, depends entirely on ourselves. The causes can only be removed if we undertake a course of self-discipline and training. The knowledge that it is worth while to do so, is the first step.
The Fourth Noble Truth is the Path which leads to the End of Suffering.
No other religion or philosophy reveals so clearly the Path of Virtue, leading to deliverance. It is called the Noble Eightfold Path because it is actually one path but is subdivided into eight sections. It is the Buddhist code of mental and physical conduct which leads to the end of suffering, sorrow and despair; to the Perfect Peace, Nibbana (or "Nirvana")
The First Noble Truth of the Universal Nature of Suffering.
We understand this truth when we awaken to the realization that sorrow and suffering is one of the principal characteristics of life. All living beings (human or animal) are subject to the ever present danger of pain and suffering, without exception. There are no guaranteed condiitons of happiness, peace or security. At any hour, or even any moment, we are likely to become victims.
What can be classified as suffering? Birth, death, old-age; hunger, thirst,heat and cold; abnormal functioning of the body, disease, sickness and accidents. All these are suffering.
To be separated from the people we love or to live with unpleasant and difficult people; mental worry, anxiety, anguish, grief, woe and despair; not to obtain the objects of our desires; dwelling in unfit or uncongenial surroundings or having unpleasant employment or mental or physical ill-health of ourselves or of those we love; suffering endured by those to whom we are attached.
Suffering must be viewed in it's correct perspective. It has attended us in the past, envelopes us in the present and will be with us in the future-----unless we take active steps to escape it.
The Second Noble Truth is the Origin of Suffering.
In this we learn of the desires and emotions which are the factors causing suffering, either in this life or a subsequent one. They include greed; attachment to or infatuation with people, ideas or objects; the failure to obtain or satisfy our desires; the unhappiness and disgust which comes from these people, ideas or objects, sooner or later. Restlessness, ambition, self-exaltation, pride, vanity, delusion, craving; the belief that the ego, or personality, is a permanent soul or entity.
The failure to learn from our past experiences; forgetting the tragedies of life by losing them in a round of artificial pleasures; insufficient self-control, immoderate living; anger, ill-will, hatred and irritability; bad habits, sexual excess; and putting reliance in others. In the past and in the present, all these and many more, are the cause o suffering.
The Third Noble Truth Is the Extinction or Cure of Suffering.
The threshold of understanding is reached when we realize that suffering can be brought to an end. The Path of the Buddha leads to this very goal. Suffering, although accepted by so many, is not without a remedy. Once the mind is awakened to the existence and causes, we are on the road to conquering them. Just how far we are prepared to go along the Path, depends entirely on ourselves. The causes can only be removed if we undertake a course of self-discipline and training. The knowledge that it is worth while to do so, is the first step.
The Fourth Noble Truth is the Path which leads to the End of Suffering.
No other religion or philosophy reveals so clearly the Path of Virtue, leading to deliverance. It is called the Noble Eightfold Path because it is actually one path but is subdivided into eight sections. It is the Buddhist code of mental and physical conduct which leads to the end of suffering, sorrow and despair; to the Perfect Peace, Nibbana (or "Nirvana")
WHO IS THIS BUDDHA GUY ANYWAY?
The Buddha ws neither a God or the prophet of a God. He was born, lived and died a man. He left no room in his teachings for any other supposition. The Buddha's mortality is man's greatest hope for the future, since in Him we have no deity or supernatural being, but one who showed the great heights to which a man could reach.
He himself has become acknowledged as the greatest man who ever lived, but few of us will possess the courage and determination to approximate his greatest example. Yet it is within the province of all of us to follow his Teachings and eventually attain the Goal of Sublime Peace.
We can do this without becoming Buddhas ourselves, for it is not in the nature of everyman to become a Buddha, by following the Path of Deliverance which Buddhists call the Buddha Sasana, or as it is knwn among western people: Buddhism.
Let us learn more about this man, who conquered what is least easily conquered; who attained what is least easy to attain; and who left the world a treasure of philosophy which has been the guiding light for the greater part of mankind and endured for more than twenty-five centuries.
He was born about 623 BC, at Kapilavathhu, a hundred miles north-east of Benares, at the foot of the majestic Himalayas. The city of Kapilavatthu, was once the small capital of the Sakya Clan, an Aryan people who had the same ancestors, as the people of Europe, America and Australia claim today. the area now lies within the frontiers of Nepal.
Son of a noble family and having advantages denied to many, he enjoyed the pleasures of life which come easily to a child born of wealthy parents.
After he passed the sgtage of boyhood and became a young man, his thoughts turned to the suffering of mankind which the philosophies of those days held to be inescapable. he realised that although wealth and position, gave advantages over less fortunate people, it could not save one from the sufferings of birth, disease, old-age or death. While confronted with this problem the transient pleasures of life began to lose their value and He not only felt that there must be some way of escape from suffering, but he determined to find it.
He was not the first to recognize the universal nature of suffering, for many of those days, had sought or were seeking for a cure, but none had ever been successful.
With the determination, that he would seek and find, He renounced his home, family and position; and clad in the yellow robes of a penniless mendicant, wandered alone to find the Eternal Peace.
In the first sermon which the Buddha preached, after attaining His Enlightenment, He explained the Middle Way, The Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, which we have referred to in an earlier chapter. These may be likened to foundation stones on which the entire Dhamma is based. Everything which is found in the entire Buddhist Scriptures, is in fact, an expansion of the Four Noble Truths.
He himself has become acknowledged as the greatest man who ever lived, but few of us will possess the courage and determination to approximate his greatest example. Yet it is within the province of all of us to follow his Teachings and eventually attain the Goal of Sublime Peace.
