Balance Is Input = Output for So Many Things In Life

Besides finding Holy Life of the Intellect during my del.icio.us clean-up, I also found a number of very interesting sites that I had discovered but not followed up on. My del.icio.us holdings are starting to go beyond my current mental capacity in breadth and depth, though that is part of reason for doing this. I am like the proverbial kid in the candy store stuffing handfuls so deep in the pockets but there is just too much and it just gets stuck there. Since I don't really write about anything in particular means I can end up trying to write about everything that comes across my plate.

So what comes across my plate. Today I went through about 600 articles on the Google Reader I was behind on. Just tossed the majority of the with Wired articles bringing it down to 300 or so. Sped through the majority of the remainder finding about 30 worth further consideration but still have about 80 Marginal Revolution posts which I find myself unable to speed through at quite the same pace. My problem is not wanting to miss something interesting. Having found something interesting I find myself wanting to write about it as though that will help to incorporate it within myself. Particularly if I see it as something that will assist in my quest to redefine myself for my post retirement career. So the only answer to not getting bogged down and keeping that balance of life I have been posting about is to limit the number of posts I try to do in a week or reading faster. Of course, there is still those 54 webpages stored in Ask.com MyStuff saved results that I want to get through.

The Bricks For Building Dreams

CoolPeopleCare | There's a Rumbling
"Passion is key for anyone looking to start something new. It's not all you need, but it's a big part of what's necessary when you set out on your own. Finding the right balance of passion and realism is key."

Those are the words of Samuel Davidson, a blogger who appears to be at the cusp of Generation X and Y, and who has provided food for thought for this weblog before. I like him because he combines idealism with pragmatism. This weblog has talked about his 4 step process from dream to reality before.

"That's the thing about passion – it's always there with us. For some of us, we wear it on our sleeves and those who know us know that we're about something..."
"Because when you have a passion, you know it. And there's no way you can't not follow it." But passion is never all we need. It's the first thing you need during the early stages of start up, but it alone won't get you to the finish line. It may not even get you to step 2. As Robert Greenleaf so eloquently pointed out:"

"Not much happens without a dream. And for something great to happen, there must be a great dream. Behind every great achievement is a dreamer of great dreams. Much more than a dreamer is required to bring it to reality; but the dream must be there first."

I am not quite as ready to accept his position on Schumpeter.

"Schumpeter was a very early advocate of entrepreneurship, believing that individual invention was what powered a capitalist economy, and not the role (or non-role) of the government. McCraw points out that while Schumpeter's ideas didn't immediately catch on in the first half of the 20th century, he now looks like a genius." McCraw writes:

"One of the hallmarks of Schumpeter's 1911 book is that he ventured into territory where no economist had gone before - namely, the psychology of entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs, he insisted, are not propelled solely by a wish to grow rich or by any "motivation of the hedonist kind." Instead, they feel "the will to conquer: the impulse to fight, the prove oneself superior to others, to succeed for the sake, not of the fruits of success, but of success itself...There is the joy of creating, of getting things done, or simply of exercising one's energy and ingenuity.

As someone who identifies with Schumpeter's definition, I believe that the organizations and companies that will succeed in today's economy will be those that embrace entrepreneurship at every level.

While I can readily agree with, "There is the joy of creating, of getting things done, or simply of exercising one's energy and ingenuity" Schumpeter may be getting better press than he deserves because its a quick sell for the ideas people want to get across, but Schumpeter does not philosophically epitomize the ideals being expressed as he may seem on first look.

I do appreciate the concept of creative-destruction but keeping in mind the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald

"The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

We need to appreciate the effect of the destruction as well as the creation.

China's New and Growing Role at the World Economic Table

The G20 meeting in London is set for 2 April 2009. One of the relative new and now major participants will be the People's Republic of China. Whatever happens to the World Economy, and therefore to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, will depend to a great extent upon China.

One of my news sources is the China Daily. I took a look over the last couple of weeks to see what they were putting out as news worthy in terms of world economics.

To a great extent they pull what they want from the same sources as we do. Which can mean that their information is as conflicted as ours is, depending upon who is talking.

China Daily (Xinhua) Updated: 2009-03-19 23:07
IMF: World economy to shrink in 2009, first time in 60 years

WASHINGTON - The world economy is expected to contract in 2009 for the first time in 60 years as advanced economies will shrink sharply, the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday.

In the analysis, the IMF called on G20 governments to take steps to relieve their financial systems of distressed assets and free up credit.

"Turning around global growth will depend critically on more concerted policy actions to stabilize financial conditions as well as sustained strong policy support to bolster demand," the IMF said.

For a different perspective

China Daily (Agencies) Updated: 2009-03-18 16:46
ECB chief: Growth may resume in 2010

PARIS - European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet said Wednesday that economic growth could resume next year, although 2009 will be "very, very difficult." "2010 could be the year of a moderate resumption of growth, but that depends on us," he said on France's Europe-1 radio.

