India’s First Social Enterprise and Investment Forum: Sankalp 2009

Change doesn't just happen - It needs faith and cheerleaders. And I should add Sankalp -Determination.
And institutional change requires changemakers to gather and become catalysts for action. So I am excited about Sankalp 2009 - India’s first Social Enterprise and Investment Forum with the primary goal of bringing together various stakeholders sharing a common conviction that capital should be invested to create multiple bottom-line returns (financial, social and environmental) and not exclusively financial (profit-maximizing) or social (philanthropic) returns. Set against the background in India, where 924.1 million Indians (nearly 95% of India’s population) have incomes below USD 3000 per annum in local purchasing power, and 78% of this from rural India, India has been able to clock growth rates between 6.5% and 7% despite the slowdown. India presents us with questions of development coupled with the unlimited potential of an emerging market. The event is designed to recognise and award truly impactful enterprises and catalyze investments in sectors such as agriculture and rural innovations, affordable education, healthcare inclusion, environment and clean energy, and highly scalable social models. Sankalp 2009 featured Naina Lal Kidawai, CEO of HSBC India, Vijay Mahajan, CEO of Basix, Anthony Bugg Levine of Rockefeller Foundation, Gurcharan Das (former MD P&G), Sarath Naru of Venture East, and Vineet Rai, founder Aavishkar.
Sankalp Forum is the brainchild of Intellecap – a pioneer in the multiple bottom line investment industry. The key partners for the inaugural 2009 event include Rockefeller Foundation from the US, Rianta Capital from UK, National Bank for Rural and Agriculture Development (NABARD) and Rural Innovations Network (RIN). Sankalp Forum (held in Mumbai, April 28th) details at http://www.sankalpforum.com/ .
I have been spending 4 months out of 12 in India for the past 24 months, doing seminars, giving talks, attending conferences and writing (triple bottom line investing article in ISB Insight, Hyderabad) to create mindshare and thought leadership in the area of business creation for social impact so Sankalp 2009 marks a major milestone in my journey. I will be keeping you posted on the actions resulting from Sankalp.

A different kind of story - win big, think small

Have you noticed how the stock market never goes up or down? It soars or plummets. Somehow hyperbole hustles us to the same stories over and over. So whenever I see mainstream news with a story truly different I feel the need to applaud. Such is the case with CBS news story on micro-lending. Bigger is not always better. Think micro-loans. And how they are giving good returns when banks are loaded with "toxic assets" of large loans. The CBS story, on location in Peru, is one of the best explanations of micro-loans (features MicroPlace, Ashwini Narayanan) and truly inspiring. Another big player in this space is Kiva and there is a nice blog with details about the two. But here's the main point: Micro-finance isn't so much about the fact that the loan amount is small - its about the fact that loans are being made to people who the banks have declared "not creditworthy". It means loans are made to people normal banks don't give loans to. Banks, using metrics based on collateral (i.e. how much they already own), decided that these people could not pay back their loans. In other words, you have to be rich already to get a loan. Now isn't that backwards? This is the Big Idea; The Big Win of micro-lending phenomenon. Micro-loans and the fact that they get almost 99 percent payback prove that establishment thinking is wrong; can be wrong. So it is really unfortunate that micro-finance still remains in the "boutique" category (yes- just calculate the percentage of money in micro-loans versus total lending) and seems a long way from becoming mainstream. There are entrepreneurial efforts (e.g. UnitedProsperity) to make lending to the poor more viable by raising money for guarantees and this is change in the making.

Change doesn't just happen - It needs faith and cheerleaders - and -yes mainstream media can do a lot by uncovering stories like this one. Cheers for CBS.

Digital Media and Learning Awards -- 19 projects share $12M

Nineteen projects from around the world were awarded funding today to explore digital media’s ability to help people learn. Administered by HASTAC, winners include a radically affordable $12 TV-computer, a video blogging site for young women in Mumbai, India, and a cutting-edge mobile phone application that lets children conduct digital wildlife spotting and share that information with friends. All projects are fantastic - one of my favorites because it has technology, global scope, climate, and engages children is : DigitalOcean -engages middle and high school students in 200 classrooms around the world in monitoring, analyzing, and sharing information about the declining global fish population that, in its implications for humans and the ecosystem, dwarfs other food issues in our time. DigitalOcean uses multi-disciplinary teams of students, scientists, and new media experts, partnering with Google Ocean, NASA GLOBE, and ePals, to engage the next generation of consumers in a global dialogue on the interrelationships among local human customs, regulatory laws, fishing practices, wildlife management, and the future of the sea. In the young innovators section my favorite (since I worked with ACCI to promote science education) Cellcraft: Addressing a decreasing interest and proficiency in the biological sciences among American teenagers, Cellcraft seeks to engage kids in ways that make biological principles personally meaningful and relevant. Built on the powerful Maxis Spore strategy game engine, Cellcraft will put middle and high school students in control of a cell, tasked with the job of coordinating all of the organelles in order to process food, create new parts, fight off viruses, and grow. During game play, students learn valuable biological information, while also developing organizational, planning, coordination, delegation, and logistical skills. This annual competition- $2 million- is funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and is a good one to track for inspiration.

