Think Different

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results......


 - Albert Einstein









He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. 

He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice. 

- Albert Einstein 

Katherine Fulton: You are the future of philanthropy

President of Monitor Institute, Katherine Fulton is also a strategist, author, teacher and speaker working for social change.

Katherine Fulton sketches the new future of philanthropy -- one where collaboration and innovation allow regular people to do big things, even when money is scarce. Giving five practical examples of crowd-driven philanthropy, she calls for a new generation of citizen leaders

Billions of dollars are spent on philanthropy each year, but the way they are spent is changing rapidly. Katherine Fulton’s team at Monitor Group has been tracking these changes, and she has become an eloquent advocate for the “New Philanthropy,” surprising audiences with her insights on an underreported phenomenon of momentous significance.



As president of Monitor Institute, she works with today’s most imaginative, entrepreneurial leaders (not just in philanthropy, but also in business and government) to pioneer breakthrough next practices in how complex social problems are framed, confronted, funded and ultimately solved.



As a result of her efforts, she has been awarded both a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University and a Lyndhurst Foundation prize for community service. Her innovative course design at Duke University was featured in Time magazine and her work on the future of journalism in Columbia Journalism Review. She is also co-author of several books, among them Investing for Social and Environmental Impact: A Blueprint for Catalyzing an Emerging Industry, Looking Out for the Future: An Orientation for Twenty-First Century Philanthropists and What If? The Art of Scenario Thinking for Nonprofits.
 

Geoff Mulgan: Post-crash, investing in a better world

The Young Foundation and Geoff Mulgan have published a number of reports and books on social innovation, public sector innovation and public strategy. They are also working actively on recession responses.

Previously he was:

• Director of Policy at 10 Downing Street (under British Prime Minister Tony Blair)
  

• Director of the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit (formerly known as the Performance and Innovation Unit)
  

• Co-founder and Director of the London based think tank Demos (from 1993-98)
  

• Chief adviser to Gordon Brown MP in the early 1990s
  

He has written a number of books including:

• Communication and Control:networks and the new economies of communication (1991),
• Politics in an Anti-Political Age (1994),
  
• Connexity (1997) and
  
• Good and Bad Power: the Ideals and Betrayals of Government (Penguin 2006).
  

He has written numerous Demos reports and pamphlets.

His current base, the Young Foundation, mainly works on social innovation - design and launch of new social organisations, but also produces some publications, including recent ones on social innovation and the state of British society.

 He has lectured and advised governments around the world on policy and strategy - including China, Australia, the United States, Japan and Russia.

He is profiled in two books - The New Alchemists (1999 by Charles Handy) and Visionaries (2001 by Jay Walljasper). He is a trustee of the Design Council and the Work Foundation.

Geoff Mulgan (born 1961) is director of the Young Foundation based in London and Visiting Professor at University College, London, the London School of Economics and University of Melbourne as well as being the chair of Involve.

He obtained his Ph.D. in telecommunications from the University of Westminster. He was a Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and obtained a First Class degree from Balliol College, Oxford. Mulgan was also trained as a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka , but instead worked in local government and academia in the UK, and became an influential writer on social and political issues in various newspapers and magazines in the 1990s. He was made a CBE in 2005.

Geoff Mulgan poses a question:

Instead of sending bailout money to doomed old industries, why not use stimulus funds to bootstrap some new, socially responsible companies -- and make the world a little bit better?

Nicholas Negroponte takes OLPC to Colombia

The founder of the MIT Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte pushed the edge of the information revolution as an inventor, thinker and angel investor. 



Now he's the driving force behind One Laptop per Child, building computers for children in the developing world.


It's an education project, not a laptop project. Inexpensive, durable, networked laptops are important to better education everywhere in the world, empowering children and communities, and sharing access to modern skills with every child on the planet.

We follow Nicholas Negroponte to Colombia as he delivers laptops inside territory once controlled by guerrillas. His partner? Colombia's Defense Department, who see One Laptop per Child as an investment in the region.

Why are you so unhappy?

Why are you so unhappy?