We can do this without becoming Buddhas ourselves, for it is not in the nature of everyman to become a Buddha, by following the Path of Deliverance which Buddhists call the Buddha Sasana, or as it is knwn among western people: Buddhism.
Let us learn more about this man, who conquered what is least easily conquered; who attained what is least easy to attain; and who left the world a treasure of philosophy which has been the guiding light for the greater part of mankind and endured for more than twenty-five centuries.
He was born about 623 BC, at Kapilavathhu, a hundred miles north-east of Benares, at the foot of the majestic Himalayas. The city of Kapilavatthu, was once the small capital of the Sakya Clan, an Aryan people who had the same ancestors, as the people of Europe, America and Australia claim today. the area now lies within the frontiers of Nepal.
Son of a noble family and having advantages denied to many, he enjoyed the pleasures of life which come easily to a child born of wealthy parents.
After he passed the sgtage of boyhood and became a young man, his thoughts turned to the suffering of mankind which the philosophies of those days held to be inescapable. he realised that although wealth and position, gave advantages over less fortunate people, it could not save one from the sufferings of birth, disease, old-age or death. While confronted with this problem the transient pleasures of life began to lose their value and He not only felt that there must be some way of escape from suffering, but he determined to find it.
He was not the first to recognize the universal nature of suffering, for many of those days, had sought or were seeking for a cure, but none had ever been successful.
With the determination, that he would seek and find, He renounced his home, family and position; and clad in the yellow robes of a penniless mendicant, wandered alone to find the Eternal Peace.
In the first sermon which the Buddha preached, after attaining His Enlightenment, He explained the Middle Way, The Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, which we have referred to in an earlier chapter. These may be likened to foundation stones on which the entire Dhamma is based. Everything which is found in the entire Buddhist Scriptures, is in fact, an expansion of the Four Noble Truths.
Friday, December 23, 2005
LIGHTS AND LATKES
The elves have arrived to help decorate and light the tree and so have the latke leapers. In other words we're taking a sabbatical of sorts, not to relax, but to finish the book. So that means these pages shall remain silent just like the night before the jolly fat man visits, and we shall return to scribe more musings on January 3rd, 2006. That is unless of course either you or I get an inspiration. So feel to write a comment on the many many articles we have posted.
Don't be shy and just get by, be a good mate and participate!
Don't be shy and just get by, be a good mate and participate!
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
IN A ZEN MINDSET?
Try meditating. You can do it anywhere.From the April, 2000 Issue of Fortune Small Business FSBBy Beth Kwon
Leave it to our manic, overachieving society to produce a new meditation culture, where we have to squeeze relaxation into hyperactive schedules. It's not about religion anymore either. Americans are spending money to go for nirvana -- either at the gym, where a 45-minute yoga session gets sandwiched between Absolute Abs and Super Spinning, or at a deluxe retreat, like the Coolfont spa in West Virginia (www.coolfont.com), which offers Reiki and private meditation.
Hospitals that long eschewed alternative therapies are taking meditation seriously too -- like Boston's Mind/Body Medical Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, which is associated with Harvard (617-632-9530; www.bidmc.harvard.edu/). "The scientific base for mind/body medicine has been established," says Dr. Herbert Benson, the institute's founder. Read: Insurance now covers it! (It's mostly case by case, so check with your plan to make sure.)
But you don't have to check in to a clinic to meditate. You don't have to leave home, for that matter. An Internet search yields kitchen yoga tips (punch up www.selfcare.com). Sautè those onions, and do the "counter dog" pose -- simultaneously. Or -"receive your self-realization" at www.sahajayoga.org through a Shockwave Flash presentation. Just say "om."
Leave it to our manic, overachieving society to produce a new meditation culture, where we have to squeeze relaxation into hyperactive schedules. It's not about religion anymore either. Americans are spending money to go for nirvana -- either at the gym, where a 45-minute yoga session gets sandwiched between Absolute Abs and Super Spinning, or at a deluxe retreat, like the Coolfont spa in West Virginia (www.coolfont.com), which offers Reiki and private meditation.
Hospitals that long eschewed alternative therapies are taking meditation seriously too -- like Boston's Mind/Body Medical Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, which is associated with Harvard (617-632-9530; www.bidmc.harvard.edu/). "The scientific base for mind/body medicine has been established," says Dr. Herbert Benson, the institute's founder. Read: Insurance now covers it! (It's mostly case by case, so check with your plan to make sure.)
But you don't have to check in to a clinic to meditate. You don't have to leave home, for that matter. An Internet search yields kitchen yoga tips (punch up www.selfcare.com). Sautè those onions, and do the "counter dog" pose -- simultaneously. Or -"receive your self-realization" at www.sahajayoga.org through a Shockwave Flash presentation. Just say "om."
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
A LEVER LONG ENOUGH TO MOVE THE WORLD
Social visionary Bill Drayton is creating a network of incalculable problem-solving power.
From: Fast Company Issue 90 January 2005 Page 61 By: Keith H. Hammonds
Here is a concise history of the modern world, according to Bill Drayton. Well, no: In real life, Bill Drayton would never -- could never, it's fair to say -- be so concise. He is an expansive thinker of remarkable intensity, not easily gathered in -- a mind informed by influences as diverse as Gandhi and Hubert Humphrey, and as likely as not to travel intellectual parts sundry and exotic before returning, methodically, triumphant, to . . . the point.
So here is Bill Drayton's history of the modern world, made concise by us. The Industrial Revolution of the 1700s split society into two unequal halves. Commerce became entrepreneurial and competitive, its compounding productivity gains sparking rapid income growth. But enlightenment bypassed society's other half, the half concerned with education and public welfare and the environment. As the consumer sector grew more productive, the social sector, supported by taxes and protected from competition, fell ever further behind.
