Funding Ideas, Backing People

Nelson Mandela Theatre, Said Business School
Wednesday 28th March 2007

• The major Forum workshop sessions happened throughout the Said Business School over the following two days. The workshops were panel sessions made up of short speeches from leaders in the field, followed with comments and questions from the audience. You can imagine, with seven major sessions happening at the same time, we were spoilt for choice. I chose three sessions to focus on: Funding Ideas and Backing People, Bringing Projects to Scale, and the Future of Philanthropy.

• This first panel explored funding strategies from multiple perspectives including innovation from within foundations, private sector investment for public good, and non-profit venture investing. Panelists included JB Schram, founder of the College Summit, Ion Yadigaroglu of Capricorn Investment, Edward Skloot of the Surdna Foundation, and Jacqueline Novogratz of the Acument Fund. The session was facilitated by David Bornstein, the author of the book on social entrepreneurs “How to Change the World” (which we have given to all our Fellowship members in New Zealand).

• It was Jacqueline Novogratz, founder and CEO of the Acumen Fund who most captured my attention at this workshop. Her description of the strategy of investment behind the Acumen Fund is well worth looking into further.

Acumen is a non-profit global venture fund that seeks to demonstrate that small amounts of philanthropic capital, combined “with large doses of business acumen” can build thriving enterprises that serve the poor. The Acumen Fund currently manages $20 million in investments in South Asia and Eastern/Southern Africa, all focussed on delivering affordable healthcare, water and housing to the poor. Acumen also runs a Fellowship programme which is focussed on “building the next generation of business leaders with an understanding of global issues and poverty”.

Resources.
— Streaming video of this session "Funding Ideas, Backing People" featuring David Bornstein, JB Schramm, Ion Yadigaroglu, Edward Skloot and Jacqueline Novogratz (Real Player required) 1 hour 56 mins
— Acumen Fund overview brochure
— “Designing Change: How venture philanthropy fund Acumen uses design thinking to help solve real-world problems” by Jessi Hempel in Business Week 12 March 2007 (Reader)
— David Bornstein speaking to the Duke University Fuqua School of Business (2006)
— How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas by David Bornstein (book pub 2004 by Oxford University Press)

"Funding Ideas, Backing People" workshop (Real Player required) 1 hour 56 mins

Paper on Social Investment

• The Skoll Centre in Oxford has produced a paper on Social Investment by Jed Emmerson, Tim Freundlich and Jim Fruchterman. It is a good basis to explore the whole area of social investment, and I think will be a useful paper to give us a framework for future discussions at the Social Innovation Investment Group.

The paper argues that the social entrepreneur movement has a critical need to address the funding gaps in risk-taking capital for social enterprises. The new enterprises need investment if they are to grow and prove their innovations, and this needs to be investment that shares the risks of the enterprise.

But a dearth of such capital is hampering the sector’s development ... and the authors of this paper are arguing that new instruments and stakeholder relationships need to arise if we are going to meet this challenge:

“ Put simply, between the traditional approach to financing non-profit ventures through grants, fundraising and limited use of debt, and the traditional approach to financing for-profit ventures through market-rate private equity and debt, there is a funding gap into which an increasing number of social enterprises are falling ... Innovation in the allocation of capital for social change is needed if existing vehicles are falling short of accomplishing our objectives.” — Emmerson, Freudlich and Fruchterman

Resources.
— “Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained: Addressing the Critical Gaps in Risk-Taking Capital for Social Enterprise” by Jed Emmerson, Tim Freundlich and Jim Fruchterman, published 2006 by the Skoll Centre, Oxford University
— Social Edge website discussion on this paper
— “Foundations: Essential and Missing in Action” interview with Jed Emmerson by Alliance Extra March 2006

The Problems and Perils of Scaling

• By the time I got to the “Problems and Perils of Scaling” workshop I was suffering from information overload, or possibly even “hope fatigue”. This session was full to overflowing, and it was obvious that “scaling up” to achieve systemic impact was one of the main interests of the Oxford Forum. The workshop focussed on the personal stories and examples of how specific enterprises went from a local project ... to national and international success.

