[PDF] A Manifesto For Mavericks

Bill Taylor and Polly Labarre are the authors of Mavericks at Work a book that asserts an n irresistible mantra for social entrepreneurs;

In an age of hyper-competition and nonstop innovation, the only way to stand out from the crowd is to stand for something truly original.

Bill is the co founder and founding editor of Fast Company. Polly was one of the original core contributors to the same magazine.

Aside from the widely available book, Bill and Polly created a manifesto at ChangeThis - see A Manifesto For Mavericks.

We think their message to business isn't the only suitable audience. Here are 10 questions they think should be asked:

• Is there a distinctive and disruptive sense of purpose that sets you apart from the competition?
  The best companies are the ones that stand for the most original and compelling ideas. What ideas are you and your company fighting for?



• Can you be provocative without provoking a backlash?
  There’s a difference between challenging the status quo and inviting retribution from rivals that are bigger, richer, and more ruthless than you. One key test of any would-be disruptor is whether he or she can also be a convincing diplomat.



• If your company went out of business tomorrow, who would miss you and why?
  We first heard this question from advertising maverick Roy Spence, who tells us that he got it from Jim Collins of Good to Great fame. Whatever the original source, the question is as profound as it is simple — and worth taking seriously.



• Are you the kind of person that other smart people want to work with?
  If you expect outsiders (or even colleagues) to share their best ideas with you, then don’t be surprised when they expect something in return. It can be money, it can be recognition, but more often than not, what draws people into open-source projects is the chance to push themselves and develop their skills.



• Can you make innovation fun?
  Ideas are serious business, but if you’re working to tap the brainpower of outside-the mainstream contributors, then you have to work to keep your open-source project colorful, dramatic, and energetic.



• Do you treat different customers differently?
  If your goal is to establish a psychological contract with customers, then almost by definition you won’t appeal to all customers. One test of how committed a company is to its most important customers is how fearless it is about ignoring (even offending) customers who aren’t central to its mission. Not all customers are created equal.



• Why should great people join your organization?
  The best leaders understand that the best rank-and-file performers aren’t motivated primarily by money. Great people want to feel like impact players inside their organizations. Great people want to be surrounded with and challenged by other great people. Put simply, great people want to feel like they’re part of something greater than themselves. Does your company give them that chance?



• Do you know a great person when you see one?
  In organizations that are serious about competing on talent, who you are as a person is as important as what you know at a moment in time. That is, character counts for as much as credentials. Do you know how to conduct a character test?



• Does your organization work as distinctively as it competes?
  It’s a simple question with huge implications for productivity and performance. Leaders who are determined to elevate the people factor in business understand that the real work begins once talented people walk through the door. HR maverick John Sullivan says it best: “Stars don’t work for idiots.”



• Are you learning as fast as the world is changing?
  We first heard this question from Gary Hamel, the world-renowned strategy guru, and it’s the ultimate challenge for any executive or entrepreneur. The best leaders we’ve met, regardless of their age, experience, or personal style, have all been insatiable learners. In a business environment that never stops changing, you can never stop learning.

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Interested in learning more about social enterprise? Take a browse through the Vancouver Social Enterprise Book Store (Vancouver | United Kingdom | United States) and see what other social entrepreneurs recommend reading.

Tags for information about: for:vsef, Social Enterprise, Management, ChangeThis

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[Recommended Read] SustainAbility - Growing Opportunity: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Insoluble Problems

SustainAbility and the Skoll Foundation have just published Entrepreneurial Solutions to Insoluble Problems.

More later ...


[Heads Up Credit: Joel Makower]
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Interested in learning more about social enterprise? Take a browse through the Vancouver Social Enterprise Book Store (Vancouver | United Kingdom | United States) and see what other social entrepreneurs recommend reading.

Tags for information about: for:vsef, Social Enterprise, Social Entrepreneur, SustainAbility

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[Recommended Read] Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition

The Spring 2007 issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) features the paper Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition. It's worth a read.