And then, about 25 years ago, something happened. We'll let Drayton describe the moment: "We could see it," he recalls. "The system was beginning to change. It was like hearing the ice breaking up at the end of winter in a lake. Creak, creak, groan, crash! The need was so big, the gap so huge, the opportunity to learn right before people's eyes. When do systems begin to change? When entrepreneurs decide it's time."
Or, to the point, when Drayton does.
Drayton is founder and chief executive of a group called Ashoka. It is not hyperbolic to call Ashoka this century's (much better) version of the United Way, and Drayton the most important innovator of any sort out there -- a seer who has correctly predicted the rise of the "citizen sector" in the past two decades and an audacious visionary of what will yet come.
Ashoka, named for a peace-minded third century BC Indian emperor, has identified and supported 1,500-plus Fellows, as it calls them, in 53 nations since Drayton founded it in 1980. (Five of them are winners of our 2005 Social Capitalist Awards.) It seeks out social entrepreneurs with enormous ideas -- solutions of such ambition and force that they cannot be denied. They are pioneers like Mary Allegretti, a Brazilian who thought of legally separating rubber-extraction rights from land-ownership rights in the Amazon rain forest to give indigenous rubber tappers economic standing -- and then made it happen.
What Drayton has created is a network of incalculable power. It's not so much about funding, though Fellows do receive a modest stipend. Rather, these entrepreneurs, who typically work alone amid hostile circumstances, get support, ideas, and, quite literally, protection. (When one Ashoka Fellow in Brazil attracted the ire, and gunshots, of local police for his drug rehab program, other Brazilian Fellows intervened with the state governor, and the problem went away.) How do you market a big idea? How do you run a big organization? How do you combat corrupt local politicians? The answers come from other Ashoka Fellows.
The potential of this emerging network is what gets Bill Drayton's blood coursing. Because he can see what's going on now, as clearly as he did 25 years ago. Society's citizen sector is expanding rapidly, irresistibly. Ashoka itself is growing, too: Its budget was set to jump 50%, to $30 million, in 2004. What happens in the next five years, he thinks, will prove crucial to, well, everything -- finally redressing the chasm between consumer and social sectors.
"An entrepreneur plows the field," Drayton says, "and it weakens the idea that change isn't possible. He seeds with some very user-friendly idea. The next entrepreneur comes, and there's more plowing, more seeding. Then hundreds. As we wire the world together, ideas flow from Bangladesh to the United States and Brazil, and back. This becomes multiplicative. The network becomes a distribution channel."
Drayton, 61, is a slight man, nearly inconspicuous, with thin hair and a frumpy suit. Self-effacing and unfailingly deferential, he is not charismatic in any traditional sense. When he speaks, it is at something just above a whisper -- and not always on message. David Bornstein, whose recent book How to Change the World (Oxford University Press, 2004) dwells on Ashoka, recalls asking Drayton to speak up above the din of traffic outside his apartment building. Drayton, typically, responded with an expert 20-minute discourse on the effect of canyons on noise.
But beneath the eccentric-uncle veneer is a willful and fearless thinker, a crusader of near-monastic devotion to the possibility of massive social change. (He is unmarried and childless, and lives in a simple apartment a few blocks from Ashoka's offices in Arlington, Virginia.) He first dedicated himself to the idea of Ashoka while a Harvard undergraduate in the early 1960s, then nurtured it through his years at Oxford, Yale Law, McKinsey, and the Environmental Protection Agency. "Bill is totally committed to an important idea, and has unshakable faith in what's he's doing and in the value of each person's life toward effecting change," says Julien Phillips, who worked with Drayton at McKinsey and was one of Ashoka's founding directors. "That's a tremendously powerful combination."
Really, all you need to know about Bill Drayton is this: His father was an explorer in the Sahara and British Columbia, and his mother a musician and impresario. That is Drayton: a creative explorer and promoter -- of ideas. And if his plan comes off, ideas will drive Ashoka's future. Ashoka is morphing into a knowledge-management organization, "the sum of its ideas," as Sushmita Ghosh, its president, puts it. Project managers in Virginia and elsewhere are charged with spotting emerging trends and connecting the dots. They apply solutions that have worked in one part of the world to problems in another, link together similar innovations to amplify their impact, and package ideas in ways that take them from local to global in reach. It resembles, in that way, the Catholic order of Jesuit priests, the only truly effective global service organization Drayton knows of.
Take a relatively simple problem, that of alpacas. In mountain villages of Bolivia, poor farmers with small alpaca herds traditionally have relied on unimaginably primitive production methods, using the edges of tin cans to shear wool. A local organization came up with an answer: a simple but efficient distribution system that grades wool, creating financial incentives for farmers to buy shears and wash the fiber -- eventually raising their incomes.
It's a great solution for Bolivian villagers. But what about alpaca farmers elsewhere in South America, or herders of similar livestock around the world? In fact, Ashoka has demonstrated the Bolivian model to sheep farmers on Nepal's Tibetan plateau -- and they understood it immediately. Making that sort of knowledge transfer happen all the time is something Ashoka is trying to systematize, so that global networks of small producers can constantly share innovations that improve their financial prospects.
Next big idea: Global partnerships between social entrepreneurs and business. To Drayton, these "hybrid value chains" are a no-brainer; the divergence of the consumer and citizen sectors was a "nonsensical historical accident" in the first place, and their reintegration is "profoundly important for the health of both." Business must use social networks to reach new markets. And the citizen sector needs the marketplace to gain financial sustainability.
