April Pinata: Random News and Notes

Early April Musings from the Optimist World:

More from the realm of MBA Business Plan competitions: Wake Forest's Babcock School expanded the field of its 2008 Elevator Competition to include Social Entrepreneurship after the 2007 contest featured about 30% social entrepreneur contestants. This year the field was slanted even more- 14 socially-motivated entrants and 12 strictly for-profit. Ever curious in how anyone defines "social entrepreneurship" (because my definition is at least inclusive of for-profits!) I'm wondering whether the new category was by strictly for non-profit; the WSJ suggests that criteria was entrants whose goals were "non-financial." Anyone know more about the WFU competition last weekend?

Its 2008 and Smart Cars are coming (in fact, I've already seen several on the road out here in Southern Cal and even know of a friend of a friend of a friend who rumoredly has one). Here's the Smart USA site that helps you find a dealership and even make a reservation for your own "Smart fortwo" for only $99.

March roundup of recent fundings for cellulosic ethanol biofuel start-ups from Red Herring - including $100M for Range Biofuels of Broomfield, CO.

In the ever-confusing realm of alternative transport, GoodCleanTech reports that a diesel BMW 5 Series outperformed in MPG a Prius during a 545 mile European test. Status symbol status aside, I love the Prius and was inspired to see a co-worker driving one as a rental yesterday; but is this an eye opener or just part of the backlash?

SANGONeT- a development portal for NGO's in South Africa - offers a manifesto on Social Entrepreneurs and leading change. An interesting read, if abstract. The author differentiates between "First Order Change," or "Shuffling the Deck Chairs on the Titanic" and "Second Order." But the gist is that First Order Change is changing the content of an existing system, while Second Order Changes (and real Social Entrepreneurs) transform the way people live- changing the system entirely. The point is well taken, although I don't see it so black and white; I've been convinced by enough modern change agents that there is room for (and a market for) incremental change and that even sinking Titanics can be kept afloat by what this author would call First Order Change. Then again, I'm sure the task of spurring development in South Africa tends to put one into a more dire frame of mind.

Check out this unique franchising opportunity with Enigin; the site is glossy and slick and of course doesn't cut right to the chase of what the EnergyMaps business opportunity actually is, but it appears to be a B2B energy-saving system.

Here's The Mount Airy News' preview of an apparently smash hit local TV show, Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska. Aside from the topic - and to hear the hostess' quotes, she's apparently quite passionate about showing residents creative ways to live well while being "Frugal" AND increasingly conscious consumers and environmental stewards - I think this highlights a fascinating business opportunity to produce intelligent and timely media content in a local market. I don't know what else Urbanska's production company does, but she appears to have carved out a loyal audience.

Finally, an nothing particularly Optimist about this, other than that it's always fun to revisit past prognostication: Treehugger's Wayback Machine on 1968 predictions for 2008

March Links: Business Plan Competitions!

Apologies for the delay, but the good news is, it's college business plan season!

Pepperdine's Graziadio School winners were Kimberly Foster and Mara Kamins from the morning MBA program with Nurse Education Web, which helps to alleviate the bottleneck in the RN world by enabling clinical training to tale place more efficiently.

Also at Pepperdine, the Values-Centered Leadership Lab awarded it's second annual Social Entrepreneurs of the Year award to Luke Marvel and Brett Clouser for The Monument of our Hearts, an attire company that addresses both ecology and self-image. For the 2nd straight year, The Lab is able to help incubate its winning team by offering them professional review and critique from real investors at CT Ventures, DFJ Frontier and Maverick Angels- three highly esteemed organizations that generously off their time to participate in the student initiative. (Disclaimer- I am an alumni of The Lab and get very excited about this annual event!)

Nice link from The Earth Times on both Pepperdine winners.

Babson, among the most entrepreneurial of colleges, announces that student Jennifer Green is the winner of its first annual Wal-Mart Sustainability Business Plan competition with her Generate Change concept of connecting retailers and non-profits.

U. of Michigan students bring home honors from interscholastic U. of Cincinnati Spirit MBA Business Plan Competition with their military inventory tracking plan for ArmyProperty.com.