Here's a snippet:

Social entrepreneurship is attracting growing amounts of talent, money, and attention. But along with its increasing popularity has come less certainty about what exactly a social entrepreneur is and does. As a result, all sorts of activities are now being called social entrepreneurship. Some say that a more inclusive term is all for the good, but the authors argue that it’s time for a more rigorous definition.

Here's a little about the authors of the paper.

Roger Martin has served as dean of the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto since 1998. He is director of the school’s AIC Institute for Corporate Citizenship and serves on the board of the Skoll Foundation. In 2004 Martin received the Marshall McLuhan Visionary Leadership Award, and in 2005 he was named one of Business Week’s seven “Innovation Gurus.”

Sally Osberg has served as president and CEO of the Skoll Foundation since 2001. Before joining Skoll, Osberg was executive director for the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose. She sits on the boards of the Oracle Education Foundation and the Children’s Discovery Museum. Her essay on philanthropy’s changing landscape is included in Social Entrepreneurship : New Models of Sustainable Social Change, published in 2006 by Oxford University Press.

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Interested in learning more about social enterprise? Take a browse through the Vancouver Social Enterprise Book Store (Vancouver | United Kingdom | United States) and see what other social entrepreneurs recommend reading.

Tags for information about: for:vsef, Social Enterprise, Nonprofit, SSIR

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[Recommended Read] In Plain Sight: Reflections on Life in Downtown Eastside Vancouver

Congratulations to the editors of In Plain Sight, Leslie A. Robertson and Dara Culhane, for winning the George Ryga Award.

The CBC quotes Dara Culhane:

The book came out of a research project that started in 1999 called the Health and Home project.

[...]

We were interviewing women and talking to women about the relationship between health and housing for women in the Downtown Eastside, and as we moved into that project and got to know some of the women, they talked often about wanting to publish their stories.

From the publisher's website describing In Plain Sight:

In compiling this collection of seven life stories from Vancouver’s “Downtown Eastside,” the editors set out to create a space for the voices of women who are seldom heard on their own terms—the words of people who are publicly visible yet who, due to the blur of preconceptions that surround Vancouver’s inner city, remain unseen. To many, the women who offer their stories here are “people without history,” defined only by belonging to a neighbourhood branded by layers of stigma. Their diverse histories are rarely included in the cacophony of media depictions of urban poverty: the “drug problem,” “prostitution” or statistics on crime and violence. These women share the stories of their complex pathways from childhood into and out of the “Downtown Eastside,” through periods of addiction and recovery, strength and illness, affluence and poverty. They confront and challenge the familiar stereotypes applied to drug users, to “wayward women,” and to those who live with disease and/or mental illness.

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Interested in learning more about social enterprise? Take a browse through the Vancouver Social Enterprise Book Store (Vancouver | United Kingdom | United States) and see what other social enterpreneurs recommend reading.

Tags for information about: for:vsef, DTES

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Reading List: Diminished Democracy

Theda Skocpol's Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life might also be titled Professionals at the Gate. The book explores the decline of member-based voluntary associations, since the 1960s, in the wake of growing professionally managed agencies. Diminished Democracy asks: Does the trend leave citizens with fewer opportunities to get actively involved in community and public affairs?

To get a perspective of Skocpol's work, consider reading, The Narrowing of Civic Life.

Theda Skocpol is Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology, and Director of the Center for American Political Studies, at Harvard University.

Here are links to order Order Diminished Democracy in Vancouver, the United Kingdom, or the United States.

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Interested in learning more about social enterprise? Take a browse through the Vancouver Social Enterprise Book Store (Vancouver | United Kingdom | United States) and see what other social enterpreneurs recommend reading.

Reading list: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid

C K Prahalad's book, 'The  Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits' is a selection for the October Fast Company Book Club.   The book is also a recommended summer read by Wharton.
 
To read an excerpt look  here, or order your copy here [for US/UK orders]. Wharton also offers an excerpt here.
 
To read more, Strategy+Business (First Quarter, 2002), printed an article by C. K. Prahalad and Stuart Hart also titled, 'The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid'.

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Interested in learning more about social enterprise? Take a browse through the Vancouver Social Enterprise Book Store (Vancouver | United Kingdom | United States) and see what other social enterpreneurs recommend reading.