Here's one example of such collaboration: Cemex, the big Mexican cement producer, has invented a plan that encourages families in urban slums to save for cement to build home additions, then provides them with discounted engineering services. Community activists love the scheme, since it promises to alleviate family abuse sparked by overcrowding. And it's great in principle for Cemex, which penetrates a difficult market and gets paid upfront, to boot.
But Cemex is having trouble retaining the reps it trains to promote the savings plan. So in the city of Puebla, Ashoka hooked the company up with Patricia Nava, an Ashoka Fellow who has created a Mary Kay-like network to provide sex education and AIDS prevention training. The strategy calls for Cemex to use Nava's existing distribution system, paying commissions to safe-sex educators when they refer cement customers. The partnership, Nava hopes, will "allow us to increase the life quality of many people while [creating] new alternatives to generate money for projects."
The bigger idea, yet untested: Cemex and other companies use Nava's network to sell other products. Or Cemex hooks up with similar social entrepreneurs to distribute cement across Mexico and elsewhere. Think of it as a matrix. "The challenge for us is finding ways to institutionalize this," says Valeria Budinich, the Ashoka vice president who oversees the initiative.
And the really bigger idea, the uebergoal, is that ultimately, innovative strategies like this one will spread themselves without Ashoka's help. "A hundred years from now, the field will know how to do this," Drayton says. "The pattern will be obvious. We'll be able to recognize a group of entrepreneurs coming up around the world on a new issue."
We will do so, he expects, because of structures and tools being established now. Already, Ashoka has launched the makings of a global accelerator for social entrepreneurs. McKinsey is providing management consulting, Hill & Knowlton the public relations expertise, and the International Senior Lawyers Project the legal support. It's also negotiating with several financial institutions to create new mechanisms for financing -- and it's toying with the notion of an online marketplace where entrepreneurs and funders could find each other. Drayton is even piloting a professional-services firm called Social Entrepreneur Associates -- like a McKinsey populated by citizen- sector professionals.
If this all comes to pass? Well, Drayton was meeting two years ago with eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, whose Omidyar Network ultimately committed to investing $20 million over five years in Ashoka. Drayton described Ashoka's central goal -- to speed and make possible the emergence of an entrepreneurial citizen sector. Omidyar pressed: "That's an intermediate goal. What are you really after?" It was a good question, Drayton realized.
And he thought, We have this network of entrepreneurs, all of them seeding social innovation. "That is changing a lot of things, upsetting local patterns, weakening existing structures, weakening the idea that things are the way they are. It's an invitation for people to step up and do things differently. That first change touches a series of people who weren't doing this before. They're not passive anymore. They're full citizens, change makers."
As of right then, Ashoka embraced a new goal: "Everyone a change maker."
"Think about the implications for society of that change," Drayton marvels. "The number of angry, frustrated, unhappy people would be dramatically reduced. And the probability of problems outrunning problem solvers would go away. We'd laugh at the idea. Every single being becomes a white blood cell that solves problems."
It's late in the evening, the skies outside are pitch-black, and Drayton is hacking with a nasty cold acquired on his travels. But he keeps talking. These ideas are too big and too important to be bound by schedules, or dinner, or exhaustion.
Drayton speaks often of Jean Monnet, the brilliant financier and diplomat who, in the 1940s and 1950s, drove for the unification of Europe. Monnet understood that a continental organization could solve problems that individual nations couldn't -- and he set in motion a dynamic that would produce, 20 years after his death, the Euro-based common monetary system.
"It's clear to me," Drayton says, "that you can't solve the world's problems unless you deal with them on a global level. Our field has to be integrated from the local right up to the global. From the beginning, we've had to fight against all national divisiveness. You can see the field moving up and accelerating. But at a global level, where's the Jean Monnet? I've wondered for years, who is the Monnet we're looking for?"
We are, perhaps, looking at him.
Keith H. Hammonds is Fast Company's deputy editor.
Buddha says; "He whose vision is deep, who is wise, who knows the path and what is outside the path, who has attained the highest end--him I call a Brahmin"
From: Fast Company Issue 90 January 2005 Page 61 By: Keith H. Hammonds
Here is a concise history of the modern world, according to Bill Drayton. Well, no: In real life, Bill Drayton would never -- could never, it's fair to say -- be so concise. He is an expansive thinker of remarkable intensity, not easily gathered in -- a mind informed by influences as diverse as Gandhi and Hubert Humphrey, and as likely as not to travel intellectual parts sundry and exotic before returning, methodically, triumphant, to . . . the point.
So here is Bill Drayton's history of the modern world, made concise by us. The Industrial Revolution of the 1700s split society into two unequal halves. Commerce became entrepreneurial and competitive, its compounding productivity gains sparking rapid income growth. But enlightenment bypassed society's other half, the half concerned with education and public welfare and the environment. As the consumer sector grew more productive, the social sector, supported by taxes and protected from competition, fell ever further behind.
And then, about 25 years ago, something happened. We'll let Drayton describe the moment: "We could see it," he recalls. "The system was beginning to change. It was like hearing the ice breaking up at the end of winter in a lake. Creak, creak, groan, crash! The need was so big, the gap so huge, the opportunity to learn right before people's eyes. When do systems begin to change? When entrepreneurs decide it's time."
Or, to the point, when Drayton does.
Drayton is founder and chief executive of a group called Ashoka. It is not hyperbolic to call Ashoka this century's (much better) version of the United Way, and Drayton the most important innovator of any sort out there -- a seer who has correctly predicted the rise of the "citizen sector" in the past two decades and an audacious visionary of what will yet come.
