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• Unleashing Data for Development

  Jocelyn Ling 12:58 pm on September 29, 2011 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: collaboration, data, impact (17), world (12), worldbank

  *This post was orig­i­nally pub­lished on http://www.socialearth.org on Jul 18, 2011

  There are three things about devel­op­ment data that you need to know: 1) It is beau­ti­ful; 2) There is a hid­den story within each com­bi­na­tion; and 3) It needs to be set free.

  Last year, the World Bank released it’s prized pos­ses­sion of data – one that tells the sto­ries of eco­nomic, socio and polit­i­cal real­i­ties around the world. This is a push to “democ­ra­tize devel­op­ment data” and embrace its open infor­ma­tion pol­icy. It’s absolutely incred­i­ble what has been done with the data and I wanted to high­light some of the ini­tia­tives that have been born out of this:

  1) http://data.worldbank.org/

  This is the main Knowl­edge Bank where you can infor­ma­tion from poverty rates to the aver­age life expectancy of a coun­try. Data is sorted by topic, coun­tries, indi­ca­tors, sec­tors and the World Bank even made a neat fea­ture of key devel­op­ment indi­ca­tors around the world. It cov­ers over 200 coun­ties and in some cases, dates back as far as 50 years.

  The data is updated reg­u­larly and as you can see from the screen­shot below, you can even find infor­ma­tion on the newest coun­try in the world – South Sudan! The site includes the Bank’s widely-used and extremely use­ful datasets: the 2010 World Devel­op­ment Indi­ca­tors (WDI), Africa Devel­op­ment Indi­ca­tors (ADI), Global Eco­nomic Mon­i­tor (GEM) and Global Devel­op­ment Finance.

  

  2) Apps for Development

  With the launch of the the above resource, the World Bank orga­nized an Apps for Devel­op­ment Com­pe­ti­tion – bring­ing together the best ideas from devel­op­ers and data to cre­ate use­ful soft­ware appli­ca­tions that is related to the Mil­le­nium Devel­op­ment Goals (MDGs). The com­pe­ti­tion was a tremen­dous suc­cess and the Bank received apps from 36 coun­tries: 30 of the 107 final sub­mis­sions from Africa. You can check out the win­ners from this com­pe­ti­tion here.

  A side spin­off from this com­pe­ti­tion was also an Inter­na­tional Day Hackathon on Dec 4th last year where devel­op­ers write appli­ca­tions using open data to sup­port and encour­age the adop­tion of open data poli­cies by the world’s gov­ern­ments. My favorite appli­ca­tion is the San Fran­cisco Crimespot­ting – an inter­ac­tive map of crimes in San Fran­cisco and a tool for under­stand­ing crime in cities. Help­ing keep peo­ple safe with open data. Amazing!

  3) Map­ping for Results

  This Plat­form pro­vides detailed infor­ma­tion about the World Bank’s work in poverty alle­vi­a­tion and devel­op­ment around the world. It pro­vides access to inter­ac­tive maps that high­lights loca­tions of the bank’s projects around the world and involved releas­ing data pro­vided by gov­ern­ments and other entities.

  

  4) Data on the Go!

  The World Bank is bring­ing acces­si­bil­ity of data to a whole new level by pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion on an iPhone app. They have six apps ( 4 pub­lished and 2 in the pipelines) that are being devel­oped and the inter­face and usabil­ity for the data is just incred­i­ble. My per­sonal favorite is the clas­sic Datafinder – an app that lets you access 50 years of WB data on global eco­nomic indi­ca­tors that can eas­ily be shared in pre­sen­ta­tions, research and projects. Two more apps are being released in August 2011 – The World Bank at a Glance and the World Bank’s Finances.

  Data is truly beau­ti­ful and with the world’s devel­op­ment data at your fin­ger­tips, we can use, ana­lyze and even crit­i­cize.. but the only thing we shouldn’t do is ignore it. The video below is an exam­ple at how mag­i­cal data can be. 4 min­utes – 200 coun­tries, 200 years by world renown econ­o­mist – Hans Rosling.

   

• An Interview with Antony Bugg-Levine: Embracing Impact Investing

  Jocelyn Ling 10:08 pm on September 26, 2011 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: collaboration, impact (17), impact investing (10), social finance (7)

  *This post was orig­i­nally pub­lished on http://www.socialfinance.ca on Aug 26, 2011

  I had the priv­i­lege to speak with Antony Bugg-Levine, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of the Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion, Board mem­ber of the Global Impact Invest­ing Net­work and one of the thought lead­ers and influ­encers in impact invest­ing. He leads the Foundation’s impact invest­ing team that works to har­ness the cap­i­tal and exper­tise of investors mak­ing “impact invest­ments” that gen­er­ate a social and finan­cial return. This in an insider inter­view to his book, Impact Invest­ing: Trans­form­ing How We Make Money While Mak­ing a Dif­fer­ence. This book was co-authored with Jed Emer­son, an exec­u­tive atImpactAs­sets, Senior Advi­sor with the Ster­ling Group (Hong Kong) and a senior fel­low with the Cen­ter for Social Invest­ing at Hei­del­berg Uni­ver­sity. In our con­ver­sa­tion, he shared key high­lights in the book as well as his hopes for the book. Note: This inter­view is being posted in three parts; stay tuned for Part II and Part III over the next few days.

  1) The premise of the book is on impact invest­ing. How do you intend for peo­ple to read this book? What mind­set should peo­ple be in?