In Green Bay, the Urban Hope Education Center announced these winners to their annual competition, including Of the Earth Artisans of Green Bay.

More to come on business plan competitions...

Grad Student Champions of Ethics and Innovation

Thunderbird names its "Global Champions of Sustainable Innovation" earlier this month at the School of Global Management, yet another great academic exercise in the growing dialogue of innovative and good business leadership.

Closer to home for me, my alma mater hosted the 2nd Annual Graziadio Case Competition, a production of the Values-Centered Leadership Lab. The Lab is a student-driven organization focused on developing ethical and socially-entrepreneurial leaders within Pepperdine's MBA program. I was honored to serve as a judge in the first two rounds earlier this month and witnessed some fantastic team presentations on business cases like Ikea's past child labor issues.

In the finals, held November 16th in Malibu, the team of L2 (Aria Ziatabari, Lance Kawamoto, Adrienne Cohn, Tal Marom and Lance Yuhn) took first place. In other Pepperdine Ethics news, a team of MBA students (Liz Passaretti, Nick Merriam, Zach Pond and Alina Topala) brought home first place at Baylor University's National Case Competition in Ethical Leadership earlier this autumn.

Oberlin College: The Greenest...and City Wheels

More great news out of North Central Ohio:

The Sierra Club named Oberlin College American's most environmentally friendly school. Supporting evidence ranges from local sourcing of much of the school's cafeteria food to the two Priuses for rent on campus through CityWheels, a Cleveland-based, family-owned car-sharing business.

Values-Centered Leadership: The Graziadio Case Competition

Quick plug for the upcoming 2nd Annual Graziadio Case Competition at the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University.

The inspiring event- a traditional case competition, but focused on ethical and socially responsible decision-making- is produced by the Values-Centered Leadership Lab, a student-driven organization focused on hands-on ethics and social entrepreneurship practice, of which I am proud to have been an early organizer.

The multi-round event was a great success in its first run last year under Case Competition founder Naveen Jethwani and is sure to top it this year under director Elizabeth Passaretti and Lab president Nicholas Merriam.

Ohio Turns Its Money Toward The Future

Congratulations to Ohio for taking its $18B share of tobacco settlement money, reports Kenny Luna on Treehugger, in a $5B lump sum and reinvesting it in green building principles at public schools. Tough to say definitively that this is a worthier cause than youth tobacco education, as was the original plan, but nonetheless noteworthy.

Negroponte and Buy One, Give One Laptops

Nicholas Negroponte is combating slower-than-expected adoption of his One Laptop Per Child initiative with a simple and brilliant marketing ploy. Steve Hamm and BusinessWeek have the scoop: the $100-per-laptop goal is not quite yet achievable (unit cost is still at $188), so Negroponte's OLPC is going with a "Give One, Get One" plan to encourage American consumers to pay $400, get one laptop for themselves and have another sent to a child in one of four underdeveloped nations.

In the sense that all companies/organizations have to "market" their ideas, I love this "Buy One, Donate One" ploy and hereby nominate it as the Good Marketing Ploy of the year. See how TOM's Shoes does it, too, and more importantly note that my use of the word "Ploy" is with all due respect. Getting peoples' attention is a competitive thing in any endeavor. I bet this works.

Hall of Shame: Student Loan Lenders and Profiteering Colleges

Here's a great BusinessWeek expose from Jessica Silver-Greenberg about college students racking up credit card debt and the credit companies whose predatory on campus recruiting tactics seem to stimulate the youth debt phenomenon.

This mirrored and investigative clip I saw last night on CurrenTV (it originally aired in June and was produced by MossMedia), in which the reporter's polling of NYU students on their astronomical debt burden is interspersed with clips of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo talking about his state's bust-down on credit card companies, colleges, and their less-then-ethical collaborations- which included KICKBACKS to the schools from private student loans!

All of which is a way of saying that companies and colleges are working together not to ensure that young spenders understand debt- which is perfectly clearly NOT the case- but instead to make sure that they BOTH profit from the rising costs of college in the US.