He said an economic recovery depends on the confidence of governments, businesses and consumers. "The essential problem is not to make predictions in an uncertain world, it is to find confidence again," Trichet said.

That seems to be saying that our only problem is that we have a bad attitude. Others have written about the Europeans refusal to follow President Obama's economic strategy. China seems to be willing to participate with the IMF, but on its own terms. It seems that China now as a far greater ability to set its own terms than it did in the last century.

By Zheng Lifei (China Daily) Updated: 2009-03-28 08:42
Vice Premier: China will aid IMF bond scheme

China is ready to buy bonds issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) if the multilateral financial institution's quota-based contributions fall short of immediate needs, Vice-Premier Wang Qishan wrote in a Friday article for the London Times newspaper.

In an article titled "G20 must look beyond the needs of the top 20", Wang said the IMF should set the scale of contributions by per-capita GDP rather than the size of a country's foreign exchange reserves.

"It is neither realistic nor fair to set the scale of contribution simply by the size of foreign exchange reserves," he wrote, "China is ready to play an active part in exploring ways to raise resources and will contribute to this effort within its ability. We hold that the IMF should mobilize resources through the quota-based system as well as voluntary contributions, striking a balance between the rights and obligations of the contributing countries."

Links to Related China Daily Articles

• China cautioned to lend less to IMF
• Increasing stake in IMF should be voluntary, Wen says
• IMF to set up 2 more technical assistance centers in Africa
• IMF: China's 8% growth this year challenging but possible
• Brown: End western control of IMF, WB
• China may offer IMF $100b during G20 summit: expert
• UK fully supports China's role in IMF
• Major IMF reforms seen at G20 summit

Surviving Ideaicide And Other Perils Of The New Economy

Some of the recent posts for this weblog have been dealing with the creative-destructive aspects on the Web 2.0 business environment, Kevin Kelly's insights for the creative side and commodification for the destructive. Another post dealt with the new Artisan Economy.

What this post is taking a look at are some of the aspects of the social/business environment in which all of this is suppose to be happening. This is to serve as a reminder that having a laptop does not instill instant creativity or guarantee a smooth road to success.

As this New York Times BUSINESS article on February 3, 2008 By JANET RAE-DUPREE tells us in Unboxed: Eureka! It Really Takes Years of Hard Work

As humans, we want to believe that creativity and innovation come in flashes of pure brilliance, with great thunderclaps and echoing ahas. Balderdash.

Not only do we have to work hard on our own ideas, we have to maintain an openness to conflicting ideas, going back to what F. Scott Fitzgerald advised. This Los Angeles Times article provides a more indepth perspective.

The modern world is an ever-changing mass of contradictions. Reconciling them is fundamental to success, whether in business or in life.

The need to keeping conflicting ideas in balance is hard enough, but one also has to do so in an environment of increasing complexity. As small business expert by Ivana Taylor review of The Complexity Crisis — Why Keeping it Simple is Not Stupid at Small Business Trends' tells us.

Looking at the current business obsession regarding product proliferation, the long tail, and flat worlds complexity the argument goes has run amok among businesses, both big and small. John Mariotti, former president of Rubbermaid Office Products and Huffy Bicycles, lends perspective and clarity to complexity in his new book The Complexity Crisis. Why too many products, markets and customers are crippling your company and what to do about it.

"Businesses must compete in more complex global markets than ever before. Most companies are seeking double-digit growth in markets growing in single digit rates — or not at all. This quest for growth has led to runaway complexity caused by the proliferation of products, customers, markets, suppliers, services, locations, and more. All of these add costs, which go untracked by even the best accounting systems. Complexity also fragments management focus, wastes time and money, and ultimately reduces shareholder value. The problems grow, but they remain under the radar of management attention. Complexity is arguable, the most insidious, hidden profit drain in today's business world."

What is of greatest interest is how, even succeeding in meeting the above challenges, you keep your ideas alive. One source of inspiration has been referenced before, the Change This Manifesto. This time the pointer comes from Brand Autopsy's johnmoore on 2/1/08 Ideaicide Prevention is Everybody's Business.

"Ideas are usually rejected out of turn for being too 'something' — too fast, too unproven, too far beyond the corporate image. 'Too something' is a reactionary description used to take the edge off ideas that are strong, bold, and a little scary at first sight. Your challenge is to help people discover a means, harmonious with the culture, to accept your concept."

Alan Parr & Karen Ansbaugh Ideaicide: How To Avoid It And Get What You Want * ChangeThis Manifesto *

I am not sure that this has to happen necessarily in a corporate setting. GroupThink, which I suspect is a primary cause only needs two to be contagious. Government is also particularly susceptible to this aliment.

Finally, in this type of environment the chances of unhampered non-stop success are slim and none. As the The Entrepreneurial Mind told us back on 1/30/08 Failure Stinks!. Fortunately, Dr. Cornwall provides a pointer to Bounce.

