What has struck me recently are the number of tremendous people thrown down hard in this economy. With no revenue, with layoffs everywhere, and most people having plenty of time to raise their skill sets, what's an enterprising innovator to do? Why, create social good of course!
Today I'm going to address what do you do if you're one of the people who still do have financial assets and an intact career, and feel beleaguered by the masses of excellent people and fascinating projects asking you if you'd like to be their Sponsor.
The simplest thing is to turn all of them down, but if you wanted to do that you probably wouldn't be reading this post. You can make allocation based on the strength of your relationships - and truly there is nothing wrong with that, though you may feel that you're not investing as wisely as you could be, and just that thought alone might make those relationships weaker. So if you do want to help rebuild the economy and solve emergent social problems, how do you evaluate amongst the choices? The same way as you always make decisions: know your own mind, first.
(1) Decide what you, personally, think are the challenges that affect your environment and the world at large. Climate change or pollution? Water access? Political instability? The Skoll Foundation is establishing the Urgent Threats Fund to address climate change, water scarcity, pandemics, nuclear proliferation and Middle East conflict, as an example of top-level threats to the world. There are others. And there are specific issues that need to be addressed that we know have immediate leverage, not to mention the business of business, simply identifying a clear market need and servicing it.
(2) To the extent you would rather not put your own revenue stream at risk, but you do see large-scale risks as problematic, you may want to contribute to those solutions. To the extent you simply want to see economic recovery, you can invest in those projects that will bolster "the size of the pie."
(3) Pick your area of interest, then decide what the antecedents are -- those things that must happen in order to make progress in whatever issue area you have interest. Don't have any idea? Then the first step might be to research the antecedents, which can be as simple as a literature survey.
(4) Then you can look at your deal flow with a stable foundation from which to make decision: do the deals presented to you manage one or more of the antecedents? What is the competitive landscape of that antecedent, and how well is the assembled team able to gather the resources -- financial, knowledge, human, technological -- to address the issue?
(5) Specifically, you can look at the growth of intangible assets as antecedents to an eventually stable economy, or you can look at how those assets can manage risks to other assets.
In the piece I did for IFTF.org in 2007, "Finance Perspectives for the 10-Year Forecast," I describe intangible assets and created a grid to encourage discussion about how these risks offset each other.
Once you've identified the antecedents to growth and the mechanisms by which these antecedents affect each others' risks, you can parse your requests with supreme confidence!
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