Pitching sponsors used to seeing results

Are you prepared for the emerging wave of philanthropists who invest in organizations with a sustainable business model and a measurable social impact? Here is a likely dialog reported by the Boston Globe in “Bottom-line philanthropy.”

"You're going to hate me for this, but you've got to listen to yourself on tape. In your initial presentation you said 'um' 33 times."

So said an investment management firm to a nonprofit doing a test run for a funding pitch to a group of potential donors, including investors, government officials, and foundation executives who pick their charities the way they pick stocks: using facts and data.

Modeled after the financing pitches that start-up companies make to venture capital firms, the event by the Social Innovation Forum illustrates a push in the philanthropic community to help nonprofits become more businesslike, understand the language of the private sector, and win the backing of influential, deep-pocketed donors.

"I know it's a little cold, but when I make a decision to support a nonprofit, it's just like an investment for me," said the investment management firm. "I know they're all going to help people, so I want to give my money to someone who will help people three times as efficiently.

Afterward, the not-for-profit presenter confided that he "felt nervous the whole time." But he was grateful for the straight talk, he said. "It was really refreshing to have somebody be fully honest with me, especially a person who's coming from a very professional and effective background."

The VDC plays this role at UMass Boston, helping researchers figure out how to better present their work so that people understand the need they're trying to address and how the work they're doing is effective.

Understanding each other

Knowledge sharing among researchers within interdisciplinary communities may be critical for new discoveries. In spite of this, biologists tend to talk to biologists, economists tend to talk to economists, and psychologists tend to talk to psychologists. Co-locating them may be a helpful but insufficient step to generating multidisciplinary knowledge. Disciplinary subgroups hold contrary assumptions about the appropriate questions to be asked.

How can this be overcome? Kathleen L. McGinn, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, argues that interdisciplinary communities must first attend to the compatibility of assumptions held by sub-groups within the field. Understanding may stem from the potential for members to recognize the relevance of others' findings to their own scholarship.

A definition of innovation that fits

Innovation is a buzzword in business. It shows up in the pages of scholarly journals, popular magazines, and international reports; and in advertisements and marketing slogans. But the "innovate or die" message is beginning to spread beyond business. A new breed of social entrepreneur embrace and encourage innovation as a strategy for building a better world.

A noteworthy example is the Boston Foundation's fourth biennial report of the Boston Indicators Project covering the years 2004-2006. It includes a section called The Hub of Innovation. It lists breakthrough products, programs, and practices in ten different sectors: Civic Vitality, Cultural Life and the Arts, the Economy, Education, the Environment, Health, Housing, Public Safety, Technology, and Transportation.

This definition of innovation deliberately integrates diverse perspectives. It draws ideas from the worlds of business, community development, environmental action, education, and social entrepreneurship. It assumes that innovation needs to be seen as a core component of a region's growth strategy.

True innovation can be identified by both the process and the results, so we define it this way: Innovation means the process of thinking and acting creatively to solve an identified problem with the outcome being a new process or product that acts as a catalyst for new cycles of development. Thus, innovation inspires more action—not simply more ideas, but more innovative approaches to putting ideas to use. Innovation thus increases potential and opportunity, and sparks new cycles of thinking—revolutionizing how we learn, how we live, and how we work.

The modern entrepreneurial university and its community

How do public research universities express their connection to the community they serve? My favorite is Arizona State University’s New American University statement. Everyone who is doing research is invited to pursue ideas that create new value.

“ASU has a vision to be a New American University, promoting excellence in its research and among its students, faculty and staff, increasing access to its educational resources and working with communities to positively impact social and economic development.

“ASU believes that you should measure the value of research by the impact it has on society. ASU encourages its scholars to pursue research that will impact society, conduct that research in a way that recognizes its potential impact, and share it with people in a way for it to make that impact. This idea shapes one of ASU’s goals: whatever the research encompasses, the university will measure success by looking at the ways in which that research has changed patterns in society. This could be a social scientist figuring out how to help politicians make better decisions. Or it could be a bioengineer working to make a cancer vaccine. Whatever the topic, the goal is: impact.”

That's inspiring to academic community members with exciting new concepts that have never considered that their concepts could result in a commercialized product. If we nurture new venture creation based on our teaching and research successes, we tap a vast resource that could be used for the betterment of our supporting communities.

The journal article “Creation of an Entrepreneurial University Culture” chronicles how one university focused on four elements that significantly contributed to a change in their entrepreneurial culture:

1. Establishment of a technology business incubator

2. Establishment of centers of coordinated research activities

3. Establishment of entrepreneurial elements in degree curricula

4. Establishment of research linkages to businesses

Creation of an entrepreneurial culture in a university environment is a complex task that requires the efforts of many dedicated individuals. These individuals are located in industry, academe, and government, and often are only loosely coordinated in their activities with one another. But they all share a common passion to provide new and expanded opportunities for the community.

Creative economy innovation leads the way

The John Adams Innovation Institute tracks Massachusetts “innovation economy” against other leading technology states. The recently published 2007 Index of the Massachusetts Innovation Economy shows Massachusetts remains one of the global hotbeds of innovative activity, attracting research investments from industry and government.

The occupational category of innovation worker that is outpacing all others? Arts & Media, with an average five year growth rate of 5.2%. Next is Life, Physical and Social Sciences at 2.7%. This signifies the importance of the creative economy, public relations and online and offline content industries to the innovation economy.

Our stereotype of creative activity is the starving artist, painting in the basement; or the depressed poet, writing somewhere out in the woods. But the forms of creativity that make a big economic impact are complex, organized, and collaborative. Creative works such as textbooks, software programs, education modules, course ware, web tools, databases, videos, and a host of other non-traditional forms of intellectual property too often go unnoticed and untapped in tech transfer offices that are chasing the next high-tech “big winner.”

What’s the buzz?

We're building an 18,000 state-of-the-art Venture Development Center, designed for collaborative innovation. The new space, opening in fall 2008, is designed to be a beehive, where creative researchers from every corner of the university explore, develop and test ideas.

We were inspired by Peter Gloor's book "Swarm Creativity." (Peter Gloor is a research scientist at the Center for Collective Intelligence at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he leads a project exploring collaborative innovation networks.) We see our role as instigators of swarms. After all, swarms are productive because each team member knows intuitively what she or he needs to do. The guiding principle of the swarm is not to become rich, but to create real value for the swarm.

In every large organization, groups of creative individuals self-organize to explore and develop ideas that they care deeply about. These swarms are crucial for organizations to succeed in this emerging era of increased collaboration among innovators both inside and outside the organization. This is the very essence of doing business in Venture Development Center.

Make the leap from good to great

According to the Greek parable: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." If you want your research program to have impact, then you must think like a hedgehog, according to Jim Collins (Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don’t). Collins makes the case that what separates those who make the biggest impact from all the others who are just as smart is that they’re hedgehogs. Hedgehogs see what is essential, and ignore the rest.

Collins of course thinks it is possible for any program or organization to make the leap from fox to hedgehog. The strategy is based on deep understanding of three intersecting circles: 1) what you are deeply passionate about, 2) what you can be the best in the world at, and 3) what best drives your economic engine.