Workshop on the Problems and Perils of Scaling, with Asok Khosla, Mel Young and Mechai Viravaidya — photo Hutchinson

• The panel group included Ashok Khosla, one of the world’s leading experts on sustainable development, and a former director of the United Nations Environment Programme. He is the founder of Development Alternatives, a Delhi-based NGO which promotes commercially viable and environmentally friendly technologies that support livelihoods. He has spent decades developing and promoting innovations ranging from village power plants using agricultural waste as fuel to mini factories that recycle paper and local enterprises that make low-cost roofing tiles.

Mel Young was the co-founder of The Big Issue weekly magazine sold by homeless people throughout Britain, and helped set up the International Network of Street Papers which helps 100,000 homeless or long-term unemployed people every year. More recently, Mel set up the Homeless World Cup annual soccer tournament (this year’s competition in Copenhagen will see teams from 48 countries).

The competition isn’t just about soccer. It acts as a focus to encourage people to make fundamental changes in their lives. A survey in 2005 showed that 77% of the players in the Homeless World Cup have significantly improved their lives through employment, housing, education and/or drug/alcohol treatment programs. A dozen players went on to become semi professional or professional footballers or coaches.

“ Football is a great leveller, it connects people and is a universal sport for everyone. The Homeless World Cup is able to change the scenery, challenge stereotyping and people who have been spat at the week before are cheered by thousands and treated as soccer heroes during the tournament. The feeling of belonging, challenge of working in a team, regaining a health- oriented attitude towards life, self-esteem and last but not least the experience of fun is a powerful combination to change a person's life.” — Mel Young

Mechai Viravaidya, the third panelist, is the founder of the one of Thailand’s most successful development organisations which has done pioneering work in family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention. Mechai is popularly known as “Dr Condom” in Thailand for his public role of promoting family planning (condoms are apparently often referred to as “mechais” in Thai slang).

This social entrepreneur had many entertaining stories to share at the workshop ... including holding condom blowing contests for school children, encouraging taxi cab drivers to hand out condoms to their customers, and setting up a restaurant chain called “Cabbages and Condoms” where condoms rather than mints are served after the meal. This family planning campaign has been one of the most successful family planning programmes in the modern era. The annual population growth in Thailand has dropped from over 3% to 0.6%, and the average number of children per family has fallen from seven to under two.

Resources.
— “Ashok Khosla: Mini enterprise leads to macro change” on the Infochangeindia website
— Homeless World Cup website
— Mechai Viravaidya profiled in Time magazine’s “Sixty Years of Asian Heroes”

Moving Capital - John Elkington

Nelson Mandela Theatre, Said Business School
Wednesday 28th March 2007

• This session was happening at the same time as the “Scaling” workshop, but I got to see it streamed over the internet at a later time (thanks to the free broadband services in the local hotel). This workshop focussed on how social ventures can access different sources of external capital to increase their impact.

• The main speaker here was John Elkington who is a prominent British “thought leader” in the area of sustainability. His think tank, called SustainAbility is currently working on a three-year project with the Skoll Foundation to increase partnerships between social entrepreneurs and major corporations.

The workshop marked the release of a major report by SustainAbility which surveyed over a hundred leading social entrepreneurs on how they are working with the corporate sector, and how they raise money for their new ventures.

“ A growing array of apparently insoluble socio-economic, environmental and governance challenges presses in on decision-makers — including climate change, the risk of global pandemics, the growing threat to natural resources like water and fisheries, and the ever-present issues of poverty and hunger. At a time when such challenges seem to narrow our horizons, social entrepreneurs are creating a wealth of new opportunities. But to enjoy these opportunities over the longer term, we must ensure real opportunity for a very much greater proportion of the global population...” — John Elkington

The report concludes that for real system change to take place, we must focus on government and public policy. Governments need to do more to shape public sector targets, with tax incentives and pricing signals that ensure that markets can drive change — so that the new social enterprises can reach their full potential.