Ashoka, named for a peace-minded third century BC Indian emperor, has identified and supported 1,500-plus Fellows, as it calls them, in 53 nations since Drayton founded it in 1980. (Five of them are winners of our 2005 Social Capitalist Awards.) It seeks out social entrepreneurs with enormous ideas -- solutions of such ambition and force that they cannot be denied. They are pioneers like Mary Allegretti, a Brazilian who thought of legally separating rubber-extraction rights from land-ownership rights in the Amazon rain forest to give indigenous rubber tappers economic standing -- and then made it happen.
What Drayton has created is a network of incalculable power. It's not so much about funding, though Fellows do receive a modest stipend. Rather, these entrepreneurs, who typically work alone amid hostile circumstances, get support, ideas, and, quite literally, protection. (When one Ashoka Fellow in Brazil attracted the ire, and gunshots, of local police for his drug rehab program, other Brazilian Fellows intervened with the state governor, and the problem went away.) How do you market a big idea? How do you run a big organization? How do you combat corrupt local politicians? The answers come from other Ashoka Fellows.
The potential of this emerging network is what gets Bill Drayton's blood coursing. Because he can see what's going on now, as clearly as he did 25 years ago. Society's citizen sector is expanding rapidly, irresistibly. Ashoka itself is growing, too: Its budget was set to jump 50%, to $30 million, in 2004. What happens in the next five years, he thinks, will prove crucial to, well, everything -- finally redressing the chasm between consumer and social sectors.
"An entrepreneur plows the field," Drayton says, "and it weakens the idea that change isn't possible. He seeds with some very user-friendly idea. The next entrepreneur comes, and there's more plowing, more seeding. Then hundreds. As we wire the world together, ideas flow from Bangladesh to the United States and Brazil, and back. This becomes multiplicative. The network becomes a distribution channel."
Drayton, 61, is a slight man, nearly inconspicuous, with thin hair and a frumpy suit. Self-effacing and unfailingly deferential, he is not charismatic in any traditional sense. When he speaks, it is at something just above a whisper -- and not always on message. David Bornstein, whose recent book How to Change the World (Oxford University Press, 2004) dwells on Ashoka, recalls asking Drayton to speak up above the din of traffic outside his apartment building. Drayton, typically, responded with an expert 20-minute discourse on the effect of canyons on noise.
But beneath the eccentric-uncle veneer is a willful and fearless thinker, a crusader of near-monastic devotion to the possibility of massive social change. (He is unmarried and childless, and lives in a simple apartment a few blocks from Ashoka's offices in Arlington, Virginia.) He first dedicated himself to the idea of Ashoka while a Harvard undergraduate in the early 1960s, then nurtured it through his years at Oxford, Yale Law, McKinsey, and the Environmental Protection Agency. "Bill is totally committed to an important idea, and has unshakable faith in what's he's doing and in the value of each person's life toward effecting change," says Julien Phillips, who worked with Drayton at McKinsey and was one of Ashoka's founding directors. "That's a tremendously powerful combination."
Really, all you need to know about Bill Drayton is this: His father was an explorer in the Sahara and British Columbia, and his mother a musician and impresario. That is Drayton: a creative explorer and promoter -- of ideas. And if his plan comes off, ideas will drive Ashoka's future. Ashoka is morphing into a knowledge-management organization, "the sum of its ideas," as Sushmita Ghosh, its president, puts it. Project managers in Virginia and elsewhere are charged with spotting emerging trends and connecting the dots. They apply solutions that have worked in one part of the world to problems in another, link together similar innovations to amplify their impact, and package ideas in ways that take them from local to global in reach. It resembles, in that way, the Catholic order of Jesuit priests, the only truly effective global service organization Drayton knows of.
Take a relatively simple problem, that of alpacas. In mountain villages of Bolivia, poor farmers with small alpaca herds traditionally have relied on unimaginably primitive production methods, using the edges of tin cans to shear wool. A local organization came up with an answer: a simple but efficient distribution system that grades wool, creating financial incentives for farmers to buy shears and wash the fiber -- eventually raising their incomes.
It's a great solution for Bolivian villagers. But what about alpaca farmers elsewhere in South America, or herders of similar livestock around the world? In fact, Ashoka has demonstrated the Bolivian model to sheep farmers on Nepal's Tibetan plateau -- and they understood it immediately. Making that sort of knowledge transfer happen all the time is something Ashoka is trying to systematize, so that global networks of small producers can constantly share innovations that improve their financial prospects.
Next big idea: Global partnerships between social entrepreneurs and business. To Drayton, these "hybrid value chains" are a no-brainer; the divergence of the consumer and citizen sectors was a "nonsensical historical accident" in the first place, and their reintegration is "profoundly important for the health of both." Business must use social networks to reach new markets. And the citizen sector needs the marketplace to gain financial sustainability.
Here's one example of such collaboration: Cemex, the big Mexican cement producer, has invented a plan that encourages families in urban slums to save for cement to build home additions, then provides them with discounted engineering services. Community activists love the scheme, since it promises to alleviate family abuse sparked by overcrowding. And it's great in principle for Cemex, which penetrates a difficult market and gets paid upfront, to boot.
But Cemex is having trouble retaining the reps it trains to promote the savings plan. So in the city of Puebla, Ashoka hooked the company up with Patricia Nava, an Ashoka Fellow who has created a Mary Kay-like network to provide sex education and AIDS prevention training. The strategy calls for Cemex to use Nava's existing distribution system, paying commissions to safe-sex educators when they refer cement customers. The partnership, Nava hopes, will "allow us to increase the life quality of many people while [creating] new alternatives to generate money for projects."