Mainstreaming Electric Vehicles- from Tesla to Reva

One sure sign that a particular innovation is approaching mainstream consciousness is a burgeoning of obscure acronyms in that technology, and by that yardstick, electric vehicles are about about to leap onto the great American Highway. Do you know what REEV is? A Chevy Volt is one. Who would have thought! Chevrolet? EV being an electric vehicle, REEV is a Range Extended EV (when there is a gas engine also that kicks in), HEV is Hybrid EV and PHEV is a Plug-in HEV and so on - all modifications to address the main issue with electric cars - what is know in the industry as "Range Anxiety" - which is the nervousness people have about running out of charge on the highway. Tesla - is all EV, and so one of the world’s most closely watched start ups, and having the most brand recognition of any “green” or alternative-energy company- even though the Indian company's Reva EV (typical daily distance requirements being smaller in India) has been shipping for a while. So last Thursday I went to to the Stanford Law and Technology Association (SLATA) seminar with Craig Harding, General Consul, discussing the regulatory environment relating to the sale of electric cars, the batteries that power the cars, and current state and potential developments in the electric car industry. I learned about how laws obsolete as fast as technology- e.g. Tesla body designers found they could significantly extend the range of the car by replacing the side-view mirrors with digital cameras in the back - but they found they cant eliminate the mirrors because of how the car-safety laws are written- and it will take a few years of work to get the guidelines rewritten - who had heard of cameras when the car manufacturing laws got written? The biggest issue for Tesla is safety (batteries get hot and explode). The Tesla all electric vehicle has 7,800 small batteries- there are no large batteries for safety reasons. Their solution to safety and range anxiety is to lash all of these together and never let the temperature vary by more than a few degrees across the entire set. That's $25,000 of battery cost. Batteries are pretty simple in principle with just three parts - Anode/Cathode/Electrolyte and they have three main issues when it comes to passenger cars- Materials/Costs/Safety. Hence the Tesla innovation is a big deal. And yes, Craig said there is an agreement with recyclers to process spent batteries (expected life 5-7 years at this time). They say that in two years, by the time a more affordable roadster comes to market, there will be plenty of competition in the XX-EV space. I think that's good news. Though Craig was a bit down that day - saying orders are slow right now and he had to let his administrative assistant go as part of the cost cutting measure. But he is not getting much sympathy from me. The Tesla sedan, standard price tag at $60K has 165 mile range and the premium version with 300 mile range is $80K. The Reva car is expensive (for India) to buy but pays the extra off in just a few years.

Challenge-Based Learning- New Report

In the largest study to date of the practice anywhere, new findings from the New Media Consortium's K12 think tank confirm that challenge-based learning is extremely effective with 9th grade students, including those most at risk of dropping out. The report, entitled Challenge-Based Learning: An Approach for Our Time, followed six schools across the US as they implemented the practice in high school classes.Challenge-based learning is not a curriculum. It is a strategy to engage kids in any class by giving them significant that have real-world implications. More than 320 students and nearly 30 teachers in the schools, all of which had implemented a policy of providing full-featured notebook computers to every student, worked together to research, formulate strategies, and ultimately implement local solutions to problems of global significance. Students used their laptops for just-in-time research, to document their rationales, and to present the outcomes of their strategies. The outcomes of the three-week experiment, conducted last fall, were overwhelmingly positive.The study revealed that both teachers and students found challenge-based learning significantly effective and engaging, even with the students most at risk of dropping out. Teachers noted that students learned more, and produced more than expected. Students reported learning skills that overlapped almost completely with the critical competencies identified by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.The project was organized by and built on work by NMC Platinum Partner, Apple Education, where the concept was initially developed. (For more on the approach, see Apple's site at http://www.challengebasedlearning.org.) The NMC's role was to assess and evaluate the outcomes of the work.The teachers, students, and staff that participated agreed to allow their experiences to be exhaustively chronicled and researched. The students, primarily 9th and 10th graders, were chosen based on the desire to represent not only a variety of urban, suburban, and rural settings, but also private, public, and magnet schools, richly diverse schools and relatively homogeneous schools, and both affluent and low socio-economic status schools.The report traces the development of challenged-based learning over the last several decades, and makes a strong case for why it is needed in schools, especially in programs serving ninth graders. (Studies from the National Center for Education Statistics show that more than 30% of students will drop out before the end of their first year of high school. Challenge-based learning is offered as a strategy to reverse that growing trend.) In addition to reporting on the outcomes of the experiment, the report extensively details teacher and student experiences throughout the project. Recommendations are provided for schools that wish to try the approach themselves. The 38-page research report is available free of charge and has been released with a Creative Commons license to facilitate its widespread use, easy duplication, and broad distribution. The report is online at http://www.nmc.org/pdf/Challenge-Based-Learning.pdf [PDF, 38 pp, 672 kb].
From - Larry Johnson, Chief Executive Officer, NMC