Let's make this general indictment of the student lending industry our inaugural entry in The Optimist Company's Hall of Shame

Fast Company September: Microsoft in the Schools

Fast Company nails yet again on a profile of Microsoft's collaboration with Philly schools on a technology-driven school of the future. I'm not too editorially balanced to admit that education is my favorite of all Optimist topics even though Green usually takes center stage.

My favorite angle of the story is the idea that the companies who have funded free-form, technology-oriented programs that move secondary education beyond "batch processing" toward white collar career development (from pioneering Citigroup and American Express to Google, Boeing, Intel and Chevron) can't simply point to a percentage of pilot students who have become future employees...but that progams like the National Academy Foundation (funded by such companies) CAN point to dramatically higher graduation rates, college achievement and career stickiness.

We should probably just submit to doing a monthly recap of Fast Company's best stories per issue, as this month's issue also features a great story on one-time green whiz kid Adam Werbach's (former 23 year-old head of the Sierra Club) date-with-the-devil, his controversial paid consulting work with Wal-Mart's sustainability efforts.

"The Triple Bottom Line," Entrepreneurs and Schools

Newish blog from Andrew Savitz with Karl Weber, authors of The Triple Bottom Line. It's a nice read where sustainability is the focus. Before it goes the way of "at the end of the day" and other poisonous and meaningless business cliches (quick digression: check out this rampantly populated Seth Godin Squidoo lens on powerless business speak) I wanted to mention the first time I heard the phrase Triple Bottom Line, which references People, Planet and Profit (or Profit, People and Purpose, depending on whom you ask).

I was at Pepperdine's Graziadio School of Business and Management in spring 2006 when, at the finals of our business plan competition, Ann Ollivier and Katherine Yee won first place with Conscious Society, their environmentally-friendly line of premium attire. A great part of their pitch was devoted to the Triple Bottom Line, and as they fended off cynics in the audience who said "What if Banana Republic gets into eco-friendly clothing? You can't compete!" (two obvious rebuttals: there's definitely room for more than one premium fashion label in this market, and Considerate Consumers seek authenticity, so not just any company can play in it eco-friendly clothing market!) it became obvious to me that The Triple Bottom line could be part of a viable business model, even beyond the marketing plan.

Check out the 2006 winners of the Miven Venture Partners / Pepperdine University Business Plan competition. It's no surprise that three of the four top finishers (and arguably all four) are "Triple Bottom Line" -oriented. In the 2007 winner's circle, where a buddy's start-up iRent2U.com brought home the big bacon, Fresh 180 won the first annual "Socially-Minded Entrepreneurs of the Year" award for its healthy fast casual restaurant format. This award was presented by a student organization I helped get started at Pepperdine called The Values-Centered Leadership Lab. Obviously Pepperdine's students aren't the only ones (MBA and otherwise) getting in on the socially-responsible entrepreneurship act, since energetic entrepreneurial students are in maybe the best position to capitalize on a sustainable, green or otherwise Optimist start-up model.

BONUS Education Links:
Bainbridge Graduate Institute, where you can attain an MBA in Sustainable Business
Arizona State University's pioneering School of Sustainability
BYU's Social Innovation and Venture Competition

Premier Soccer Academies and the Good World of Soccer

Early on we posted about Eurosport's Passback program. Simple, effective, awesome.

I used to get three or four soccer catalogs growing up as a young footballer: Acme Soccer and Widget Works, TSI, and of course Eurosport, which has outlived the other two and a slew of competition, rightly earning its url (www.soccer.com). They've succeeded strategically and along the way done some good with a awesome program that rounds up used gear from footballers (who seriously love their gear) and gives it to kids who need gear.

It won't be the last time we post on the good business side of soccer. The Beautiful Game lends itself to a spirit of giving. A few potential reasons: 1) the truly global nature of the game, which fosters an ambassador-y attitude among those who love it and a cultural kinship between soccer (futbol, etc.) lovers everywhere 2) the underdog position of the game in this country, which maybe motivates companies to support the sport as though it were a charity 3) growing recognition of soccer as a quintessential learning experience for kids: multicultural, team-oriented, fitness-intensive 4) the great, giving personality of those who love the game (an admittedly biased option.)

