Posted in March 2012

Good & Gasp #3 – Social Enterprise in Chinese, EcoMind, Common Wealth, Muppetgate, Human Engineering

Good & Gasp #3

Social Enterprise in Chinese, EcoMind, Common Wealth, Muppetgate, Human Engineering

Themes that caught my attention, interest or made my eyes roll while roaming the web world of doing good:

  • Social Enterprise in Chinese – 3 definitions of “social enterprise” in the same (huge) country?
  • EcoMind & Mental Myths – do the “end of growth” pessimists have it all wrong?
  • Common Resource Use Charges – should companies pay for polluting (and should we get some of the proceeds of such “common wealth” charges)?
  • Goldman Sachs’ Muppetgate – why do GS’ “muppet” clients keep coming back for more?
  • Human vs. Climate Engineering – should we consider genetically “making” humans more environmentally friendly?

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The Good Thermometer – March 2012

The Good Thermometer keeps track of what our Good Generation community is interested in reading and talking about.

Please take 30 seconds for 3 clicks and share what content you tend to read most, and what you would like to see more of in the future.

As always, results are shown instantly!

Thanks a lot again for swinging by, hope to see you again soon. Feel free to send a note if you got thoughts or suggestions!

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The Quest for Originality or: “Help! Everything Has Already Been Done!”

As easy to find as a needle in a haystack!As someone who did not grow up with a habit of inventing things, I wonder sometimes what it must be like to have that type of mind. It is less creativity that I’m referring to as much as the notion of originality. More precisely: how to cope and avoid going nuts when you cannot really come up with anything truly original!

Remember the time I was thinking about why we don’t consider more seriously the idea of social “replicaneurship” instead of the traditional “entrepreneurship”, in order to take some of that “wheel reinvention” habit out that we tend to see nowadays? At the time I wondered if sometimes we would be doing good enough if we could simply take well-conceived social change models that some brilliant person elsewhere had already come up with, say, microcredit, and simply replicate this idea in our own neighborhoods. Instead, what we tend to see is many people starting up their own social enterprise without much research about what has already been done, i.e., with little regard to existing best practices. Sometimes this wastes time, money, or both, or worse: it can create widespread confusion among the landscape of funders, beneficiaries and practitioners.

In that sense, the problem was that people sometimes overestimate the importance of originality to create breakthroughs and/or attain fame.

Today, I am pondering what we should do when we actually DO seek originality… but can’t find it because thanks to the Internet, you can find your awesome idea already done just about fourteen times over – five years ago, that is – maybe even by a guy or girl living in the town next to you!

Oh, the angst, the frustration!

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Good Profile – Stacy McCoy (Give To Get Jobs)

Good Profiles feature members of our Good Generation who are either out there in the field doing interesting work or still in the trenches of schools and institutions waiting to make their mark on the world. Have your own story to tell? Know someone who would be great to be profiled? Please sign-up or leave a note here!

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What do you do for a living nowadays?

Currently, I am the co-founder of Give To Get Jobs. Give To Get Jobs is a for-profit social enterprise job board for jobs that use a sustainable business model to address a social and/or environmental mission, mainly social enterprise and CSR. As a social enterprise ourselves, we donate a portion of the proceeds to fund job creation programs.

As one of the co-founders, I manage a lot of the day-to-day operations and get involved with developing long-term strategy. You can find me updating social media channels, managing the blog, building partnerships, reaching out to social enterprises, publishing job posts, you name it!

Is “doing good” a key reason why you chose this job?

Yes. The reason why I launched a social enterprise is because of the opportunity to do good. I view “doing good” as having a positive impact on the world. It is actively pursuing something benefiting instead of harming society.

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Book Review – “The End of Growth”

Recently read:

The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality (Richard Heinberg)

My grade (1 to 5): 5 – thorough account of our dire ecological and economic predicament with convincing arguments that things will likely get worse before they get better, and that radical shifting in our way of life is likely in the books no matter how much we deny or accept this view of the future

Key Ideas:

  • A sobering and well-researched story on why economic growth, and our contemporary thought and market system based on this assumption, is fundamentally going to end, leading us to a world where we have to make do with a more “steady-state” economy (and smaller world population).
  • The reason why economic growth will end is because we will likely reach within our lifetime the limits of environmental resources that have to-date never been properly accounted for – even ignored – by the disciplines of economics, accounting and finance; in other words, we will reach a state of “peak everything”, most critical of course will be the depletion of oil and water resources as pillars of our global economy and well-being.

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The Lorax Test: How to Judge Multi-Partner CSR Effectiveness?

How many of you (non-Americans) know of Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax,” the loveable, furry orange, ultimate tree-hugging champion?

How many of you went to see the new movie in the past few weeks?

Then surely, some of you must have heard about the somewhat odd controversy surrounding this movie’s marketing campaigns by various corporate sponsors. It’s funny to begin with of course, that a movie character defined by his resistance to corporations’ greed and their historical disregard for the environment’s health, should be endorsed by a long list of corporations at the same time! Smells like greenwashing?

Not so fast. Experienced sustainability pundits like Marc Gunther have noted appropriately in articles about the issue that the judgment of a “sell-out” can seldom be made in a black and white manner. More precisely, given that we had a big set of corporations sponsoring this movie, some with better CSR/sustainability records than others, the question seems if it is possible to call the Lorax a sell-out or an earnest effort at corporate responsibility in general. Also, how can we test the effectiveness of so many companies involved in such a veritable “CSR smorgsabord”?

