Tuesday: lunch with various attendees, followed by a launch party for the Global Social Entrepreneurship Network, a network that is being established by Unltd., a UK organization for the social entrepreneur community. Following the event, held at a beautiful part of the Bodliean Library, the Skoll World Forum had pre-Forum drinks at various pubs throughout the town. There, I bumped into old friends and started to make some new ones.
Wednesday: The Forum officially began. I noticed that Matt Flannery of Kiva was in town, and was also aware that a number of Kiva Fellow Alumni were also attending the Forum. Matt and Bennett were kind enough to join me and the other Kiva Fellow Alumni for lunch, where we discussed our experiences in the field and asked them our burning questions about the happenings at Kiva currently. Following lunch, I attended two sessions:
- Cracking the Code on Social Impact - A session in which Nolan Gasser of the Music Genome project (which formed the foundation for Pandora radio) shared with us the methodology for organizing qualities of songs along a "genome" to create a database of algorithms that could determine a user's music preferences by the songs they "Liked". This same approach, it was purported in the session, could be applied to measuring social impact. Impact would be measured based on outcomes (as there are a variety of means to achieve the same ends), and various aspects of those outcomes could be mapped along a genome. With enough data, algorithms could be created such that an impact measurement report could be produced as easily as an online credit report. The single metric that this measurement system boiled down to is "cost per outcome". While this is an improvement on "cost per input", I don't believe that the single most important metric for measuring impact is "cost per input". It could be a useful benchmarking tool to determine the most cost-effective way to achieve the same outcomes, but development interventions should also be measured along other axes, including "sustainability likelihood" of such outcomes as well and be weighted accordingly.
- Design for Impact- A session that provided a refreshingly simple approach to designing a business model around impact, with tips on creating a mission (8 words or fewer!) statement that also clarifies measurable objectives.
- Dinner at Balliol College- the delegates were divided among various colleges for dinner. At dinner, I sat with individuals from the Future Institute, Pop Tech, Barclays, and an NGO that addresses water issues. We talked about means and methods of influence, particularly in the context of the global agenda-setting World Economic Forum. This was particularly interesting to me as I am currently consulting to the World Economic Forum with a group of Oxford MBA and MPP students.
Richard Branson speaking about the future of space and air travel at the opening plenary.
Thursday: On Thursday, I focused more on attending sessions than on finding networking opportunities on the fringes of the sessions. The sessions I attended included:
- In the morning's first session, Leading with Authenticity, the panel included Bill Drayton of Ashoka, Rafiatu Lawal of the Campaign for Female Education, and Sebastien Marot of Friends International. The topic was on leadership, and I most appreciated the discussion on how being an introverted leader is "okay". Panelists talked about feeling as though sometimes there is a prescribed way a leader should be, but that to truly be a leader, you don't try to fit into that mold. Rather it is important to capitalize on our personal strengths and lead in our own way. As someone who is an introvert (and who is pretty hard on herself for not being a louder leader), this was refreshing and highly motivating.
- I then attended Future-Proofing Businesses: Beyond CSR, PR and Charity, and blogged about the session here for the Skoll Centre: http://skollcentreblog.org/2014/04/11/future-proofing-businesses-swf/ (Unilever's slide presented below)
- During lunch, I attended a delegate-led session on indigenous development in the Amazon, with an Anthropologist leading the session. I was highly impressed with the way he started his discussion- by clearly articulating that what he was about to share with us was from the perspective of an outsider. He provided examples of how different cultural perspectives might change the way a point is articulated as a result of the fact that we each have different cultural lenses through which we see, understand and analyze the world. I was inspired to think of how such a cultural relativist perspective can help inform social entrepreneurs and the way they design for impact. I want to cover this discussion (which can become a debate quite easily) in another blog entry at a later date.
The day concluded with the Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship, where we learned about the amazing work of ground-breaking entrepreneurs (featured here: http://skollworldforum.org/forum-2014/meet-awardees/) and concluding with a powerful talk by Malala on the power of education.
Friday: What blew me away on Friday was to hear how Planet Labs has designed small satellites that have been placed into orbit to be able to photograph the entire earth once a day. The potential applications for this could be tremendous! Check them out: http://www.planet.com/
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