• The SustainAbility report gave some sobering figures on the comparative size of the social enterprise sector. Its rough estimate is that less than $200 million is going into social enterprises worldwide, and most of this is coming from the Foundations sector. This can be compared to the over $2 billion being invested into “clean technology” businesses worldwide, or the over $200 billion that is spent in philanthropy in the US alone. Elkington told the workshop that even though social entrepreneurship is growing quickly, it is still a very small field financially. His warning: “Are we growing a huge number of ventures that may not be able to sustain themselves into the next stage of their evolution?”

Resources.
— Streaming video of this session “Moving Capital” featuring Jan Piercy, John Elkington, Penny Newman, Tim Reith, Arthur Wood, and Michele Giddens (Real Player required) 2 hours
— “Growing Opportunity — Entrepreneurial Solutions to Insoluble problems” by SustainAbility and the Skoll Foundation (2007)
— “Rising to the challenge?” by John Elkington in The Guardian 28 March 2007
— The SustainAbility / Skoll project website

• Several other Sustainability/Skoll Reports are available for download from their website. These include a business primer on “scalable solutions”, a report profiling the “barefoot billionaires” who are backing social entrepreneurs, and a quick global overview of leading social entrepreneurs.

Resources.
- Sustainability/Skoll Business Primer report
- Sustainability/Skoll Barefoot Billionaires report
- Sustainability/Skoll Hot Spots of Social Enterprise report

"Moving Capital" workshop (Real Player required) 2 hours

The Future of Philanthropy

Nelson Mandela Theatre, Said Business School
Thursday 29th March 2007

• This workshop session focused on just how far “creative” philanthropy can go to support social innovation. Two of the panellists (Helmut Anheier and Lester Salamon) are the leading academics in a field that looks at the voluntary sector and civil society from the lens of social science. The other panellist, Mark Kramer, is the Managing Director of FSG Social Impact Advisors.

• Helmut Anheier, Director of the UCLA Centre for Civil Society, set out his arguments for a new approach to philanthropic engagement, which he calls Creative Philanthropy. He’s written a book of the same name, which argues that endowed foundations have a unique capability to spot innovative solutions to problems, to jump-start and help sustain the innovative process, and to help disseminate and implement the results of innovation. He believes that Foundations will become more relevant as they learn to act themselves as social entrepreneurs, as institution-builders, as risk absorbers and as mediators in different social fields.

“Foundations are neither poor imitations of government nor the chosen tools for quick fixes. They are something far more important: foundations are the potential powerhouses of creative thinking and working that society needs. We do not have a shortage or scarcity of resources in modern society. What we have is a weakness in creating innovation, and in seeing innovation through a process that leads to sustainable solutions. This is the area of creative philanthropy where foundations are needed most...” — Helmut Anheier

• Anheier remarked that one of the main characteristics of Creative Philanthropy is a change in the relationship between foundation programmes and grantees. There is not an emphasis on performance criteria and performance indicators and other elements of control. There isn’t the requirement for grantees to fill in long forms or to write long narratives on their work. There is much more of an emphasis on an ongoing dialogue and exchange between the foundation and grantee. This emphasis is on learning and evaluating their shared contribution to the common good.

During the Forum, I discovered that this approach to grant-making was very much the style of the Skoll Foundations own relationship with its own grantees. Some of the people I spoke to, who had received money from the Skoll Foundation, remarked on the difference: The Foundation people came to them, they interviewed, checked facts, and filled out all the paperwork, and when their reports were written, the Foundation sent them to the grantee and asked: Did we get that right? The end result was that the people felt they could focus a lot more on the job at hand ... and their meetings with Skoll as a funder were seen as an opportunity to discuss and explore what was being learned, rather than as some sort of accountability ritual.