Barry Moltz's long awaited second book, titled Bounce, has finally arrived. From his (Barry Moltz's) website:

Conventional business wisdom tells us that there is always something to learn from failure. Not true--sometimes it just stinks! Failure that offers no real learning value becomes a big jolt to the basic business belief system.

Barry's gift is that he uses humor to offer lessons that all entrepreneurs can learn from. During his last visit to Belmont, Barry offered some glimpses of what he planned to explore in his new book. Just like with his first book You Need to be a Little Crazy, this book is a must read for entrepreneurs at any stage of their development.

Barry demonstrates that developing the resiliency to 'bounce" through these cycles determines who ultimately will succeed. Using real life business examples, he shows that with true business confidence, we can face our fears, let go of shame and failures, use all our choices, be better risk-takers, and define our own brand of success.

Belief and Ritual Finding Common Ground Through Difference

My objective in creating this blog was as a learning tool for myself through finding websites of interest and organizing them for further study to create my own personal paradigm shifts. One of the main sources of interesting material continues to be TED. Recently, I have had a desire to go back to the original motivations for this blog and broaden my explorations again. This is done with the belief that it will help my gaining more understanding of the Millennium Development Goals dealt with in my other blog. Below are a collection of TED talks I found inspiring on a personal level.

Wade Davis: The worldwide web of belief and ritual
Anthropologist Wade Davis muses on the worldwide web of belief and ritual that makes us human. He shares breathtaking photos and stories of the Elder Brothers, a group of Sierra Nevada Indians whose spiritual practice holds the world in balance. Watch this talk >>

Stefan Sagmeister: Things I have learned in my life so far

Rockstar designer Stefan Sagmeister delivers a short, witty talk on life lessons, expressed through surprising modes of design (including ... giant inflatable monkeys?). Watch this talk >>

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Creativity, fulfillment and flow Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi asks, "What makes a life worth living?" Money cannot make us happy, he says -- instead, he looks to people who find pleasure and lasting satisfaction in activities that bring about a state of "flow."

Watch this talk >>

Challenging The "Popular" Theory Of Group and Individual Interaction

Kottke.org by jason@kottke.org puts his two cents in on the Fast Company article By: Clive Thompson regarding Duncan Watts' research.

Duncan Watts' research is challenging the theory that a small group of influential people are responsible for triggering trends as explained in Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point.

"If society is ready to embrace a trend, almost anyone can start one--and if it isn't, then almost no one can," Watts concludes. To succeed with a new product, it's less a matter of finding the perfect hipster to infect and more a matter of gauging the public's mood. Sure, there'll always be a first mover in a trend. But since she generally stumbles into that role by chance, she is, in Watts's terminology, an "accidental Influential."

Perhaps the problem with viral marketing is that the disease metaphor is misleading. Watts thinks trends are more like forest fires:

"And nobody," Watts says wryly, "will go around talking about the exceptional properties of the spark that started the fire."

Jason has more here of what he has previously covered about the topic of the article.(link)

Seth's Blog by Seth Godin has its own perspective on Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point plus that of some other Web 2.0 elite via The Hyping Point.

As I understand it, people are influenced by the people around them. That we act, like buffalo, in a herd. The idea that a single influential individual (even a blogger like Guy or a talk show host like Oprah) can individually change the herd is crazy, and I don't think anyone has argued that.

What should be really clear, though, is that people with big audiences certainly count as one of the people around you. If the guy down the row at work buys a Mac Air, it counts. If Guy buys a Mac Air, it counts just as much (or possibly a bit more).

Since people with big audiences have more 'friends' and have more 'people down the hall', they have more influence. Not because they count for more, just because they 'know' more people.

Cory Doctorow's take on it is here. Steve Pyke provides a guest perspective at Guy Kawasaki's blog. Steve agrees with Seth that this is One more reason not to obsess about the A list in any media category. Worry instead about people with passion and people with lots of friends. You need both for ideas to spread. That was Malcolm's point all along. I can agree with that

Seth uses his own Unleashing the Ideavirus as an example which he says, didn't spread because 'important' people endorsed and promoted it. It spread because passionate people did.

I can't fully buy Seth Godin's thinking on this one. He seems to be trying too hard to keep everybody happy. One issue is that we are looking at this from a very slanted and narrow perspective - marketing. At least narrow when compared to the larger fields of human psychology and sociology. We could even go one step further and talk about organic and inorganic information systems and how they interrelate. This weblog has posted previously to the ability of birds to communicate individual data that is transformed into group decisions in flight, basically bird-brains can effectively work in unison. While humans afflicted with ancient hate have the same deterministic predictability as inorganic chemicals. Seth is right in that it is a matter of balance, but as has also been argued in a previous post Nature Is Better At Balancing Complex Systems Than We Are. The problem is that this seemingly goes against what was said about feedback to and from a subsystem within a larger (information) system when dealing with unintended consequences. This is going to take a bit more thought.