Debugging the Elephant: My Aha! moment at IIT Clean Tech 2009

Have you heard that elephant story? When 4 blind people touch different parts of an elephant and they just can't figure out how it can possibly function? Software designers are required to laugh at this story to make the grade but it is relevant for all new endeavors. When it comes to figuring out the clean energy space- yep I didn't have the big picture. Aha! All is changed. On March 21, I attended the IIT Clean Tech Forum: "To inform and educate attendees about opportunities for jobs, businesses, investments, research and development in the emerging new energy economy." But I got more. I got to visualise the elephant. A software person, at such events, I position myself as a dilettante- its a defensive posture. The conversation quickly moves into PV cells, Silicon stuff, Nano or Giant windmills, even biomass (a polite word for waste matter among other things). Else its about policy, big government programs and so on. The Forum featured great talks (Solar energy, Biofuels, Energy Storage etc. ) but I was really interested in the talk by Raj Vaswani, Silver Spring Networks, on Energy Management. It was great - overview as well as details; not to mention entertaining. The energy crisis is real - NIMBY -> BANANA -> NOPE (not in my backyard, build anywhere nothing anywhere near anything, not on planet earth). He also called software the "Fifth Fuel" (I love that) and mentioned demand side management several times. I got the trunk of the elephant - I knew how software skills could be applied. But I still didn't have the big picture - Who cares enough to help me build my dream? The real AHA moment came during the panel. It came from Adam Grosser, Foundation Capital. In a nutshell: "Demand side applications are more amenable to VC funds than supply side- e.g. storage, transmission, data management - like Raj's company". So the companies that focus on "efficiency" are the "low hanging fruit" - and that is what VC's fund. Infrastructure energy projects are supply side - which is where solar, wind etc come in - payback (and witness increase in government funding) comes after a little longer period of time and required different capital strategy. That's it- this is how I can slice/dice the space - tell the tail from the trunk and what's in between. So, if you are in clean tech or thinking of getting into it- create a framework that works for you: ask - Supply side or demand side? Where is my expertise a strength? Low hanging fruit or long term payback? and then develop your funding and execution strategy. An oh, by the way, Raj's company is growing and hiring like crazy - write hr@silverspringnet.com . A word of caution - Raj says "my customers are the big Utility companies and they don't even like low hanging fruit; they will just pick up the fruit if its laying on the ground."

IBM Water Services Business will open doors for green innovation

I love this latest announcement from IBM Global Services - a new business in water purification and management that could become $20 billion in 5 years - and not just because it makes great headlines (Blue goes Green, IBM Dives into Water, Water is the New Oil... - there are tons of links out there). Its about scale. IBM's announcement leads the way for large corporations to think entrepreneurial; think "smart" - find a big problem that needs solving, apply a healthy dose of technology, innovate and get a new business going. Entrepreneurs have been thinking smart in this space; but when it comes to infrastructure kinds of issues, there is a big gap in innovating smart and taking the innovation to market and repeat the cycle. Because the business model is a little more convoluted and sustainability takes longer to achieve there is not enough VC money around and there it is too much risk for government funding other than the slow university channel. IBM will be able to bring technology, staying power as well as a business model to the green business. So it will endure and scale- hopefully. And a host of new businesses will emerge in this space. This announcement reminds me of the early days of the software industry; I am from the time when software had no business model - we were subsidised by hardware dollars. It just needed Microsoft to get big - and that spawned a whole lot of innovation in software. At that time, startups had one exit strategy - get bought up by Microsoft - and VC dollars became available. Not to mention all the other big businesses that got into the space. So that is why the IBM announcement is so great - its great for IBM (especially since water is just one of a host of other infrastructure services they are looking at) and great for launching innovation to solve a critical environmental issue. Apologies to folks who wanted to hear more about the technology - which is absolutely fascinating - maybe later..This time it is about my favourite subject - How technology+business = social impact scaled. And the fact that big business is getting into it.