• Mark Kramer of FSG Social Impact Advisers argued that we are on the cusp of a generational change in which succeeding generations will not see a separation between non-profit and for-profit sectors. He remarked that this division seems very hard for us to let go of. He also went on to suggest that we will not be looking to philanthropy or government as the primary means of solving social problems.

“ We have a phenomenal non-profit sector in America. It has a turnover of about $1 trillion and about 7% of the workforce. It has grown at a phenomenal rate over the past 50 years. But in every problem you would care to look at — whether it is environmental, educational, or in social welfare — the situation is the same or is getting worse. The problems are becoming inescapable and the ways we have been addressing them are not working. Social entrepreneurship is an interim step that has emerged as we are trying to grapple with how to find more effective ways of addressing our social problems...” — Mark Kramer

Mark Kramer has recently written a paper (co-authored with Michael Porter from the Harvard Business School) in which he argues that the social value proposition of a business will be the key competitive advantage in the near future. Businesses need to consider social issues not just because they want to be good neighbours or citizens, and not just in response to the activists, but “... because it will be the only way that they will succeed”.

Kramer argues that activists in the non-profit sector underestimate the contribution that the corporate world can make to systemic social change. He pointed to “The Equator Principles” where nine global banks have got together to set social, safety and environmental standards for major construction projects like dams and pipelines around the world. It took a year for them to negotiate the standards, but as soon as they were put in place, 75% of all major project financing in the world was under those standards. It has now become impossible to build something without meeting those standards.

Resources.
— Video stream of this session “The Future of Philanthropy” featuring Helmut Anheimer, Mark Kramer, Lester Salamon and Alex Nicholls (Real PLayer required) 1 hour 59 mins
— Creative Philanthropy by Helmut Anheier and Diana Leat (book pub 2006 Routledge)
— From Charity to Creativity - philanthropic foundations in the 21st century by Helmut Anheier and Diana Leat 2002 report for the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust
— “Strategy and Society: The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility” by Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer in the Harvard Business Review (December 2006)
— The Equator Principles website

“The Future of Philanthropy” workshop (Real Player required) 1 hour 59 mins

Two papers - Pamela Hartigan and Sally Osberg

• I met up briefly with Pamela Hartigan (Managing Director of the Geneva-based Schwab Foundation) when I arrived. Pamela has been to New Zealand and met with the Tindall Foundation, and was a key influence in establishing both the Social Innovation Investment Group and the New Zealand Social Entrepreneur Fellowship. Last year, I was invited to join her meeting of social entrepreneurs that was held in conjunction with the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. And many of the people that are members of the Schwab Social Entrepreneur Fellowship were also present at this Oxford World Forum.

• Pamela is soon to publish a book on social entrepreneurship, co-authored with John Elkington, which will be called “The Power of Unreasonable People: How Entrepreneurs create markets to change the world”.

• Just before the conference started, Pamela sent me her latest paper which has just been published in Innovations, the quarterly journal from MIT Press. The paper is co-authored by Klaus Schwab, the Swiss academic and entrepreneur who started the World Economic Forum in Davos thirty years ago, and it is a coherent and useful argument for how government and businesses need to open up more space for social innovation.

“Our fascination with these pragmatic visionaries and their organizations lies much less in the goods and services they provide than in the catalytic role they play in triggering innovations in the social sector. Like the business innovators who come up with major innovations for the marketplace, social innovators are the mad scientists as it were — working away in their organizations that act like social innovation laboratories. They test and perfect different approaches, and when they come up with the most effective and efficient ones with the greatest impact, it should be government and the corporate sectors’ respective roles to celebrate the innovation, take it up, learn from it, and help scale it so that all can benefit...” — Klaus Schwab and Pamela Hartigan

Resources.
— "Social Innovators with a Business Case: Facing 21st Century Challenges One Market at a Time" by Klaus Schwab and Pamela Hartigan
— The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship website

• Another paper released around the time of the Forum was from Sally Osberg, the CEO of the Skoll Foundation. It is a further attempt at getting a clear definition of social entrepreneurship established. It centers in on defining “entrepreneurship” itself, and how this is expressed in both the business and social fields. The diversity of the examples given in the paper might surprise you ... but it is just this diversity that is reflected amongst the participants of this Oxford Forum.