Because 99.9%

Of everything you think and

Of everything you do

Is for yourself

And there isn’t one

The words of the poet Wei Wu Wei, who diagnosed the ills of an over individualised, under socialised society more crisply than I could, and through the lens of eastern philosophy.

Between the years 1958 and 1974 eight books and articles in various periodicals appeared under the pseudonym "Wei Wu Wei" (a Taoist term which translates as action that is non-action). The identity of the author was not revealed at the time of publication for reasons outlined in the Preface to the first book Fingers Pointing Towards the Moon (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958).

Social entrepreneur JULIA MOULDEN

Social entrepreneur JULIA MOULDEN is a life coach who is making it her life's work to help others transform their careers while finding social meaning and financial security.




Julia coined the phrase “New Radicals” to describe people who are leveraging skills acquired in their careers and putting them to work on the world’s greatest challenges.

 Her personal experiences coaching a fascinating and innovative group of social entrepreneurs led to the publication of her first book We are The New Radicals - which details their journeys. Julia has defined the group of Baby Boomers determined to use their intellect, talent and influence to change the world through their own journey of transformation as The New Radicals.

Her book, We Are The New Radicals: A Manifesto for Reinventing Yourself and Saving the World was released internationally by McGraw-Hill, New York. Her first book, Green is Gold, an environmental primer for business, was translated into six languages.
 

Julia has a weekly column on the HuffingtonPost; “The Giving Life” appears each Saturday. Her byline has also appeared in a diverse range of publications, including the Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, and Ms magazine.

A speechwriter for CEOs, cabinet ministers, and celebrities for more than 20 years, Julia’s clients include North America’s leading organizations, such as AstraZeneca, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, and Rogers Communications.  Born in Toronto in 1956, Julia has lived in Europe, the U.S., and Mexico. She kayaks as often as possible on Georgian Bay.

GERI BERHOLZ realised the power of mentoring children

The concept is to identify kids with leadership potential and match them with a mentor who helps them reach a long-term goal. The results have been nothing short of astonishing.



Since its inception in 2002, the lives of over 1300 kids have been transformed.




As a schoolteacher, GERI BERHOLZ realized the power of mentoring children. The creation of a Canadian chapter of Future Possibilities For Kids was a natural next step.
One success story is Kid Coach Yvon, a former at-risk teen, who, because of his work with Geri, is now the first member of his family to graduate high school, graduate college and now attend university. Yvon is well on his way to fulfilling his life-long dream of becoming a peace negotiator for the United Nations.






Future Possibilities For Kids

A Strategic Plan for Smart Philanthropy - Paul Brest

Paul Brest visits Google to present his book "Money Well Spent: A Strategic Plan for Smart Philanthropy".

This event took place on July 14, 2009, as part of the Authors@Google series.









Why you should listen to Paul Breast?
It's good to give a little something back. If you plan or care about a social investment, Paul Brest and Hal Harvey's book can advise you on how to develop a strategy to ensure that your money is well spent. It addresses potential and practising donors eager to know how to improve the effect of their philanthropic activities. And, with its clear view on how to strategically approach a philanthropic mission and an abundance of insights and examples from the experience of two philanthropy professionals, it does so successfully.


While there have been seminal contributions on philanthropy and strategic giving in recent years (for example by Peter Frumkin and Joel Fleishman), Brest and Harvey set out to boil this thinking down to practice, doing for philanthropists what books on business strategy do for business entrepreneurs and executives. They cover the whole range of strategic social investment, introducing readers to the pertinent topics and terminology of the field like theory of change and logic models, programme-related investments and the SROI concept, and the eternal questions surrounding social impact measurement.





Their presentation is engaging, too. For example, they present a three-dimensional model for categorizing philanthropic goals and go on to talk about 'philanthropy in the small cube' (addressing short-term, small-scale problems that affect people's quality of life) and 'philanthropy in the big cube' (the fight against long-term, life-threatening and global problems). They also invent Sally Holder, president of a hypothetical medium-sized foundation, and invite the reader to share a day in her life.

The authors discuss key issues (like specifying goals and tracking progress) repeatedly and from different perspectives, giving examples and discussing pitfalls. Reading all or only part of the book, therefore, the potential donor will gain both knowledge of, and a good feeling for, what really matters in strategic philanthropy.