The bigger idea, yet untested: Cemex and other companies use Nava's network to sell other products. Or Cemex hooks up with similar social entrepreneurs to distribute cement across Mexico and elsewhere. Think of it as a matrix. "The challenge for us is finding ways to institutionalize this," says Valeria Budinich, the Ashoka vice president who oversees the initiative.
And the really bigger idea, the uebergoal, is that ultimately, innovative strategies like this one will spread themselves without Ashoka's help. "A hundred years from now, the field will know how to do this," Drayton says. "The pattern will be obvious. We'll be able to recognize a group of entrepreneurs coming up around the world on a new issue."
We will do so, he expects, because of structures and tools being established now. Already, Ashoka has launched the makings of a global accelerator for social entrepreneurs. McKinsey is providing management consulting, Hill & Knowlton the public relations expertise, and the International Senior Lawyers Project the legal support. It's also negotiating with several financial institutions to create new mechanisms for financing -- and it's toying with the notion of an online marketplace where entrepreneurs and funders could find each other. Drayton is even piloting a professional-services firm called Social Entrepreneur Associates -- like a McKinsey populated by citizen- sector professionals.
If this all comes to pass? Well, Drayton was meeting two years ago with eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, whose Omidyar Network ultimately committed to investing $20 million over five years in Ashoka. Drayton described Ashoka's central goal -- to speed and make possible the emergence of an entrepreneurial citizen sector. Omidyar pressed: "That's an intermediate goal. What are you really after?" It was a good question, Drayton realized.
And he thought, We have this network of entrepreneurs, all of them seeding social innovation. "That is changing a lot of things, upsetting local patterns, weakening existing structures, weakening the idea that things are the way they are. It's an invitation for people to step up and do things differently. That first change touches a series of people who weren't doing this before. They're not passive anymore. They're full citizens, change makers."
As of right then, Ashoka embraced a new goal: "Everyone a change maker."
"Think about the implications for society of that change," Drayton marvels. "The number of angry, frustrated, unhappy people would be dramatically reduced. And the probability of problems outrunning problem solvers would go away. We'd laugh at the idea. Every single being becomes a white blood cell that solves problems."
It's late in the evening, the skies outside are pitch-black, and Drayton is hacking with a nasty cold acquired on his travels. But he keeps talking. These ideas are too big and too important to be bound by schedules, or dinner, or exhaustion.
Drayton speaks often of Jean Monnet, the brilliant financier and diplomat who, in the 1940s and 1950s, drove for the unification of Europe. Monnet understood that a continental organization could solve problems that individual nations couldn't -- and he set in motion a dynamic that would produce, 20 years after his death, the Euro-based common monetary system.
"It's clear to me," Drayton says, "that you can't solve the world's problems unless you deal with them on a global level. Our field has to be integrated from the local right up to the global. From the beginning, we've had to fight against all national divisiveness. You can see the field moving up and accelerating. But at a global level, where's the Jean Monnet? I've wondered for years, who is the Monnet we're looking for?"
We are, perhaps, looking at him.
Keith H. Hammonds is Fast Company's deputy editor.
Buddha says; "He whose vision is deep, who is wise, who knows the path and what is outside the path, who has attained the highest end--him I call a Brahmin"
Monday, December 12, 2005
PHILANTHROPISTS HIT BULL'S EYE WITH DONATIONS
A new breed of donors bypasses charities to address specific needs
GORDON PITTS, Globe and Mail, Monday, December 5, 2005
David Cheriton is a Stanford University professor, global expert in computer networks and serial entrepreneur who, in the late 1990s, gave some start-up help to a couple of Stanford students.
Those students were Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and the $200,000 (U.S.) he sank into their company, Google Inc., has grown thousands of times, building a fortune that amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars.
But for all his willingness to trust kid researchers with his hard-earned cash, Mr. Cheriton, 54, is not ready to put equivalent faith in charities. Giving is a big priority for him, but not just to anybody.
"So much money going to charity is wasted," says Prof. Cheriton, 54, who distrusts mainstream charities with their high-paid executive directors and elaborate bureaucratic machinery.
That was the thinking behind his move this fall to donate $25-million (Canadian) in Google stock to Ontario's University of Waterloo and the computer science program where he earned his Masters and PhD degrees.
His rationale is the money would go directly to the people who could use it, the students, researchers and academics who, like Mr. Page and Mr. Brin, might change the world.
The B.C.-born, Alberta-raised Prof. Cheriton, who has been a founder, chief executive officer and technologist for a swath of Silicon Valley companies, is typical of the new giving coming out of the corner office.
The sums of money are growing fast, but the donors are more targeted and personally engaged in the deployment of their funds.
Prof. Cheriton's thinking is that he made a big bet at Google and it turned out exceedingly well. He's making another venture capital bet at University of Waterloo but the risk is smaller. The university already houses a demanding computer school that's a go-to source of talent for Silicon Valley and other technology incubators.
Prof. Cheriton doesn't plan to micromanage the application of the money he's giving Waterloo. He's busy enough teaching at Palo Alto, Calif.-based Stanford and serving as a technical adviser to a number of companies, including Sun Microsystems Inc.
But he has stipulated that the university will tackle what he sees as an enormous challenge in software development: to make it trustworthy in the functioning of large-scale computer systems.
The same problem-solving orientation inspired Marcel Desautels, who has donated $45-million over the past five years to two Canadian business schools, including, this fall, $22-million to what is now the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University.
When he was president of a credit information company, Creditel of Canada Ltd., from 1970 to 1996, he was frustrated because he could never find good managers with strong general skills.
So when he sold the company in 1996, and ended up as CEO of a $100-million foundation formed from the proceeds, management training was at the top of his philanthropy priorities.