How would you advise a friend who wanted to get promoted from manager to director level?

Typically at the Director level, leadership is reflected in having additional breadth - including scanning external factors and making new proposals. What I would do, in such a situation is: scan organisation for director level people I admire; list typical things they do; list the sorts of things I do - make a match and identify gaps if any between the two lists. If gaps are there, develop proposal to fill gaps. Approach your manager to let them know that the organisation will benefit with your proposal; you are the best person to follow on proposal; explain why this is a good thing for the organisation - work off of your list- be concrete - its about the work. If no support from manager (could be because they don't have the authority), inform that you want to go to next level etc - make presentation and ask manager to be there to show support. Meanwhile garner support from peers and employees for initiative.
The same method works for leading change management - which social entrepreneurs must deal with.
Question - posted by Betty Lamarr on WITI group -

Campaign using Social Networking

Ever since I wrote about Obama style campaign for India politics, I have been gtting email asking for details. So check this WSJ article "How a young tech entrepreneur translated Barack Obama into the idiom of Facebook" written by Amy Schatz in May 2007 - useful pointers on how things got started.

By the Numbers: An Obama Style Digital Makeover for India Politics?

I attended the Accel Stanford Symposium on Feb 25, 2009, The Impact of 2008's Dramatic Events on the World of Digital Media and Technology. Like others who know about Obama's tech savvy youth following, I have been curious about the nitty-gritty of the digital (My.BarackObama.com) campaign so I was all ears for the panel "Technology Priorities in an Obama Administration: Lessons from the Campaign" with Matthew Barzun (National Finance Team for Barack Obama) and Chris Hughes (co-founder facebook who time off to be Architect of Obama's digital Campaign Strategies). But I am not just curious for the sake of curious (as anyone who knows me would guess). I have been thinking; India elections are coming up next year, with Mumbai attacks and India's growing economic abilities, India-youth is willing and able to engage with the political system to free it of corruption and bring in young leaders (avg. politician age is 70 I think).

The question is How? Viola - Like Obama did.

Barzun explained the Hunting vs. Farming Model (from Purple Cow, Seth Godin) strategy. Obama realised he didn't have a long list of large-amount donors to chase (hunting) so he decided to grow new ones (farming). Some numbers: Feb 2007 Clinton starts with database of 250,000 names and Obama has 20,000 names; March 31, 2007 Clinton supporter calls convert names to 50,000 donors (divide by 5) and Obama digital campaign converts names to 100,000 donors (multiply by 5)- How? 1. Ask never-heard-of people to get 10 donations at $25 each and get the emails of the donors- all did it. 2. Raise expectations (ask for another $25) and so on. The goal was to have email lists larger even than the donors - to increase reach. Eventually -they ended up with an average $90/person donation. Chris explained the architecture and said they did regular surveys for course correction. They found that people like to donate via email and they liked to form community over facebook. So they did both. For example Barzun paraphrased the kind of email letters that were written - designed to show - in a young people way- Respect, Empower, Include - the campaign theme. But the panel was skimpy on financial detail. So, I cornered Chris Hughes (thanks Martha!):

ME - Really Chris, so how did you do it? I want to do the same for India elections next year

CH- I don't know how popular facebook is in India. It won't work. Besides its expensive and I can't do numbers for India

ME: Just give me US numbers; I'll do the conversion. My background is software development.

CH: It took 8-10 full time developers to create the platform, $15-20 million investment, and most importantly the push has to come from the top. It couldn't have worked without Obama pushing it. and he was right to push because we raised 3-4 times that in funding; not to mention the large number in popular support that converted to votes.

ME: And you also had lots of free time donated to the digital campaign - like yourself.

CH: Ah yes. Not just me but hundreds of staffers and campaign people gave time.

ME: thanks.

And here I am thinking - for India - money can be got, expertise can be got, digital model can be adapted to allow for lack of PC penetration in rural India, BUT- who is this leader? Rahul Gandhi are you listening? Or send this to your favorite candidate - I have no allegiances yet.