Whatever it may be, here's another example: Lorain (OH) Morning Journal writers Jennifer Bracken and Alan Ingram cover the opening of the new $8M Premier Soccer Academies in Lorain, Ohio, which is going to be a life-changing experience for a diverse group of young student-athletes.

The Great Lakes town, known for sailing, Ford, and iron ore-receiving near the end of the St. Lawrence Seaway, may not have been where you'd expect to hear about of one of the most deluxe soccer academies to be established outside of Florida's IMG Academy or The David Beckham Academy at the Home Depot Center in Los Angeles- until you realize that Brad Friedel, one of the United State's most accomplished international soccer players, a longtime fixture of our national team and the goalkeeper of Blackburn Rover in the English Premier League, grew up just up the road in Bay Village.

To bring it full circle, Friedel's Premier Soccer Academies are supported by Star Trac, CenturyTel, adidas, and the Cleveland Clinic, further perfect examples of strong corporate support for the Beautiful Game.

BONUS: A phenomenal book about soccer as a reflection of nationalism, religion and culture all over the world: How Soccer Explains the World, by Franklin Foer. It's as rich with world history as it is with history on some of the international game's most legendary clubs.

Wired Covers Education on the Web 2.0

Josh Fremoso at Wired gives a great overview of educational resources on the internet, especially those invoking the targeted and collaborative principles of Web 2.0. It's the final chapter of his week-long "Education 2.0" feature, which has been a great read.

My take is that Education is an area in which the web has greatly underachieved to date. It's not a matter of the medium's inability to capture youthful eyeballs; Facebook and Myspace and others have done just fine in that department. But I suspect the most-used web resources for anything Education-related are probably Google and Wikipedia; absolutely nothing wrong with that, but if kids and other lifelong learners have learned to look no further than the basic search engines for research, it might mean that web resources haven't made themselves relevant (and that students are generally lazy and looking for a quick answer, if not the best).

Besides, direct research by learners is only one aspect of it. That's why I like the idea behind Curriki.org; it's a collaborative wiki (not collaborative enough, as Fremoso points out, but a great start nonetheless) that helps teachers develop better lesson plans on a range of topics. Web 2.0 goes beyond the end customer; students benefit from better teachers if teachers are sharing their plans on Curriki. (Of course, I'm not a teacher, so I don't know how applicable this really is.)

PS I quickly found great activity for a high school audience on the economics, costs and benefits of owning a business, provided by Darry Trampe from the Nebraska Council on Economic Education via the Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education.

Google: Doing Good, Locally

Google. Do No Evil. Google.org. There are so many "Optimist" facets to one of the most fascinating and fastest growing companies out there (and one with unbelievable brand-building momentum, according to Interbrand.) Here's another:

If you believe that small business is the life blood of this country, which we do, then this project, Google Local Business Referrals, is an example of a technology company doing good while probably also doing well. Google is enlisting paid local representatives to take digital photos and collect information about local businesses for integration with Google Maps (with the participation and permission of the business, of course.) This is a win for the small business, the end user looking for a solid referral, and certainly, in some way, Google.

If promoting small business doesn't meet your definition of doing good, consider:

• Free AdWords advertising for non-profits through Google Grants
• The business world-leading solar installation at the Google campus (see BoingBoing)
• How Googlers and non-Googlers like the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum have teamed up to use Maps to track Darfur and the genocide tragedies of the region (also see StopGenocideNow.org)
• Google releasing a version of the Apps suite for non-profits and educators
• Google planning to go Carbon Neutral by next year (see Shiny Shiny)...

...and of course, the legendary treatment of its employees, from work-life balance to the fabled amenities to a stipend for buying a hybrid, all well-document on the Fortune 100 Best Companies To Work For list and even on Oprah...

...and underlying it all, Google.org, the philanthropic arm which, lead by the legendary Dr. Larry Brilliant and endowed by Google cash and equity, is focused on public health, climate change, and global development, and supporting or launching great programs from the Acumen Fund (supporting entrepreneurial pursuits against poverty) to RechargeIT.org, which targets auto emissions.