Digging through Web 2.0 for Feelings and Facts and Fraternity

My last few posts used slacktivism to make a point about online activism, but the lesson that I have taken from my blogging and wanted to pass on to others is that Web 2.0 tools can be used to tell the story of a cause not just the facts. The story of a cause goes to the heart or the meaning of a cause and why someone should join, not merely the facts of the issue.

The World Wide Web may have started transmitting only data, but it has evolved into something more and is continuing to evolve.

Change-agent organizations need to understand and adapt these new means of connection, communication and collaboration. It is a balance between pulling on people's feelings and getting them to be part of some larger cause and providing the facts so that they can make up their own minds and find new means of working together.

From the New York Times TECHNOLOGY / INTERNET | August 24, 2009 By ALEX WRIGHT

Mining the Web for Feelings, Not Facts

The universe of reviews, ratings and recommendations online open a tantalizing window on the collective consciousness.

“Social media used to be this cute project for 25-year-old consultants,” said Margaret Francis, vice president for product at Scout Labs in San Francisco. Now, she said, top executives “are recognizing it as an incredibly rich vein of market intelligence.”

Here are two TED Talks featuring Clay Shirky, who in the first TED Talk looks at how the end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics, Iranian protestors streaming news to the world, showing how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news by bypassing censors (if all too briefly).

The second TED Talk examines how the Internet and Web 2.0 can enhance collaboration.

Now a Slacktivist Still Not All That Social of One

In the beginning the idea was to experiment with this blog to see what could be learned. A good deal was learned including the fact that I enjoyed doing it. Those lessons were then applied to a new blog. Again, it was a matter of learning and sharing those discoveries which was also found to be enjoyable.

Part of the sharing was connecting with other people. Currently I am on Facebook, Orkut, Bloggers Unite, BlogCatalog, Change.org and a number of other communities. Now I am still not all that social. I am a nice person, cordial and all, but getting a thousand Facebook or Orkut friends is not a main objective, even though I have met many very good and caring people. I will usually friend anybody who asks unless it is blatantly obvious that it is just a sales pitch. I will even friend those with subtle sales pitches, be they market oriented or political causes. I just don't spend any time looking for people. I connect with the idea first then the people.

Lately though, I find myself being drawn into the world to the Slacktivist. I do believe that there is a place for Slacktivists in the Web 2.0 Activist World. They are, we are, an essential part of the collective wisdom to bring about change. The professional activists are not going to do it without us. The problem is that it starts replacing the original focus of what I was doing which was learning and creating my own paradigms instead of clicking to respond to somebody else's. I know have 178 action invitations of the whole spectrum of causes. This are from very good people, but it does not leave any time for why I started all of this. So I am reasserting some balance and will begin making my blogs the main focus again.

Social Media Marketing Not A Miracle But Worth The Effort

A couple of posts again I said that a post featuring Ivana Taylor would be forthcoming. This is it. Why Social Media Should Be a Key Ingredient in Your Marketing Mix via Small Business Trends by Ivana Taylor from May of this year. I am also letting her take the point in arguing for social media.

What Role Should Social Media Play?

Social media's primary benefit to your communication strategy is its ability to build relationships and communities between individuals who share interests AND who would not be brought together otherwise except for those interests.

5 Easy Ways to Spice Up Your Mix with Social Media

1. Develop a social media strategy YESTERDAY.

Its insane to ignore the movement to this kind of communication. But it's wise to learn and make decisions about how to use it so it doesn't use you.

2. Choose the critical few social media applications. Always ask yourself: Who is my ideal customer? What is important to them when they are buying what I'm selling? And which tool will help them connect with my business in an easy and relevant way

3. Build your brand from the inside out. Use your smart, knowledgeable and active employees to build your brand.?

Ms Taylor also cites the Groundswell book that is making such an impact.

Forrester Research has taken what they've learned and published a book called Groundswell. The authors of the book Charlene Li and Josh Burnoff (both VPs and analysts for Forrester) are also active members of the social media community and have developed a dedicated fan base that will use their products and services.

4. Find the right place for social media in your strategy. The real work is in finding the right balance between social media and more traditional marketing tools like your printed materials. The ideal outcome is to have them all working together.

5. Go mobile. Many blog platforms offer mobile applications (like Typepad) that you can download to your phone. Twitter is designed to be mobile. This gives you the opportunity to report and communicate discretely in real time.

As usual, I am advocating applying business methodology to change-agent and social-entrepreneurial organizational objectives. Ms Taylor's ideas, especially her last idea, make all the more sense if the clientele one is working on is more dependent upon the cellphone than the laptop.

How to be a good manager: Be generous to everybody

One ongoing paradigm shift is looking to use my skills sets in new ways after I finish my current career. The question is not only what to do, but who to do it with. 50-plus entrepreneurs starting lifestyle businesses via RetirementRevised by Mark Miller back in May of this year provides some insights.

Ask someone over 50 what they want to do after retirement, and you may well get this answer: "Keep working!" Surveys suggest that more than 75 percent of the baby boom generation plans to keep working past traditional retirement age. But it's not likely that many will keep laboring away in Corporate America. Most boomers [...]