Mr. Desautels, 71, has also championed integrative learning that cuts across functional disciplines, such as finance and marketing. His $21-million in donations over five years to the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management has funded a centre of integrative thinking, along with providing funds for new curriculum and teaching in that area.
At McGill, the money is going to a number of uses, including endowed chairs and fellowships. But there is also a nod to Mr. Desautels' consuming interest: an annual symposium in integrative learning.
The good thing, he says, is that McGill's leaders were already committed to an integrative approach. "I was very anxious to learn whether that idea already existed here."
Both men get their names on the schools they are funding, although they say that was not essential in the granting of the funds. But pride certainly plays a part in Mr. Desautels' motivation.
His foundation's funds do not come from his own pocket but from the disposition of Creditel, originally an association of client companies. But he says he built Creditel from almost nothing. "I feel that I earned every cent of it."
By contrast, Mr. Cheriton says he is somewhat embarrassed by the naming of the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, and is still trying to get used to his added profile.
Although today's donors work hard at structuring the scale, timing and form of donations, emotion still plays a part. Mr. Cheriton is giving to his alma mater, and the Manitoba-born Mr. Desautels is putting money back into Montreal, which his family helped settle in the 17th century.
Ian Ihnatowycz, president, founder and chief information officer of Toronto's Acuity Funds Ltd., recently gave $5-million to the Royal Conservatory of Music -- and part of the motivation stemmed from the long hours he spent as a boy in the conservatory's old building in Toronto, training to be a pianist. That teenage dream died, but he is giving $4-million of his total donation to the renovation of the hall, to be renamed after him.
Another key factor, he says, are the studies that show a link between musical skills and training and intellectual development in children.
These people are not done giving. Mr. Desautels figures he will deepen his relationship with U of T, McGill and his own alma mater, the University of Manitoba, to which he has also committed money. Mr. Cheriton also has more to give, although he insists "I'm not a billionaire."
The sums can grow in other ways. In 2002, Dick Haskayne, a retired chief executive officer and director of a number of companies, gave $16-million in cash and Calgary land to the University of Calgary's business school, which now carries his name. With the growth of Calgary and real estate values, Mr. Haskayne estimates his endowment would be worth about $30-million now if the property were sold.
He thinks donations like his should serve as examples. "There has been a lot of money made out West and across this country in the last number of years. The accumulation of wealth in Calgary these days is staggering," he says.
"There are a lot of good people who want to give back. They just have to figure out how to do it."
gpitts@globeandmail.ca
GORDON PITTS, Globe and Mail, Monday, December 5, 2005
David Cheriton is a Stanford University professor, global expert in computer networks and serial entrepreneur who, in the late 1990s, gave some start-up help to a couple of Stanford students.
Those students were Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and the $200,000 (U.S.) he sank into their company, Google Inc., has grown thousands of times, building a fortune that amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars.
But for all his willingness to trust kid researchers with his hard-earned cash, Mr. Cheriton, 54, is not ready to put equivalent faith in charities. Giving is a big priority for him, but not just to anybody.
"So much money going to charity is wasted," says Prof. Cheriton, 54, who distrusts mainstream charities with their high-paid executive directors and elaborate bureaucratic machinery.
That was the thinking behind his move this fall to donate $25-million (Canadian) in Google stock to Ontario's University of Waterloo and the computer science program where he earned his Masters and PhD degrees.
His rationale is the money would go directly to the people who could use it, the students, researchers and academics who, like Mr. Page and Mr. Brin, might change the world.
The B.C.-born, Alberta-raised Prof. Cheriton, who has been a founder, chief executive officer and technologist for a swath of Silicon Valley companies, is typical of the new giving coming out of the corner office.
The sums of money are growing fast, but the donors are more targeted and personally engaged in the deployment of their funds.
Prof. Cheriton's thinking is that he made a big bet at Google and it turned out exceedingly well. He's making another venture capital bet at University of Waterloo but the risk is smaller. The university already houses a demanding computer school that's a go-to source of talent for Silicon Valley and other technology incubators.
Prof. Cheriton doesn't plan to micromanage the application of the money he's giving Waterloo. He's busy enough teaching at Palo Alto, Calif.-based Stanford and serving as a technical adviser to a number of companies, including Sun Microsystems Inc.
But he has stipulated that the university will tackle what he sees as an enormous challenge in software development: to make it trustworthy in the functioning of large-scale computer systems.
The same problem-solving orientation inspired Marcel Desautels, who has donated $45-million over the past five years to two Canadian business schools, including, this fall, $22-million to what is now the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University.
When he was president of a credit information company, Creditel of Canada Ltd., from 1970 to 1996, he was frustrated because he could never find good managers with strong general skills.
So when he sold the company in 1996, and ended up as CEO of a $100-million foundation formed from the proceeds, management training was at the top of his philanthropy priorities.
Mr. Desautels, 71, has also championed integrative learning that cuts across functional disciplines, such as finance and marketing. His $21-million in donations over five years to the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management has funded a centre of integrative thinking, along with providing funds for new curriculum and teaching in that area.
At McGill, the money is going to a number of uses, including endowed chairs and fellowships. But there is also a nod to Mr. Desautels' consuming interest: an annual symposium in integrative learning.
The good thing, he says, is that McGill's leaders were already committed to an integrative approach. "I was very anxious to learn whether that idea already existed here."
Both men get their names on the schools they are funding, although they say that was not essential in the granting of the funds. But pride certainly plays a part in Mr. Desautels' motivation.
His foundation's funds do not come from his own pocket but from the disposition of Creditel, originally an association of client companies. But he says he built Creditel from almost nothing. "I feel that I earned every cent of it."
By contrast, Mr. Cheriton says he is somewhat embarrassed by the naming of the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, and is still trying to get used to his added profile.