(Equal Opportunity: Yahoo! For Good is a great program for using Yahoo tools to make a positive impact. No one could say it simpler or better than that!)

Critics point to privacy concerns, click fraud, or other standard criticisms, but that's not what this is about; they may also scoff that any company with Google's cash position could do such good things.

To which we say, to all other huge companies with lots of money, "Great, so do it like Google does it."

Disclaimer: The Optimist Company doesn't reflect Google's position and in no way are they connected; the only things they have is a vision that companies can make money while doing good. Even though The Optimist isn't about journalistic integrity (which I respect as a trained journalist) and instead simply celebrating companies that make money while doing good, this bears mentioning, because I can't go much further without mentioning Google.

The Untapped Education Market

Dane Carlson's Business Opportunities Weblog quotes Inc. on the looming, massive back-to-school spend that American parents will pump into the economy to the tune of $18B.

Poster Rich doesn't even throw out specific ideas for capitalizing on the huge spend, just the implicit opportunity in parents opening up their wallets for a late-summer rite that seems somehow tied to their desire to outfit their kids to learn real good.

So instead I'll go out on a limb: even though the Inc. post, and the National Retail Federation behind it, cites that almost a quarter of that spending will go toward technology and electronics. Don't get me wrong; I'm a technologist just like the next 27 year-old dotcom'er raised in the cyber era. But I think all the emphasis on technology "tools" for learning actually leaves a neglected opportunity in non-tech educational products. I'll save my anti-20 lb.-textbook rant for another day, but I don't anticipate a lot of 8th graders sitting in math class with either an iPod or a laptop handy, no matter how many are bought.

Gadgets get all the press. But what's the next flashcards, workbook, chalkboard...what, that isn't out there yet, could really help kids learn?

Target: Quietly Dominating Educational Philanthropy

For a huge company that is known for getting it right with design, and even changing big-box discount retailing by offering customers great design, rather than treating them like slobs with leftover-quality slop in a sloppy setting, Target should be known be known for something else it really gets right.

Target is the ultimate corporate activist in several critical areas: social services, the arts, and most notably, education.

One problem: other than it's own occasional PR, who's talking about it? The Minneapolis company, at 33 on this year's Fortune 500 with $59B in annual revenue, gives away $3M weekly to a variety of education-focused and other social programs, according to their website and the wikipedia snippet below:


Target Corporation is consistently ranked as one of the most philanthropic companies in the country. According to a November 2005 Forbes article, it ranked as the highest cash-giving company in America in percentage of income given (2.1%).^[54] Target donates around 5 percent of its pre-tax operating profit; it gives over $3 million a week (up from $2 million in years prior) to the communities in which it operates. It also gives a percentage of charges from its Target Visa to schools designated by the cardholders. To date, Target has given over $150 million to schools across the United States through this program. Target's corporate by-laws state it must give 5 percent of its pre-tax profits to charity.

So here are some blog posts and articles on Target's educational activism.

(cue crickets)

There AREN'T ANY. Isn't it enough to simply give away a lot of money in a bunch of ways to a bunch of deserving recipients? Not that they do it for the press...but a little press is nice recognition for a deserving company. Is it that they don't get it because they're a huge company, or because they're relatively quiet about it, or because education itself isn't as sexy as green?

UPDATE: Forget to link to this BusinessWeek article about one of Target's scholastic programs. I guess they're getting some press anyway, on top of the cool, if slightly conceptual, tv spot about designing classrooms that just shows a guy drawing a 3D visual of a classroom on a 2D surface...

General Mills and Box Tops 4 Education

General Mills has been an Optimist Company since long before it was trendy to integrate philanthropy into a marketing plan. The Box Tops 4 Education website doesn't even brandish the General Mills logo or any trademark cereal characters. The program is so entrenched that it's apparently not sexy enough to warrant much mention in the blogosphere (although here is one mom blogger's plug for it, plus a newsletter post from an Alaskan school). Yet it's so effective that General Mills has given $200M to primary schools in a simple purchases-for-cash program in 11 years.