Solvation

Organic vs Conventional Farming - Bad Big Data

Ok, fine. I'll say something about that article going around (here's the NY Times version) that organic is not more nutritious than conventional produce: It's ridiculous.

I, like the vast majority of people, choose organic produce because of a desire to avoid the consumption of pesticides. That's why people started growing organically. That's why people still prefer to grow organically. I don't want to eat pesticides; I don't want farm workers to be exposed to pesticides. I don't want them in the air or the soil or the water supply.

When you see "Whaaaa?" results like this, first take a breath and think about why it is that it strikes you as odd. I think many people hit the "What about pesticides?" situation pretty quickly.

So the question really is: why did this researcher do this giant meta-analysis without looking at pesticides? In other words, when evaluating organic vs. conventional, why was the persistence of pesticides not even be a factor in the exploration?

Is that good, objective, medical research? I think not.

Some quick ninja-googling shows that the original author of that study, Dr. Bravata, widely cited as a Stanford University Scientist, is actually a "Stanford Health Policy Adjunct Affiliate." What does that mean? It means she's not only not on the faculty, she doesn't office at Stanford. She's in the loose connection of people Stanford has that makes the flow of money and students - and knowledge - happen more easily. However, she's not a PhD, and this isn't peer-reviewed work. She is part of a consulting group, Castlight. Castlight is a big data driven HR Health Benefits company. It aims to bring transparency into healthcare - which is actually something that is a great idea and which I'm highly in support of.

But with meta-analyses like the one saying organically-farmed foods are not more "nutritious" than conventional crops, which was released only a few months before the vote on California's Prop 37 (labeling GMO produce), one wonders at whether this researcher was just incompetent at framing her question, or whether there was some other reason for dropping this common (pdf) reason people choose organic food from the meta-analysis.

I have not attempted to find clarification on this with Castlight, Stanford, or Brevata and don't intend to. I'll just personally disregard the study and chalk it up to bad data analysis. For all I know there was a good purely scientific reason to exclude toxicological issues. But before you think "ok, then - organics are a waste of money" because of this study, I wanted to throw my two cents in.

"Has Cleantech Finally Arrived?" - Watching Intangible Assets

The 2012 National Cleantech Open in Santa Clara, CA asked the question "Has CleanTech Finally Arrived?"

There has been dancing around cleantech for a while; wondering about the continued presence (or not) of subsidies, the practicalities of timing funding and risk management through affiliation, and other tactical concerns of investors. While panelists debated the financial activity in the industry and funding flows related to subsidies and other political concepts, I prefered to look for indicators of growth in intangible assets to see whether the sector seemed to be taking hold or struggling for air, here in the US.

Highlights of 2011

In 2011, my work focused on organizational and societal development, and its measurement. Here are some professional highlights from 2011, in chronological order. I'm deeply grateful for my teammates and partners, and for those who made these opportunities possible.

(1) I taught Organizational Behavior to 1st Year MBA students, most of whom were military veterans, and all of whom had limited business experience. I'd characterize the students as under-educated (only one could write well), highly motivated, and what I think of as "lawful": prefering discipline, order, and a strongly-normed environment. I learned that the first item of the curriculum is to learn how to learn from someone like me. I also came away from the process feeling like the entire approach to traditionally conceived Organizational Behavior needs to change drastically.

(2) I helped develop the Deliberative Society, a brand new service offering, based on over a decade of work at the Center for Deliberative Democracy with Reframe It software. This was instantiated at a major consulting firm as a trial offering. As a "support" member of the team, I collaborated in thinking through the productization of the offering, built some knowledge in the domain, and became familiar again with the culture of Top 4 consulting firms.

(3) I launched (heh!) Winged Pigs with Eric Grant, focusing on offerings to help startups deal with non-product related issues that can make or break its success. Our strengths are in organizational design, facilitating interpersonal dynamics and agile process design, and its measurement. There was a lot of encouragement but we ended the year without having successfully landed a VC portfolio company client. My business development skills evolved over the year; I believe we would have been more successful had I known then what I know now.

(4) I presented "Measuring Life," which is really an introduction to new economic thinking at TEDxHayward, a joint venture of CSUEB and Stanford University. I was happy to hear feedback that my talk was conceptually understandable and well-delivered. This is a growth area for me.