• Osberg, and her co-author Roger Martin, put an emphasis on innovations that lead to “systemic social change” when discussing the key differences between social entrepreneurs, social activists, and social service providers. (In this, they have come to much the same conclusion as our own discussions in New Zealand.)

• One of the drivers behind writing this paper is the concern (expressed several times at the Skoll Forum) that the promise of social entrepreneurship is not being fulfilled because too many “non-entrepreneurial” efforts are included in the definition. Martin and Osberg are pushing for a much sharper definition of social entrepreneurship, in an effort to determine the extent to which an activity is and is not “in the tent”.

At the Forum, Bill Drayton remarked that this will always be a troublesome exercise ... “ because social entrepreneurs are the sort of people who are always breaking down barriers anyway ... and they will not accept any boundaries put on defining who they are”.

Resource.
— “Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition” by Roger L. Martin & Sally Osberg in Stanford Social Innovation Review (Spring 2007)

Charles Leadbeater

• I missed the workshop session featuring Charles Leadbeater (... there was just too much going on at the same time), but I got to read his column in the Observer newspaper, which was published during the time of the Forum, and also his later article in the Social Enterprise magazine. Leadbeater was one of the earliest influences on my own awareness of this field. Ten years ago, he wrote a small booklet called The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur which was published by the British Think Tank Demos. This booklet helped to popularise the term and brought social entrepreneurship into the mainstream of public policy debate.

Leadbeater’s booklet also had a significant influence on the “Third Way” movement within the leadership of Labour Parties around the world. In New Zealand, in the early part of this decade, these ideas were an influence on Social Development Minister Steve Maharey’s interest in establishing a local Social Entrepreneurship Scheme (through the ill-fated Community Employment Group).

• These days, Leadbeater is a “Visiting Fellow” at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University. So ... What has he learned about social entrepreneurship after its first decade of significant growth? Well, he believes that the movement has got quite a lot right, but also quite a lot wrong. For a start, he challenges the current “hero” focus as a way that social entrepreneurship is being promoted:

“Social entrepreneurship needs to become a mass activity, not just the domain of inspirational mavericks ... Entrepreneurship usually comes from teams, not heroic individuals. Social entrepreneurs thrive on interdependence, learning and borrowing resources from the public and private sectors.”

Leadbeater believes that the biggest challenge facing the social sector is how to scale up its impact — and the social entrepreneur movement needs to embrace this challenge:

“Too many social entrepreneurs are still running inspiring but small schemes. Too few can show how their inspirational new approaches have spread. Part of the reason is a lack of both capital and management skills to expand larger organisations from smaller roots. Opposition from entrenched bureaucracies and professionals is another factor. But social entrepreneurs may have their biggest impact by being disruptive innovators, opening up markets that bigger organisations cannot see...” — Charles Leadbeater

Resources.
— “Mainstreaming the Mavericks”, by Charles Leadbeater, The Observer 25 March 2007
— “Whatever Happened to the Heroes?” by Charles Leadbeater in Social Enterprise magazine Issue 57 (April 2007)
— Charles Leadbeater on Innovation (TED Talk July 2005 in Oxford UK)
— The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur by Charles Leadbeater (pamphlet pub 1997 by Demos Thinktank)
— Social Entrepreneurs — Special issue of The Jobs Letter (No.147, 27 June 2001) by vivian Hutchinson

Sir Ronald Cohen

• Another participant at the Forum was Sir Ronald Cohen. He was one of the media “stars” of business-led social entrepreneurship, and was profiled in the business sections of several British newspapers during the time of the Oxford conference. Cohen is described as having a major influence on the current government, and is considered a trusted member of Chancellor (and leader-in-waiting) Gordon Brown's most trusted inner circle.