The "who" applies not only to the type of organization, which defines more than anything the what, the who is also the types of people within the organization as well. It has been discussed before, but Lela Davidson's article, also in May, on 4 Generations of Workers - Can You Relate? via Business Pundit provides another look at working in a multi-generational environment.

Today's workforce is a diverse mix of generations that each come with their collective background and value systems. Understanding their unique perspectives is important in a large organization where they are likely to be working side by side. Professor at the Instituto de Empresa in Madrid, Spain, Cristina Simón's study Generation Y and the Labor Market: Models for HR Management, address differences in generational values. Simón looked at our generations of workers, analyzed their values and suggested ways for businesses to get people working together.

Four Generations and Their ValuesTraditional Workers(born before 1946/over 60)

• Value loyalty and discipline.
• Tend to respect authority.
• Accomplished a lot
• Contributed to success under hierarchical systems of the past.

Baby Boomers (1946-1960/late 40s and up)

• Expect success.
• Created strong social change including
• The hippie movement,
• Feminism, and
• Civil rights.
• Optimistic and self-motivated.

Generation X (1961-1979/30s and 40s)

• Best academic training and international experience in history.
• Breaking with traditional patterns, including
• Creating informal work environments
• Transforming corporate structures from hierarchical into horizontal and flexible entities.
• Personal initiative and a healthy dose of skepticism toward large organizations
• Produced a lot of entrepreneurs from this generation.
• Key value achievement of balance between career goals and quality of life.

Generation Y (starting from 1980/under 30)

• Lived their entire lives with information technology
• Have a hard time comprehending a world without it.
• Tend toward individual needs in favor of the community good
• Often demand a high level of autonomy.
• Lacks in loyalty, makes up for with the the value they place on relationships with co-workers and supervisors.

So this gives me potentials for what to do and who to do it with, next is how to do it in a ideal environment. One of my favorite sources of insight is Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk who wrote on How to be a good manager: Be generous again this past May. I am just summarizing what for me are some of the high points here. For the details, you need to go to the original post.

So the first rule, and probably the only rule of management, is to be respectful. A lot of questions I get from managers can be answered the same way: ask yourself if you are really being respectful.

Most people don't see management as listening and thinking, but that's what it is. Because that's what caring about someone looks like. Once you get to the point where you are connecting with the people you manage, and you are helping them get what they want from their job, you are in a position to change the world. Really.

All this reminds Ms Trunk of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

She comes up with her own version of Pseudo-Maslow Hierarchy of Job Needs in which you start with get a job, and you figure out, eventually, how to use your job to make the world a better place.

1. Physiological - Take care of keeping yourself fed and clothed.
2. Safety - Work on feeling secure that you can keep yourself employed, if something happens.
3. Love and belonging - Figure out how to get a job that respects your personal life.
4. Esteem – perform well at your job because you have the resources and the security to do so
5. Self-actualization – help other people reach their potential through creative and moral problem solving

I am at the point where I am directly quoting the original article more than I prefer for these posts, but Ms. Trunk says it so well that re-writing does not seem to be of any service.

So really, management is an opportunity to self-actualize. Some people will self-actualize by being artists, or writing code. Some people will self-actualize through management. Some, a combination.

But the point here is that being in management is an opportunity to grow spiritually and give back to the world in a way that is enormously fulfilling. If you allow it. You will need to set aside real time to make this happen. And you need to give generously. No big surprise there, though, because why else are we here, on this planet, except to give to each other?

Finding The Style For A Sucessful Career (Or Two)

Successful Career Entrepreneur Style via The Entrepreneurial Mind on 11/30/07, again stresses, as from from a previous post, what Professor Cornwall calls, "the importance of engineering personal goals and aspirations into entrepreneurs' business models. This includes both financial goals (income and wealth) and personal non-financial goals."

He provides an example of an entrepreneur featured in at Career Journal who found the balance she was seeking between work and family, be it either just starting or empty-nest.

"In a culture obsessed with profit and growth, how do you curb the growth of a successful start-up to preserve time with your spouse and new baby?"

"For Brenda Thompson, who started the business of her dreams only months before having her first baby, the answer is to ignore the siren song of expansion and keep the business small. Her story shows how taking the long view can pay off."

Best Intentions Unintended Consequences

The Los Angeles Times had an article that called into question whether the Gates Foundation was having a net positive impact on healthcare in Africa.

Unintended victims of Gates Foundation generosity - Los Angeles Times

The Gates Foundation, endowed by the personal fortunes of the Microsoft Corp. chairman, his wife and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chairman Warren E. Buffett, has given $650 million to the Global Fund. But the oxygen valve fell outside the priorities of the fund's grants to Lesotho. Every day, nurses say, one or two babies at the hospital die as Mankuebe did -- bypassed in a place where AIDS overshadows other concerns.