I guess you could call this the “Lorax Test.” What does it measure, you ask?

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Competition vs. Collaboration in Social Entrepreneurship – Can’t We All Be Friends?

In a recent article I read, the author, Yotam Ariel, tries to offer a social entrepreneur working in solar lamp distribution an opportunity to cut his costs by half by arranging for bulk-buying with other solar entrepreneurs to reduce the unit cost for each manufacturer. The entrepreneur refuses, citing that he would rather not help his competitors to “free-ride” off of his (bigger) purchasing power.

Hence, the author wonders why it is that people with similar social missions are still hesitating or outright refusing to share resources. What fears or concerns motivates them to do so? What speaks in favor or against collaborating with other social entrepreneurs? How much competition do we need among social businesses?

Good questions in my book! I wonder what you think after indulging my thoughts for a moment…

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Update – International Impact Investing Challenge 2012 – Finalists Announced!

UPDATE – Round 1 of I3C is finished now and finalists have been announced! Was a fun list I went through with neat ideas and glad to see 11 teams advancing to San Francisco for the April 13 live presentations.

Finalists below. Congratulations to folks from Columbia SIPA, Duke Fuqua, Kellogg, Stanford IPS, Berkeley Haas, UCLA Andersen, Chicago Harris School, USC Moore School, and USC Marshall School – excellent job!

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Good Archives #1 – Law vs. Justice, Respecting the Poor, Sustainable Entrepreneurship, Do Good Career Choices

If it’s true that the blogosphere is really skin-deep and that we tend to stay only on the first page of any blog, then perhaps there is some value in the ancient respected work of excavation and restoration.

To that end, I thought it might be useful to periodically dig up some previous posts and put them on a little list. Since most of the themes and questions on GG tend to be not time-dependent anyway, no dusting required! Also, some recently joined folks may find interest in them but would never in a million years bother to click through the history of this blog.

Topics in Archive #1:

  • Justice – Law vs. Justice in the Occupy Wall Street Movement
  • Poverty – Pity vs. Compassion when thinking about “The Poor”
  • Sustainability – The Right to Entrepreneurship vs. Sustainability
  • Careers – An Approach for Choosing a Do-Good Job
  • Reflections – Defining our Personal Boundaries for “Doing Good”

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On Justice

Law does not mean Justice (d’oh!) – Occupy Wall Street’s Core Challenge

  • What is the viability of the Occupy Wall Street Movement? In today’s society, is it possible to ask for justice (right or wrong) in a system where legality (rules and laws) is the official decision-making factor of a country’s rulers?

On Poverty

Respecting the Poor – What You Should and Should Not Expect from “Doing Good” Unto Others

  • How should we think about “The Poor”? What is the importance of periodically re-humanizing those we call “poor” people and what is the critical difference between “pity” and “compassion”? What’s at stake if we keep referring to those we seek to help as “the poor” without thinking about what that actually means to them (and what it would mean to us if we were in their shoes)?

On Sustainability

The Dilemma of Sustainability – Should Entrepreneurship be our Natural Right?

  • If we are serious about sustainability, should we start managing or impose stricter standards on the way every day in the world new companies get started that just add to the burden of resource depletion and emissions? Should the right to economic self-actualization overrule the need for environmental stewardship? How should we manage this unbridled activity especially in developing markets where people tend to be less educated or interested in sustainability?

On Careers

4 Steps to Choosing a “Good Career” (Part 1) – Scaling of Impact

  • How should we think about choosing careers in the so-called “do-good” jobs of social entrepreneurship, NGOs, philanthropy, impact investing, etc.? How can we make the decision as individually relevant as possible to our own desires and varying needs for ambitious results? Should we care more about how much impact we are having or how we feel about what we do?

On Reflections

Weekly Ponder #1 – Defining our Do-Good Boundaries: Will my Effort ever be Enough?

  • How can we define how much we should get engaged in the business of doing good or changing the world? Should we volunteer, work part time, work full time for our cause? How much of our effort is “enough” to achieve those goals? How much is “enough” for our personal satisfaction? What does this depend on?
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Weekly Ponder #7 – The Nature of Ambition: How Serious Should We Take Ourselves?

Weekly Ponder #7

The Nature of Ambition: How Serious Should We Take Ourselves?

Last week, we concluded some thoughts on the nature of ego and the way it affects different individuals’ approach to social entrepreneurship. While we tend to speak of ego usually negatively, I pointed out that at best, it serves as a basic motivating force for us to spring to action – even if some may not like the inherent “selfish” motivation.

Today, my thoughts have been circling around this idea of motivation and its big brother – ambition. Specifically, I have been wondering about how we can reconcile the notion of ambition, which deals by definition with the future, with the notion of being at peace and content with the present. Think about all the Buddhist teachings that encourage us to reject attachment, desire and expectations, in order to diminish or avoid suffering.

I suspect that there is a good number of people in the do-good and social entrepreneurship space today that would identify with Buddhist teachings (or perhaps, not?). If so, would it be ignorant of me to think that if you are a social entrepreneur or consider yourself active in this “social” sector, you probably have a considerable amount of ambition?

And if that is the case, do you have some advice for the Good Generation on how to balance forward-looking “ambition” with present-focused Buddhism? Can you have both? Answering this question may be a non-trivial component of the quest for happiness for many folks out there in the field, fighting the good battle.

What’s further at stake seems to be this: at a time when we keep saying that we need more and more people to engage, to strive, to change the world, we are implicitly saying that we need more people to follow the call of their ambition to make their dreams a reality. Where, then, does this leave us?

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