The Times calls Cohen “the grandfather of venture capital in Europe”. He set up Apax Partners in 1972 and grew the firm into one of the world’s biggest and most successful buyout groups, making him a billionaire in the process. He retired from Apax on his 60th birthday in 2005 and immediately started to work on projects that would enable him to give some of his and the industry’s wealth back to the community.

Much of this work is centred around Bridges Community Ventures, which describes itself as “a private equity firm with a social mission”. Its strategy is to invest only in the poorest 25 per cent of the country. (The firm has made 13 investments, sold three companies and seen five go under).

Cohen told The Observer how his worldview had changed since Gordon Brown asked him to chair first the Social Investment Taskforce and, more recently, the Commission for Unclaimed Assets.

“I came to understand that you could really change people's lives if you could manage to connect the private sector way of doing things and the access to the capital markets with the social challenges that communities are facing everywhere ...
“ I am convinced there is a wave of social entrepreneurship forming now that feels the same as the wave of business entrepreneurship I felt when I started in 1972 ... We have in our hands the ability to turn social investment into an asset class, in the same way we have turned private equity into a mainstream asset class.” — Sir Ronald Cohen

• Cohen is also heading up a new initiative which will be Britain’s first “social bank”. It aims to do this by investing about £250 million of the estimated £400 million in dormant bank and building society accounts. Although the primary aim is to return the money to its owners, the bank will use any outstanding money to fund voluntary organisations and social enterprises “... to tackle social and financial exclusion”.

Resources.
— Bridges Community Ventures website
— “Bridging the Great Divide" by Nick Mathiason on The Observer 18 March 2007
— “Billionaire sets up ‘mission’ to help nation’s poorest” by Siobhan Kennedy in The Times 31 March 2007

Skoll Foundation Awards Ceremony

• Back at the Sheldonian, we had an evening dedicated to celebrating the stories of many of the leading social entrepreneurs gathered at this Forum. The evening started with music from the Pakistani musician Salman Ahmad, followed by speeches from Jeff Skoll, Muhammad Yunus and Peter Gabriel.

The 2007 Skoll Awards were then presented to ten recipients who will each receive $1 million, over the next three years, to target social issues in need of urgent attention and to bring their projects “to scale”.

What struck me during the Awards ceremony was the relative youth of so many of these recipients — many were in their 30s and 40s. Their stories and projects so far are already extremely successful, and there is obviously such great potential still ahead for all of them.

Sebastion Marot (centre) of Friends International receives his 2007 Skoll Award, with Sally Osberg, Peter Gabriel, Muhammad Yunus and Jeff Skoll — photo Fruchterman

— Vicky Colbert of the Foundation Escuela Nueva, which started in Columbia fostering education for underserved children through a more flexible approach and stronger school-community ties. This has grown into an international movement reaching 5 million pupils in various Latin American countries, Uganda, and the Philippines.

— Craig and Mark Kielburger of Free The Children. They started this group in their early teens as a classroom fundraiser and grew it to become an international organization with 1000 chapters in schools across the US and Canada fighting poverty, exploitation and powerlessness among children around the world.

— Sebastien Marot of Friends International, an initiative to take Cambodian kids off the streets and help them reintegrate society.

— Susan Burns and Mathis Wackernagel of the Global Footprint Network, developers of the Ecological Footprint, a tool that tracks the extent to which human demand on nature exceeds what the planet can regenerate. This measure, applied by countries, hundreds of cities and organizations across the world, has become a leading sustainability indicator.