Mixed effects

The Gates Foundation has targeted AIDS, TB and malaria because of their devastating health and economic effects in sub-Saharan Africa. But a Times investigation has found that programs the foundation has funded, including those of the Global Fund and the GAVI Alliance, which finances vaccines, have had mixed influences on key measures of societal health:

* By pouring most contributions into the fight against such high-profile killers as AIDS, Gates grantees have increased the demand for specially trained, higher-paid clinicians, diverting staff from basic care. The resulting staff shortages have abandoned many children of AIDS survivors to more common killers: birth sepsis, diarrhea and asphyxia.

The article provided the impetus to go back and look again at the Vivian Hoffman paper. The paper raised questions about the real impact of social-entrepreneurs, such as the Acumen Fund, had on helping the poor. The post links to a Marginal Revolution post and from there to a New York Times article that questioned whether direct distribution of the nets of the nets was best or were social entrepreneurial programs. Similar questions of effectiveness arose from the the Fast Company article regarding Grameen Phone Company.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation supported Global Fund seems to see this either as a public relations problem, if we want to be cynical, or as a problem of self-definition, they can't be all things to all people or perhaps something in the middle. There does seem to be some truth to the later proposition that they can't be all things to all people but it is arguably a matter of balance. Because it's Bill Gates cynicism seems far easier than it might otherwise.

The LA Times did do a follow up report on the Global Funds dispute with their article. The Global Fund not only has their own piece criticizing the LA Times article, they also have a letter from the National Aids Control Commission of Rwanda.

I have an issue with attempts to find fault to create a story, which the LA Times article and the Fast Company article seem to lean too much towards in my view. The New York Times article and Vivian Hoffman paper though seemed different. My second reading of the Hoffman paper did provide a better understanding and impressed upon me again the uncomfortable perspective that going in with a decidedly social-entrepreneurial slant as the best intentions to provide assistance without fully understanding the culture could have unintended but detrimental consequences. What I don't know is what course of action, if any, have been taken by the social-entrepreneurs to address these issues. This is not, of course, the same as arguing that traditional government centered policies are automatically better.

Within the LA Times article they make a statement which is apparently in conflict with what I got from the Hoffman article.

According to UNICEF, malaria kills relatively few children. Birth-related problems, pneumonia and diarrhea are the top causes of child mortality. All are treatable but occur at high rates, in part because resources are concentrated on AIDS, TB and malaria, The Times reported.

This is in contrast to the Vivian Hoffman paper,

Malaria kills over one million people annually, 90 percent of them children under the age of five (World Health Organization, 2004).

What I found at the WHO website, which provided more insight, is that the key health dangers for children are:

• From one month to five years of age, the main causes of death are pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, measles and HIV. Malnutrition contributes to more than half of deaths.

• Pneumonia is the prime cause of death in children under five years of age. Nearly three-quarters of all cases occur in just 15 countries. Addressing the major risk factors – including malnutrition and air pollution – is essential to preventing pneumonia, as is vaccination. Antibiotics and oxygen are vital tools for effectively managing the illness.

• Diarrhoeal diseases are a leading cause of sickness and death among children in developing countries. Treatment with Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) combined with zinc supplements is safe, cost-effective, and saves lives.

• One African child dies every 30 seconds from malaria. Insecticide-treated nets prevent transmission and increase child survival.

• Over 90% of children with HIV are infected through mother-to-child transmission, which can be prevented with antiretrovirals, as well as safer delivery and feeding practices.

• About 20 million children under five worldwide are severely malnourished, which leaves them more vulnerable to illness and early death.

  About two-thirds of child deaths are preventable through practical, low-cost interventions. WHO is improving child health by helping countries to deliver integrated, effective care in a continuum - starting with a healthy pregnancy for the mother, through birth and care up to five years of age. Investing in strong health systems is key to delivering this preventive care.

This does argue for taking a more comprehensive approach to children's healthcare in developing countries but it does not argue that it is being caused by “in part because resources are concentrated on AIDS, TB and malaria, The Times reported.” Amy Smith of MIT, who is recognized for finding low tech solutions for global problems informed us that smoke from indoor cooking was the number one killer of young children.

Meanwhile, Acumen Fund has been recognized by Fast Company as one of its top 45 Social Capitalists: Acumen Fund.

The increasing gap between rich and poor is one of the greatest challenges of our generation. Half the world lives on less than three dollars a day while 250 individuals hold more wealth than the bottom two billion. Creating a sustainable world means reducing that gap.

Aid alone will not end poverty. Traditional charity often meets immediate needs but is not designed to enable people to solve problems over the long term. Poor people seek dignity, not dependence.

Acumen Fund identifies and supports enterprises that provide health, water, housing and energy to the poor. We bring capital, knowledge and talent to accelerate markets for the poor, having seen their power as customers who are willing to pay for affordable, quality services that can change their lives. We have seen this working with our portfolio enterprise in South Asia and Eastern Africa.

