Dream of sea turtles

Last week I attended a cool gathering - a smallish group of people gathering over wine and munchies not just to network or socialize (that happens anyway), but to hear and discuss stuff outside of the regular work milieu. Kind of like the salons of a past century, but more oriented to ideas and trends than art and philosophy, though that would be cool too.

Last week's topic was 'Strategic Philanthropy' and there was a panel of leaders of different kinds of local successful non-profits. Each of them talked about what they do, why and how they do it, and how they're managing in the bog of the Great Recession. They were all very engaging, and provided fodder for some very interesting post-panel discussions, but I felt that one speech in particular had a strong entrepreneurial appeal and it's message was transferable to just about any endeavor.

Wallace J. Nichols, ('J'), is the director of Ocean Revolution, an international program using creative techniques to preserve our oceans. His was a very well-constructed pitch with high impact - started with a story, outlined a few key take-aways that he elaborated, and ended with audience participation and a very simple call to action with strong emotional appeal. Anyone looking for funds (for or non-profit) could learn from him. What I liked about his speech, was not just the delivery or the message of saving the oceans (a biggie), but his four guidelines for making things happen:

• Don't be afraid of the unconventional/radical/revolutionary
• Collaborate with others to make things happen
• Build networks actively
  
• Use networks to spread the word/do the work

The first point was illustrated by a story on how as a youngster he loved sea turtles and wanted to make a living around them and had no idea how to do it and 15 years ago everyone thought he was wasting his time. But, he dreamed big, got a theory on turtle migration patterns that he went about proving with the help of a turtle 'volunteer' tagged with a transmitter, GPS, a comp. sci grad who helped build one of the first live update tracking sites on the web and a bunch of young people across the world who got fascinated by the story of the turtle going from Mexico to Japan - which substantiates the other points. At first glance it may appear that the last three points are all the same, but he explained that they were not so: collaborating is seeking peers with synergistic core competencies to participate in your efforts, building networks is spending time getting to know people (not just on Facebook/Twitter) and finally using networks to engage in and actually deliver on your initiative (a la crowdsourcing). The last one may seem hard to do if you're selling widgets for bean-counters or something, but it is eminently feasible all the same.

All of these are excellent reminders for any entrepreneur, and I believe the turtle story would be a great one for any young person wondering how to hold on to a dream. The closer was memorable too - J gave a blue marble to everyone in the room and told us that it was a symbol of the earth and to cherish it and pass it on to the next person who would benefit from it. To really understand the spirit behind the blue marbles, I recommend checking out his post here - it's an awesomely simple way to get across a big idea.

Opportunities everywhere

This post has two parts: first a really messed up situation where rules collide with reality resulting in an unacceptable outcome and the second is about the opportunity this provides.

Last week there was an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about schools that have had their federal lunch funding withheld due to 'egregious' violations. You can read the whole story here, but here are some of the examples of what appear to be clueless bureaucracy:

• No adult is allowed to hand a tray of food to a child, no matter how young the child.
  
• Teachers cannot handle the students lunch cards, or if they are more wired and have touch screens, they cannot touch the screen for a child, again no matter how young.

All I can say is, really? Do the people who make/enforce these rules know what it is like to serve lunch to younger kids, to expect them to navigate through school lunch without anyone helping them? How many moms/dads would be sanguine in their kids' ability to turn in a lunch card (without losing it) and select the right foods (as defined by the powers-that-be) entirely on their own? And I don't even want to think about those little ones who are new to the school systems and/or the language. (It doesn't help the divide that this is not a problem in private schools.)

The bureaucrats are not evil. They are trying to make sure that there are no abuses like kids being marked as having lunch when they didn't, or being forced in their food choices. All valid goals. And they have chosen the standard method of letting the 'consumer' make the choices and confirm the transaction - except that they forgot that the consumer here could be a distracted and overwhelmed six-year old. It appears that whole school lunch program, especially the free lunches, could be ineffective for older students too. As I have been mentoring teens recently, I learned that the ones who qualify for free lunches often do not want to get them as doing so requires 'special' handling, like picking up cards after an announcement on the PA system. High school is hard enough, and teenagers would rather starve than make their straitened circumstances visible to their peers.

Which brings me to the second part. This is a situation where the solution may benefit from some classic design focus, the kind many entrepreneurs bring to their products. There are many stakeholders here, federal agencies, state agencies, school districts, schools, staff etc., but ultimately there's only one goal - children need to given a healthy lunch. It needs to be such that it's easy and appropriate for the children first, and then one can add on all the accountability, auditability and other requirements to ensure fiscal and operational integrity.

Maybe this is an opportunity for a startup. It is entirely possible, with today's technology, to build something user (read 'kid') friendly, discreet (for the teens) and providing instantaneous and accurate reporting on usage. It could be a money-maker, given the number of schools that need to be served. Of course, it would help if VCs could be persuaded to invest in ventures outside the beaten path, or if someone would step up to some strategic philanthropy or mission-related investing. Most of all, it needs a passionate entrepreneur and a socially-minded one who'd love the idea of making it easier for kids to get lunch. Maybe the solution is already there - that would make a great follow up story.

Entrepreneur idols

A little news item that caught my eye: Junior Achievement conducted a poll among 1000 students between the ages of 12 and 17 and asked them to pick their most admired entrepreneur from a list of famous ones (all US based). And guess what, Steve Jobs was top of the list, way ahead of Oprah!

This poll is both fascinating and frustrating. It is amazing that Steve, nerdy though brilliant, outshone 'traditional' celebrities. He is an entrepreneur (and design genius) who became a celebrity instead of an entertainment celebrity who used his/her fame and fortune to build a business. And even more interesting is the fact that a third felt he made a difference in people's lives and a quarter felt he made the world a better place - and these are among the qualities that they most admired about him. Wealth and fame were way down the list. Steve Jobs as a do-gooder is unusual image for most techies, which leads to one of the frustrating things about this poll: the pre-selected list of entrepreneurs. It would have been interesting to see how Bill Gates would have fared in this poll. Apart from creating the Microsoft behemoth (the 'evil empire' bit is softening a little with competion), Gates continues to help improve the lives of people in a major way - but do teenagers know about it?

You can read about the poll here - there's not much to it, but it raises all kinds of interesting questions about the impact that iPods and iPhones (and maybe Macs too) have had on teens' worldview. But the good news is that JA is focused on teaching entrepreneurship to teens and is one of the handful of organizations (check out this previous post for another one) using business training to boost academic performance. What I find encouraging about all this is that so many teenagers are drawn to entrepreneurship, not just celebrity, which bodes well for more innovation and risk-taking in the future. Who'd have thought that the iPod could inspire so much by being the coolest personal music player ever?