Substitute the word Laptop, with the word Education

The founder of the MIT Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte pushed the edge of the information revolution as an inventor, thinker and angel investor. Now he's the driving force behind One Laptop per Child, building computers for children in the developing world.



It's an education project, not a laptop project. Inexpensive, durable, networked laptops are important to better education everywhere in the world, empowering children and communities, and sharing access to modern skills with every child on the planet.







Substitute the word Laptop, with the word Education, and you have much of the answer. XOs make it possible to collaborate, learn, teach, and publish at no cost. They inspire new forms of learning, and attention to education. And the provide access to digital texts in places too remote to send and update physical books in a cost-effective way.





Why you should listen to him:


A pioneer in the field of computer-aided design, Negroponte was perhaps best known for founding and directing MIT's Media Lab, which helped drive the multimedia revolution and now houses more than 500 researchers and staff. An original investor in WIRED (and the magazine’s "patron saint"), for five years he penned a column exploring the frontiers of technology -- ideas that he expanded into his 1995 best-selling book Being Digital. An angel investor extraordinaire, he's funded more than 40 startups, and served on the boards of companies such as Motorola and Ambient Devices.


But his latest effort, the One Laptop per Child project, may prove his most ambitious. The organization is manufacturing the XO (the "$100 laptop"), a wireless Internet-enabled, pedal-powered computer costing roughly $100. Negroponte hopes to put millions of these devices in the hands of the children in the developing world by 2010.


"If Nicholas Negroponte can achieve his ambition of distributing $100 laptops to the world's disadvantaged children, he will help redefine philanthropy and see his name added to a list alongside the likes of Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller."

Technology Review

Bill Gates unplugged

A passionate techie and a shrewd businessman, Bill Gates changed the world once, while leading Microsoft to dizzying success. He plans to do it again with his very own style of philanthropy.



Bill Gates hopes to solve some of the world's biggest problems using a new kind of philanthropy. In a passionate and, yes, funny 18 minutes, he asks us to consider two big questions and how we might answer them.

 

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Creativity, fulfillment and flow

Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi asks, "What makes a life worth living?"

Noting that money cannot make us happy, he looks to those who find pleasure and lasting satisfaction in activities that bring about a state of "flow."

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives.

A leading researcher in positive psychology, he has devoted his life to studying what makes people truly happy: "When we are involved in [creativity], we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life."

He is the architect of the notion of "flow" -- the creative moment when a person is completely involved in an activity for its own sake.

Csikszentmihalyi teaches psychology and management at Claremont Graduate University, focusing on human strengths such as optimism, motivation and responsibility. He's the director the the Quality of Life Research Center there. He has written numerous books and papers about the search for joy and fulfillment.

Richard St. John: Marketer, success analyst

Why do people succeed?

Is it because they’re smart?

Or are they just lucky?


Neither. Analyst Richard St. John condenses years of interviews into an unmissable slideshow on the real secrets of success.

Richard St. John knew how he had found success -- through his marketing company, the St. John Group, which boasted clients like Nortel and BlackBerry/Research in Motion.

But he couldn't get away from the question: Why him? He thinks of himself as an average guy, not talented at school, not terribly handsome or particularly lucky. So he spent more than a decade interviewing 500 people he defines as successful -- from architect Frank Gehry to non-celebrities successful in their own lives.

The resulting book, Spike's Guide to Success: Stupid, Ugly, Unlucky and RICH, has spawned a new avenue of success for St. John as a motivational speaker and talk-show star. His newest book is 8 to Be Great: The 8 Traits that Lead to Great Success.

Jeff Skoll: Making movies that make change

Jeff Skoll was eBay's employee number 2 and president number 1. He left with a comfortable fortune and a desire to spend his money helping others.



Film producer Jeff Skoll (An Inconvenient Truth) talks about his film company, Participant Productions, and the people who've inspired him to do good.

