nuance intelligence

There were many great discussions at the three-day Social Capital Markets (SoCap) conference this week at Fort Mason in San Francisco.  We’ll keep reporting and referring to these in the days, weeks and months to come.  Among their many accomplishments was a mastery of social media, including a dense twitter feed, viewable at #socap09, as well as an intelligent collective blogging approach.

One of the themes, championed by Jed Emerson, among many other high-profile thought leaders, was taking the concepts of impact investing (seeking social and environmental returns alongside the financial) into mainstream finance.  Within the broad context any community, this is just one of the many goals and missions we heard about.

But it is the one The Economist picked up on, unsurprisingly, in their day-after summary (tip of the hat to Ben Metz for bringing it to our attention).  Remember, this is the same publication who published  the cover (image at right) that Woody Tasch is using in his Slow Money road show.

They introduced their framing with the capital markets collapse a year ago: Continue reading

August was another fascinating month over at nuPOLIS.  A quick survey around the network reveals a peek from behind the scenes of the Chicago climate change planning process, a redux of a piece on Ethical Travel drawing on the first round of feedback, and a look at why Detroit is a hotbed for school reform.

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Not only did I have a great flight on Virgin on my last trip overseas, but this image from the Virgin mothership is one of my favorites in a long time.  The image comes from their page about running a sustainable company, which is worthy of your attention, as well. (Amazing what an image search can turn up, eh?)

As part of our partnership with Innovation Network for Communities (INC), we spent a week in mid-July at the Social Innovation eXchange (SIX) with 120 social innovation leaders from 24 countries.

Our two-part report ran this week at the nuPOLIS blog.

• Part 1 covers our observations about the field of social innovation.  In short, the field of social innovation is in its very early days, and there is a significant need for more work and better organization to increase impact.
• Part 2 highlights the people, organizations and initiatives that caught our attention, and are worthy of further review.

In summary, it was a wonderful and enriching experience for which I am humbly thankful.  It has further enhanced our resolve to get to work here at home, creating and amplifying the social innovations that will change the lives of our communities, and ensure a sustainable future for our children.

Don Tapscott, futurist and author of Wikinomics, posted a two-minute video (tip: Kevin Johansen) suggest that it’s time to shift how we think about financial risk.  His proposal is based on two concepts:

1. financial institutions should be sharing intellectual property. Specifically, basic risk models should be shared in a version of the creative commons, with competition happening above and beyond the basic models.
2. financial institutions should be peering, ie acting together to reinvent their industry.

As readers of Wikinomics know, this is consistent with Tapscott’s position that information and Open Source thinking change business. He positions this within the context of a failed financial system based on closed and proprietary thinking, suggesting that a more collaborative method of risk analysis would create a more stable, and ultimately stronger market.

As nuance readers know, at Business Catapult, we have been working on an evolution of risk management that takes into account sustainability thinking and triple-bottom-line metrics.

As we anticipate the upcoming Social Capital Markets (SoCap) conference (who just hosted the first of three conference-related twitter chats this week), we wonder how our fellow conference goers (and anyone else concerned about the social captial markets) think about Tapscott’s proposition, and how the social capital marketplace could take his advice.

In the world of sustainable enterprise, the tension between focusing on ‘mission’ (ie: do-gooding) and ‘business’ (ie: paying the bills) is extraordinary.  Whether the enterprise is for-profit or non-profit, these challenges bring leaders to the brink of their capacity, and pit employees and board members against one another across unnecessarily stark lines.

Further complicating the picture is the question of partnerships and collaboration.  Given the already uncertain organizational boundaries (how do we think about volunteers?), the intention of multple enterprises to share resources and align efforts to a common causes is a natural instinct.  Sadly, the results of these collaborations are often below expectations, and cause more experienced leaders to shy away from new partnerships.

In an important paper on this subject (PDF), the dynamic husband-and-wife team of Tonya (Exec Director of Center for Social Innovation) and Mark Surman (Exec Director of Mozilla Foundation) have documented their experience in creating successful cross-organizational collaborations, which they call “constellations.”

The constellation model is borne out of seven years of cross-organizational collaboration on children’s health issues in Canada. The network of related organizations overcame many hurdles and refined the model in a pracitical, working environment.

As the social innovation and social enterprise communities expand and address adjacent and overlapping goals, adoption of concepts like this one are going to be key to achieving more change faster.  We strongly recommend that anyone in the field review this paper not just once, but keep it handy for reference and guidance.

Zoo York — home of huge banker bonuses (again, already) and esteem-crushing ad campaigns (not so much, these days) — would appear from a distance to be an unlikely home to an interesting sustainability network.  A recent 24-hour layover revealed that the seeds of a green apple are germinating throughout the city. Continue reading

We’ll be blogging deeper thoughts later, but tune in to the live twitter feed at #sixlisbon on Twitter.  Lots of great collaboration from 100 leaders in 24 countries.

Sitting in a conference room in Portugal, some 3,000 air miles away from home, we post a blog and prediction market about ethical travel.

As we wrote in our new feature at nuPOLIS,

Air travel is the most damaging form of travel when it comes to global warming — yet most of us “social change agents” depend on it for our professional work. It’s time to stop avoiding the practical and ethical dilemmas.

Please share your thoughts, and contribute to the collective wisdom on this challenging issue.

Fascinating work continues at nuance partners Innovation Network for Communities (INC) and the nuPOLIS blogsite, newsfeed and shared information resource focusing on scalable social innovations for communities.  Please review and enjoy this update put together for the people who are just getting to know our work: Continue reading