(5) I organized the Technology Track for the SoCap11, the Social Capital Markets conference with 1500 attendees over three days. The Technology Track was one of seven tracks. Highlights included Jay Nath, the Director of Innovation for the City and County of San Francisco talking about opening data sets and Jamais Cascio from Institute for the Future previewing his thoughts on an upcoming book showcasing the future in 50 years as well as some fascinating panels curated by the UN Foundation and Innosight. I enjoyed this tremendously - the right combination of management, interpersonal interactions, and creativity. I wish I had had more time - there is such great work going on (those are five separate links); a lot to curate.

Finally, and overarchingly, I became involved in several Communities of Innovation, particularly the Innovating Finance group, which has been guided by the success of the WWF UK and ICAEW Finance Innovation Lab. I'm noticing patterns here that I suspect will continue to reinforce each other in the new year.

I look forward to 2012!

Why Economics Needs Data Mining

Cosma Shalizi explains eloquently the major issues surrounding the accuracy of economic modeling. He talks about how we don't know whether what happened in the past can be relevant for he future.

Also, listening between the lines (at approximately 4:30), please hear the plea for the idea that if you're going to do models, you need data to validate them.

 

Cosma Shalizi urges economists to stop doing what they are doing: Fitting large complex models to a small set of highly correlated time series data. Once you add enough variables, parameters, bells and whistles, your model can fit past data very well, and yet fail miserably in the future. Shalizi tells us how to separate the wheat from the chaff, how to compensate for overfitting and prevent models from memorizing noise. He introduces techniques from data mining and machine learning to economics -- this is new economic thinking. via ineteconomics.org

 

 

CleanTech Open Global Forum 2011 - Part 1

Oddly, cleantech markets and social capital markets are barely aware of each other, despite obvious areas of complementary expertise. So I traipsed to San Jose to the Clean Tech Open Global Forum to interact with the very high quality CleanTech entrepreneurs, and those entities that fund them.

I have a project in mind to facilitate the bridging of these investment ecosystems that I hope will unlock further capital, but for now, let me simply report on some excellent startups I spoke with.

Impact investors would be interested in what I think of as Alchemy 2.0, and Regenerative Products

• Waste (post-consumer, especially) to energy
• Waste (post-consumer or industrial) to disaster recovery goods
• Energy Grid-busters
• Off-grid irrigation and energy solutions
• Those companies in the gray area described below that add Social Entrepeneurial connection into the communities they serve, primarily via directly creating Green Jobs and providing education.
• Very low impact transportation solutions, whether local fabrication, mass transit, remote monitoring, etc.

Impact investors MIGHT be interested in super-stopgaps

• Efficiency solutions for water use
• Alternative building materials
• Efficiency solutions for currently deployed energy or power systems; including transportation
• Behavioral change solutions even if they provide only incremental energy/water advantages, because of the learning involved
• Alternatively-powered individual vehicles (rather than mass transit)

Lost in translation are those solutions that appear to work against inevitable change

• Cleaner dirty energy
• Industrial waste to consumer goods

 

In Part 2, I'll expand on specific companies.

Economic Catastrophe - Maybe It's the Only Way?

OK. Here's a hypothesis I developed after reading this highly disturbing report on the state of the world's oceans.

Hypothesis: It's GOOD that the US middle class (and lower) is becoming desperate, because in order to change behaviors drastically, it's going to require masses of people doing whatever it takes for them to survive, and the uberwealthy will in turn need to set up and financially support the rules so that "doing whatever it takes" actually is survivable.

(My own objection: most of the uberwealthy are too out of touch to understand what needs to be done, how quickly, and how extensively.)

Have I become too cynical?

Quick Look: Innovation and Sustainability

 The New Sustainability is the cover story on launch day for a brand new online magazine which is branding itself as a news source for optimism and solutions. The main thesis, "It's wrong to think economic growth and sustainability are mutually exclusive." That's it. Though there is a shower scene where the author notes that even though people are dying of thirst elsewhere, the (un-bylined) auther did his or her best creative work in the shower, so....

I tried to be brief.

Financial growth is meaningless. It's what we measure, but it's not what we want - what we want is the ability to exchange money for goods and services that make us happy and healthy. In other words, we need growth in intangible assets, such as trusted relationships, an environment conducive to mental and physical health, the ability to attain and maintain health, and continued learning.

But we don't relate any of that as growth in the US. So "economic growth" becomes useless as a measurement of the success of our "economy," and sustainability is a term that also requires a thorough understanding of the ACTUAL things we have and want, not a projection of our current rate of depleting the environment vs. a rate at which the planet can sustain itself.

The reason you're having trouble tying innovation into sustainability is because you're comparing a straw man with an unused metrics system. The connection is only created by thoroughly understanding intangible assets.