While Iqbal Quadir has become the head of the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT.

Acumen's founder Jacqueline Novogratz, Iqbal Quadir and others working in this field have also been topics of contemplation in this weblog and have been included within the Pearls of Paradigm Processing Social and Economic Paradigms.

No final conclusion, just an ever increasing realization of the complexity of the issues. As Emily Oster, the University of Chicago economist, pointed out we need to look for root causes in not only understanding poverty and poor health care -- but also other issues such as the price of coffee, and the routes of long-haul truckers.

“In short, there is a lot we don't know; and our assumptions about what we do know may keep us from finding the best way to stop the disease.”

Curious And Curiouser Layer By Layer

Curious via Seth's Blog offered the following on 1/21/08

Nic created the video below--the subtitles and edits are his. The bad cold is mine. I hope you like it (the video, not the cold).

Also from Seth's Blog Layering on 1/22/08

Here's what we used to do:
Create ---> Edit ---> Launch

Here's what happens now:
Create ---> Launch ---> Edit ---> Launch ---> repeat

Someone asked me which post on this blog represented the turning point of its growth. The 'breakthrough' post. It turns out that there wasn't one. Instead, there were 2,500 posts, one after the other, each building (and I was learning from each) as we went. And thus the challenge. We live in a layered world now. Those that plan and plan and then launch are always going to be at a disadvantage to the layerers.

The Entrepreneurial Mind on 1/17/08 also has a perspective on whether To Plan, Or Not to Plan.

I don't believe that this is in opposition to what Seth Godin had said, just said differently from a different perspective. Dr. Campbell also expresses the idea that plans are not the holy grail of entrepreneurship and when he writes that he will have to adjust my plan each step along the way, I think of Seth Godin's layering.

We set business plans up on a pedestal as if it is the holy grail of entrepreneurship. Just look at BusinessWeek.com's most recent special issue on entrepreneurship -- it is all about business planning.

It is as if we are telling aspiring entrepreneurs that once they unlock the secrets of the business plan, the world of entrepreneurial wealth will come pouring out at them. Sorry, but this is just not true.

On the other hand, there is now a debate raging as to whether we should even teach entrepreneurs about business plans.

All of this -- and I mean both sides of this debate -- is missing the point.

So why do we teach about business plans? It is because they are a way to help organize what can be a complex and overwhelming array of issues. It is because it forces us to integrate our marketing plans, or operating plans and our financial plans into one, coherent story.

But I still plan. I just know that I will have to adjust my plan each step along the way as I begin to implement it as I start and grow my business.

The Entrepreneurial Mind also tells us that Growth is Never a Smooth Curve

The truth is that growth is a messy thing. It never follows a smooth path. The real curves that signify growth are jagged. Growth is lumpy, not smooth.

Growth requires us to make leaps of faith as we commit to significant new overhead, including more space, more equipment and more staff.

And in today's dynamic economy, a growing business is like the shark -- it has to keep moving forward, or it will drown.

The commitment to growth requires careful thought and careful planning. Never grow simply on faith and hope. Grow with a careful plan that tells you what challenges your decision to grow will create.

Is this in disagreement with what was said above? I don't believe so. This goes back to Seth Godin's point about maintaining curiosity, because curiosity is to my mind the pre-commitment to immerse our selves in a chosen field to learn all we can and endeavor to make it better. This post only touches lightly upon Dr. Campbell's ideas. His full post better expresses the balance that entrepreneurs need to achieve.

A Closer Look At Fluid Intelligence

My recent post on 12 Hacks 6 Myths And Other Ways On Amping Your Brainpower, received a comment from Soak Your Head creator Erik Mork of Silver Bay Labs who said...

I think the significance of the Martin Buschkuehl research is that actual intelligence may be increased with daily training on dual-n-back. Which kind of sets it apart from the other approaches mentioned (12 Hacks that Will Amp...). Though, it does have some mutual benefits with them (for instance, working memory is generally increased with these types of training).

My wife and I have built an open source web application that implements the dual-n-back training. If you're curious to try. It's at: http://www.soakyourhead.com/ .

I'm not sure if keeping a blog make s you smarter, but it sure can't hurt ;) Thanks for this interesting post.

His point is definitely valid. My throwing the 12 hacks and 6 myths into the same post was for a more psych-lite article. Not that I am an expert, but I was leaning towards the "keeping busy and cognizant after they lock me out of the office at work" approach. As far as the viability of keeping a blog, it may not make me more intelligent but I am learning new things and keeping connected so hopefully it is doing some good. I did omit the section of the Wired article, intended perhaps to provide some balance, which cited:

David Geary, a professor at the University of Missouri and author of The Origin of Mind, who was not involved with the study, said training in one test generally doesn’t generate gains on a different test.

"Transfer is tough to get," Geary said. "Training in task A doesn’t typically improve performance on task B."