— Joe Madiath of Gram Vikas, an organization helping develop the state of Orissa, one of the poorest regions in India.

— William Strickland of the Manchester Bidwell Corporation, which introduces young people in poor urban environments to arts and career education.

— Roshaneh Zafar of the Kashf Foundation focusing on microfinance for women in Pakistan. Started in 1996, the Foundation made 228,000 loans in 2006, has 135,000 clients and a recovery rate of 99.9 percent.

— Rupert Howes of the Marine Stewardship Council, focusing on reversing the decline in global fishing stocks through a marine certification and an eco-labeling program.

— Dan Viederman of Verité, which works on improving working conditions around the world.

— Dorothy Stoneman of YouthBuild USA, an alternative school where dropout youths re-enrol, complete high school, and at the same time work to build affordable housing for the homeless.

• The evening finished with two songs from Monica Yunus (daughter of Muhammad) who is a promising young soprano based at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The Forum participants then went on to a celebration and reception hosted in a marque at Trinity College.

Resources.
— Streaming video of the “Skoll Foundation Awards Ceremony” featuring Jeff Skoll and Sally Osberg with Peter Gabriel, Muhammad Yunus, Salman Ahmad and Monica Yunus (Real Player required) 1 hour 44 mins
— YouTube video of the ten recipients of the 2007 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship
— short profiles of the 10 grantees

Monica Yunus singing at the 2007 Skoll Foundation Awards Ceremony — photo Fruchterman

• Some Quotes from the Skoll Forum:

“Every truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed.
Third it is accepted as being self-evident.”
— Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher

“There is no change without individuals, and nothing sustained without institutions.”
— Jean Monnet, the architect of the European Union

“Live like you will die tomorrow, but learn like you expect to live forever.”
— Mahatma Ghandi

“ It’s amazing what you can achieve if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
— Harry Truman, US President

“Skoll Foundation Awards Ceremony” featuring Jeff Skoll and Sally Osberg
with Peter Gabriel, Muhammad Yunus, Salman Ahmad and Monica Yunus
(Real Player required) 1 hour 44 mins

Larry Brilliant

Nelson Mandela Theatre, Said Business School
Thursday 29th March 2007

• Larry Brilliant was the final keynote speaker giving his reflections as a pioneer in social innovation. His presentation was challenging and inspiring, and something of a jolt back to “big picture” thinking after hearing so many inspiring local stories. If you watch just one of the pieces of video from this Forum ... make it this one.

Brilliant has long been a folk hero from the same loose network of American counter-cultural activists and entrepreneurs that include the likes of Ram Dass, Wavy Gravy, Stewart Brand, Howard Rheingold and Paul Hawken. He is a doctor and a former professor of epidemiology who set up the Seva Foundation which has performed 2 million free sight-restoring eye operations in India and Nepal. He helped run the WHO smallpox eradication program in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh and was part of the Global Commission which certified that smallpox had been eradicated in the world.

As a technology leader, Brilliant was a founder of the world’s first online community, The WELL, and has been CEO of two public hi-tech corporations (SoftNet Systems Inc. and Network Technologies), and most recently he founded the WiFi company, Cometa.

Larry Brilliant was 2006 recipient of the TED Prize, which grants him “one wish to change the world” (... he is setting up a global warning system to track the spread of infectious diseases). And just last year, he was appointed Executive Director of Google.org, the new philanthropic arm of the Google company. So all eyes are on just what he is going to do next ....

• Brilliant started his speech with a short clip from a 1958 movie by Frank Capra, "The Unchained Goddess". The film contained a description of the causes of global warming, complete with images of melting Arctic icecaps and maps of rising sea levels inundating the southern regions of the US ... eerily similar to Al Gore’s more recent film “An Inconvenient Truth”. Brilliant: “So in 1958 we knew about global warming — should we feel good or bad that 50 years of foreknowledge accomplished so little?”