Although today's donors work hard at structuring the scale, timing and form of donations, emotion still plays a part. Mr. Cheriton is giving to his alma mater, and the Manitoba-born Mr. Desautels is putting money back into Montreal, which his family helped settle in the 17th century.
Ian Ihnatowycz, president, founder and chief information officer of Toronto's Acuity Funds Ltd., recently gave $5-million to the Royal Conservatory of Music -- and part of the motivation stemmed from the long hours he spent as a boy in the conservatory's old building in Toronto, training to be a pianist. That teenage dream died, but he is giving $4-million of his total donation to the renovation of the hall, to be renamed after him.
Another key factor, he says, are the studies that show a link between musical skills and training and intellectual development in children.
These people are not done giving. Mr. Desautels figures he will deepen his relationship with U of T, McGill and his own alma mater, the University of Manitoba, to which he has also committed money. Mr. Cheriton also has more to give, although he insists "I'm not a billionaire."
The sums can grow in other ways. In 2002, Dick Haskayne, a retired chief executive officer and director of a number of companies, gave $16-million in cash and Calgary land to the University of Calgary's business school, which now carries his name. With the growth of Calgary and real estate values, Mr. Haskayne estimates his endowment would be worth about $30-million now if the property were sold.
He thinks donations like his should serve as examples. "There has been a lot of money made out West and across this country in the last number of years. The accumulation of wealth in Calgary these days is staggering," he says.
"There are a lot of good people who want to give back. They just have to figure out how to do it."
gpitts@globeandmail.ca
Thursday, December 08, 2005
RIGHT LIVELIHOOD AWARDS
Two Canadians win 'alternative Nobels'
Activists' work to prevent the privatization of water cited for Right Livelihood Awards
Associated Press and Canadian PressPublished: Thursday, December 08, 2005
STOCKHOLM -- Two Canadian recipients of this year's Right Livelihood Awards, also known as the "alternative Nobels," on Tuesday said privatization of fresh water resources represents a threat to human rights.
"The growing fresh water crisis is perhaps the most urgent environmental and human-rights issue of our times and, for this reason, water must be preserved as a common heritage," Maude Barlow, a Canadian activist for fair trade and human rights, told reporters in Stockholm.
Barlow and Tony Clarke, another Canadian activist, shared the award worth about $290,000 Cdn with activists from Malaysia and a group representing the Kalahari Bushmen. Barlow heads the Council of Canadians, a public advocacy group. Clarke has campaigned for an alternate trade model that takes power away from big corporations. Their recent work has focused on finding trade models that prevent the privatization of water resources.
The award was announced in September. Winners were cited for promoting justice, fair trade and cultural renewal. The awards were founded in 1980 by Jakob von Uexkull, who sold his valuable stamp collection to recognize work he believed was ignored by the prestigious Nobel Prizes.
Barlow and Clarke were cited for "their exemplary and long-standing worldwide work for trade justice and the recognition of the fundamental human right to water."
Roy Sesana, the leader of the organization First People of the Kalahari, was honoured for his fight against authorities wanting to evict the Bushmen in Botswana from their ancestral lands.
Irene Fernandez, a Malaysian opposition leader and rights activist, was honoured for her work to stop violence against women and the abuse of migrant workers.
"The thread of globalization connects peoples all over the world. But it is the impact of this globalization that tends to divide and marginalize various communities," she said Wednesday.
Mexican artist Francisco Toledo won an honorary award for "devoting himself and his art" to protect the cultural heritage and environment of the Oaxaca region of Mexico.
The awards will be presented in a ceremony at the Swedish parliament Dec. 9, one day before the Nobel Prizes are handed out.
Activists' work to prevent the privatization of water cited for Right Livelihood Awards
Associated Press and Canadian PressPublished: Thursday, December 08, 2005
STOCKHOLM -- Two Canadian recipients of this year's Right Livelihood Awards, also known as the "alternative Nobels," on Tuesday said privatization of fresh water resources represents a threat to human rights.
"The growing fresh water crisis is perhaps the most urgent environmental and human-rights issue of our times and, for this reason, water must be preserved as a common heritage," Maude Barlow, a Canadian activist for fair trade and human rights, told reporters in Stockholm.
Barlow and Tony Clarke, another Canadian activist, shared the award worth about $290,000 Cdn with activists from Malaysia and a group representing the Kalahari Bushmen. Barlow heads the Council of Canadians, a public advocacy group. Clarke has campaigned for an alternate trade model that takes power away from big corporations. Their recent work has focused on finding trade models that prevent the privatization of water resources.
The award was announced in September. Winners were cited for promoting justice, fair trade and cultural renewal. The awards were founded in 1980 by Jakob von Uexkull, who sold his valuable stamp collection to recognize work he believed was ignored by the prestigious Nobel Prizes.
Barlow and Clarke were cited for "their exemplary and long-standing worldwide work for trade justice and the recognition of the fundamental human right to water."
Roy Sesana, the leader of the organization First People of the Kalahari, was honoured for his fight against authorities wanting to evict the Bushmen in Botswana from their ancestral lands.
Irene Fernandez, a Malaysian opposition leader and rights activist, was honoured for her work to stop violence against women and the abuse of migrant workers.
"The thread of globalization connects peoples all over the world. But it is the impact of this globalization that tends to divide and marginalize various communities," she said Wednesday.
Mexican artist Francisco Toledo won an honorary award for "devoting himself and his art" to protect the cultural heritage and environment of the Oaxaca region of Mexico.
The awards will be presented in a ceremony at the Swedish parliament Dec. 9, one day before the Nobel Prizes are handed out.
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