But in this case, subjects trained on a complex version of the so-called "n-back task" -- a difficult visual/auditory memory test -- improved their scores on a set of IQ questions drawn from a German intelligence measure called the Bochumer Matrizen-Test. (The Bochumer Matrizen-Test is a harder version of the well known Ravens Progressive Matrices).

I am impressed with the site that Erik and is wife have created. I don't get the sense that either of them are trained in this scientific field, but their site is informative and seems well balanced. It also does not seem to be connected to any particular research facility. Which seems unfortunate as this appears to be a great opportunity to gather a good deal of "crowd-sourced" data, which is one potential motivation for running this post.

Another motivation is that I find the concept of fluid intelligence interesting from both the biological and cognitive perspective, and it gives me a reason to feature this article from TEDBlog on the amazing intelligence of crows: Joshua Klein on TED.com.

Hacker and writer Joshua Klein is fascinated by crows. (Notice the gleam of intelligence in their little black eyes?) After a long amateur study of corvid behavior, he's come up with an elegant machine that may form a new bond between animal and human. (Recorded March 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 10:16.)

Going Beyond Nature

In the last couple of posts this blog raised the question on the role of architecture in overcoming the challenges facing the world, over-consumption by the developed world, need for development in the developing world, sustainability for both. On one end of the spectrum was the work of the Open Architecture Network and on the other discussions of Frank Gehry's work on the MIT Stata building. Not as a criticism of Gehry's work, but the issues such work brings up and the debate regarding those issues.

The following is also from MIT and features Werner Sobek discussing architecture which is 100% recyclable and capable of incredible designs. It addresses the question of what can be done, not necessarily what should be done, but its interdisciplinary approach provides a good model for overcoming global challenges and it demonstrates the potential of what is possible.

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view latest additions		volume 7 | number 57 | August 18, 2008

Video date: April 24, 2008 6:30 PM "Complete know how in disciplines is one thing, but to work in terra incognita, this is something we more or less have devoted our lives to..." —Werner Sobek

High-Eco-Tech: Building Avant la Garde There's more than a little magic in Werner Sobek's constructions, which balance aesthetics, architectural constraints and pathbreaking science to, in his words, "go beyond" nature's own limits. SPEAKER: Werner Sobek Engineer and Architect, Werner Sobek Ingenieure

Event Host: Department of Architecture

You Are Commodified When You Lose The Ability To Changing Things

HBS Working Knowledge had an article on When Your Product Becomes a Commodity — Annotated The source of this link was from Businesspundit When Your Product Becomes a Commodity

The truth is, even when a raw material has no value added and quality standards are set by law or the industry, there is still plenty of opportunity for differentiation around availability, delivery, shipment quantities, payment terms, and all the other services that accompany the core product. Marketers must use their imagination. As the saying goes: "There are no mature products, only mature managers."

I see it relating to the concepts I am trying to get my head around from Gapingvoid, Seth Godin and even Kevin Kelly. Not in terms of a specific product but how to relate to this as a manager providing service. Moreover, I am trying to look beyond just the "mechanics", which I sense from the readings is only a veneer that wears through quickly.

It has been Gapingvoid which as given me the closest sense of this, though I have not zeroed in on it fully yet. The mechanics yes, but there seems or maybe I am looking for something more. I see it related to an ability to make change in the world for the better. If one's ability to make self generate change in the world is compromised, then one becomes a commodity.

gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards": meatball sundae: ten questions for seth godin Annotated

Here's my challenge: I want to change things. Sometimes, the best way to do that is to reach out to committed individuals and give them some ideas to run with. On the other hand, big changes, sea changes... those happen in larger organizations with leverage. So, my books have sort of struck a balance, sometimes emphasizing one more than the other. In this case, it's clear that the digerati 'get' what's going on with the new marketing. But we're frustrated. I wrote this book to help us out. The phrase, "meatball sundae" is designed as a rallying cry, something to sneer at in a big meeting.

gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards": why marketers are so interested in blogs Annotated

Yesterday, while Johnnie Moore, Mark Earls and I were recording a podcast, Johnnie came up with a wonderful metaphor to describe this phenomenon.

He told Mark and me about being 12 years old in science class. To demonstrate that yes, indeed, a stick of celery is full of capillaries, even if you couldn't see them with the naked eye, the science teacher dipped the end of a stick of celery into a beaker of blue ink. An lo and behold, the kids watched in amazement as the ink traveled up the celery capillaries, turning the rest of the green celery stalk into blue.

Suddenly that which could not be seen before, could now clearly be seen. Glaringly so.

I think Seth said it pretty well to me the other day: "The web is a giant compiler for marketers. You can experiment here for less money, in less time, than anywhere else. If Al Gore hadn't invented it, I'd be seriously bummed out."

The thing about creating a blog is that lines keep continually crossing and there does not seem to be any constraints or parameters. Within the web as 'defined' by web 2.0 organizational permeablity does not seem to be an issue allowing what Kevin Kelly wrote about and for authenticity in our efforts to connect.

tags: design, entrepreneurship, gvoid, marketing