Participant Productions, makes movies to inspire social change, including Syriana; An Inconvenient Truth; North Country; Fast Food Nation; Good Night & Good Luck, Charlie Wilsons War; Dafur Now…


The Skoll Foundation, established in 1999, invests in, connects and celebrates social entrepreneurs -- offering grants to people who build businesses, schools and services for communities in need. Every year, it presents the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford, and runs Social Edge, a networking site for social entrepreneurs.


His production company, Participant Productions, is what Skoll calls a "pro-social media company," making features and documentaries that address social and political issues and drive real change. His film North Country, for example, is credited with influencing the signing of the 2005 Violence Against Women Act. Participant's blockbuster doc, An Inconvenient Truth, is required viewing in classrooms around the world, and has unquestionably changed the debate around climate change. Upcoming for Participant are two films about Afghanistan, and a documentary about Jimmy Carter's controversial 2006-7 book tour.

Malcolm Gladwell: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce

Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell gets inside the food industry's pursuit of the perfect spaghetti sauce -- and makes a larger argument about the nature of choice and happiness.

Malcolm Gladwell searches for the counterintuitive in what we all take to be the mundane: cookies, sneakers, pasta sauce. A New Yorker staff writer since 1996, he visits obscure laboratories and infomercial set kitchens as often as the hangouts of freelance cool-hunters -- a sort of pop-R&D gumshoe -- and for that has become a star lecturer and bestselling author.

Sparkling with curiosity, undaunted by difficult research (yet an eloquent, accessible writer), his work uncovers truths hidden in strange data. His always-delightful blog tackles topics from serial killers to steroids in sports, while provocative recent work in the New Yorker sheds new light on the Flynn effect -- the decades-spanning rise in I.Q. scores.

Gladwell has written two books. The Tipping Point, which began as a New Yorker piece, applies the principles of epidemiology to crime (and sneaker sales), while Blink examines the unconscious processes that allow the mind to "thin slice" reality -- and make decisions in the blink of an eye. A third book is forthcoming.

Richard Branson: Life at 30,000 feet

Richard Branson about the ups and the downs of his career, from his multibillionaire success to his multiple near-death experiences -- and reveals some of his (very surprising) motivations.



Richard Branson bootstrapped his way from record-shop owner to head of the Virgin empire. Now he's focusing his boundless energy on saving our environment.

Tony Robbins: Why we do what we do, and how we can do it better

Tony Robbins discusses the "invisible forces" that motivate everyone's actions -- and high-fives Al Gore in the front row.



Tony Robbins might have one of the world’s most famous smiles; his beaming confidence has helped sell his best-selling line of self-help books, and fill even his 10,000-seat seminars.

What’s less known about the iconic motivational speaker is the range and stature of his personal clients. From CEOs to heads of state to Olympic athletes, a wide swath of high-performing professionals (who are already plenty motivated, thank you very much) look to him for help reaching their full potential.


Robbins’ expertise in leadership psychology is what brought him to TED, where his spontaneous on-stage interaction with Al Gore created an unforgettable TED moment. It also perfectly demonstrated Robbins’ direct -- even confrontational -- approach, which calls on his listeners to look within themselves, and find the inner blocks that prevent them from finding fulfillment and success. Some of his techniques -- firewalking, for example -- are magnets for criticism, but his underlying message is unassailable: We all have the ability to make a positive impact on the world, and it’s up to us, as individuals, to overcome our fears and foibles to reach that potential.


Robbins has won many accolades for his work -- including his memorable performance in the Jack Black comedy Shallow Hal. (It was a small but vital role.) His Anthony Robbins Foundation works with the homeless, elderly and inner-city youth, and feeds more than 2 million people annually through its International Basket Brigade.

Being Entrepreneurial in Hard Times

Thinking out of the box isn't enough. Leading executive coaches, Marshall Goldsmith and Steven Berglas, talk about entrepreneurs as "socialized juvenile delinquents" who can make a real difference within their corporations

'Blueprint to a Billion'

Author David G. Thomson talks about how to turn a big idea into a billion-dollar business

Differentiating your Brand

Liberty Mutual does the right thing. Liberty Mutual's Steven Sullivan talks about how the insurer's message of "doing the right thing" struck a chord with employees and customers.

Positive thinking in business

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