He then went on to list some of the Megatrends facing the current generation of social entrepreneurs:

— increasing global warming ... which has its gravest effects on the poorest and most vulnerable members of humanity
— increasing population levels ... expected to level out at over 9 billion people
— increasing urbanization ... we went past the tipping point this year with 50 percent of the world population now living in cities
— increasing desertification, loss of farming land etc
— increasing animal consumption
— increasing growth of technology, which is also having a downside in the growth of bio-weapons
— increasing globalization, which has big winners and bigger losers.

• Brilliant pointed out that today, the world is more diverse and more unfair than it has ever been in human history. One percent of world population owns 40% of all goods and services (he quoted Bill Clinton, who recently remarked: ”This situation is unprecedented, unequal, unfair and unstable”). And the situation will get increasingly instable as global TV, the internet and new media continue to expose the inequalities in life experiences and people’s expectations.

Brilliant drew out the “case for pessimism” in many areas ... water and other resource wars, sectarian conflicts, refugee crises, an increasing number and scale of weather-related disasters, and newly emergent disease patterns. Climate change will put all the social entrepreneurship successes of things like micro-credit into perspective. With the graphics provided by Google Earth, he “navigated” a map of Asia to show how deforestation and global warming will combine to raise seas levels and displace 100 million people in Bangladesh alone.

• But Brilliant also felt there is plenty of cause for optimism. He shared his personal story of wandering the Asian hippy trail in the 1960s before his guru sent him off to help lead the fight to eradicate Smallpox on earth. Smallpox has been the worst disease in human history — it killed half a billion people in the 20th century alone, which is more than all the wars in history. Ending Smallpox involved an immense collaboration between the World Health Organisation, governments, public and private health officials, and teams of volunteers. In India, Brilliant supervised thousands of workers who tracked down cases of smallpox, and kept visiting every household to ensure that the virus was quarantined. He suggests that the fact that we have conquered Smallpox “should make our species proud”, and it should also give us hope when we take on similar huge systemic challenges as global warming, or the many other megatrends that he had listed.

• As the new director of Google.org, Brilliant will be helping spend $1.1 billion of the assets of the world-leading company on addressing the sort of megatrends that he has described. Google.org is essentially a network that includes both a charitable foundation with a $90 million endowment, and also other forms of social investing (not unlike those being promoted by venture capitalists like Sir Ronald Cohen).

When they announced the establishment of the Google.org Foundation in 2005, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin promised shareholders they will make a social impact that will eventually “eclipse Google itself” by tackling the world's problems. Brilliant: “ In 10 years, I'd like people to say Google changed the world less for its search engine than for the way in which it changed philanthropy to make the world a better place.”

Resources.
— Streaming video of this session “Reflections from a Pioneer in Social Innovation” featuring Larry Brilliant
— YouTube video of Larry Brilliant’s speech to the 2007 Skoll World Forum (part 1 of 3) (part 2 of 3) (part 3 of 3)
— “Google's Brilliant Philanthropist” by Jessi Hempelin in Business Week 22 February 2006
— “Dr Brilliant Vs. the Devil of Ambition” by Andrew French in Fast Company Issue 39 September 2000
— “The Health of Humanity” by Larry Brilliant (2006 Sanford S. Elberg Lecturer in International Studies - UC Berkeley http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/Elberg/Brilliant/
— Larry Brilliant talking to the TED Forum January 2007 on the successful WHO campaign to eradicate Smallpox, and then unveiling his TED Prize wish - to build a global system that detects each new disease or disaster as it emerges or occurs.
— “Google”s Brilliant Philanthropist” by Jessi Hempel in BusinessWeek

Larry Brilliant’s speech to the 2007 Skoll World Forum: Part 1


Larry Brilliant’s speech to the 2007 Skoll World Forum: Part 2


Larry Brilliant’s speech to the 2007 Skoll World Forum: Part 3