  Firstly, this book is not a ‘How-to’ guide for prac­ti­tion­ers or investors who are look­ing for sim­ple guide­lines on how to con­struct an impact invest­ing port­fo­lio. There are other guide­lines or resources that are avail­able for that. We step back from the day-to-day work of con­struct­ing a port­fo­lio of impact invest­ments, but instead ask the more fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about how impact invest­ing, as a new approach to address­ing social prob­lems and deploy­ing cap­i­tal, is dis­rupt­ing our exist­ing sys­tems. The book is con­structed in two parts.

  Part 1, The Ter­rain of impact invest­ing, takes a quick overview of impact investing’s his­toric and cur­rent role in the fol­low­ing sectors

  1. Accel­er­at­ing the growth of microfinance
  2. Sup­port­ing the inter­na­tional devel­op­ment agenda
  3. Help­ing to build the social enter­prise sector

  In each of these cases, we exam­ine how impact invest­ing is gen­er­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties as well as a set of chal­lenges and questions.

  In Part 2: The Impli­ca­tions of impact invest­ing, we exam­ine the fun­da­men­tal sys­tems around which our soci­ety is orga­nized and how, one after another, they are going to need to change to accom­mo­date the aspi­ra­tions of impact invest­ing and to take advan­tage of the poten­tial that this field offers.

  This is really the core of the book: In our soci­ety, espe­cially in the West in the past 50 years, we have orga­nized our soci­ety around two fun­da­men­tal pil­lars that sup­port our cur­rent systems:

  1. The only way to solve a social prob­lem is through phil­an­thropy and the government
  2. The only pur­pose of invest­ing is to make money

  If you accept these two fun­da­men­tal pil­lars, then the sys­tem we cur­rently have makes sense, and will sup­port your activ­ity. How­ever, if you believe in the fun­da­men­tal premise of impact invest­ing, that we can inte­grate our invest­ment and our social pur­pose, then these sys­tems do not work. So in the book we high­light how impact invest­ing is chal­leng­ing var­i­ous sys­tems to change: the legal sys­tem, the phil­an­thropic sys­tem, the sys­tem by which we develop lead­ers, our cap­i­tal mar­kets and our sys­tems for mea­sur­ing value.

  We pro­vide a frame­work for think­ing about the new sys­tems we will need to build. We think what is really excit­ing about impact investors is the oppor­tu­nity to build a new set of sys­tems to real­ize the great poten­tial of impact investing.

  How­ever, we are not overly pre­scrip­tive partly because we don’t claim to have all the answers. We do not know, between Jed and myself, exactly what these sys­tems need to be, but there are clear guide­lines on how as a com­mu­nity, we have to engage on this.

  2) What do you hope this book would inspire peo­ple to do? What is the next step? Spread the word? Become action­able? Start build­ing systems?

  

  Every­one has a dif­fer­ent role to play. Every human sys­tem in which we live is the result of both inten­tional deci­sions we make and unin­ten­tional actions we take. We believe that any­one read­ing the book has the abil­ity to participate.

  If you are a stu­dent, you could chal­lenge insti­tu­tions in which you are learn­ing to not fall back on easy stereo­types, but rather rec­og­nize the great poten­tial in com­bin­ing social impact and invest­ing.
  If you are for­tu­nate to be a holder of wealth, you could read the book and chal­lenge your wealth advi­sor to not give an easy answer that rejects how you can put your invest­ments to work towards a social pur­pose.
  If you work in the finan­cial ser­vices sec­tor, we hope you con­sider putting your skills to work to build a more effi­cient social cap­i­tal market.

  At the same time, we are not so naïve as to think that read­ing this book would inspire many peo­ple to change their cur­rent life path — and we don’t think you need to. In the book, we pro­file some inspir­ing heroes who have stepped out of main­stream work to pio­neer new insti­tu­tions and approaches, includ­ing Cana­dian based Sarona Asset Man­age­ment and Social Cap­i­tal Part­ners. How­ever, we don’t believe that impact invest­ing is a domain only for radicals.

  We rec­og­nize that in order to be truly pow­er­ful, impact invest­ing needs to be acces­si­ble to reg­u­lar peo­ple as well. We empha­size in the book that we don’t want to per­pet­u­ate the idea that only the most rev­o­lu­tion­ary or entre­pre­neur­ial peo­ple have a right to be part of impact invest­ing. Lead­er­ship is going to come in many forms, and not only from the charis­matic indi­vid­u­als who start new enter­prises or quit their jobs. Instead, we antic­i­pate it will come from the many more thou­sands of peo­ple who can embrace impact invest­ing at what­ever scale they are able to.

  3) What do you think this field is pick­ing up momen­tum only now, given that it has been around for years? Why do you think peo­ple are real­iz­ing the impor­tance of this space so late?

  Impact invest­ing has been going on for decades — but the coin­ing of the phrase “impact invest­ing” around four years ago has allowed dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties to share their aspi­ra­tions under a com­mon lan­guage and to come together more visibly.

  In the book, we talk about this phe­nom­e­non. Many peo­ple are increas­ingly frus­trated with business-as-usual approaches. There is a grow­ing num­ber who do not think that the model of phil­an­thropy their par­ents adopted is enough.  At the same time, we talk about a new gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple who have been raised within the social enter­prise move­ment and seek to inte­grate busi­ness and social pur­pose through­out their career, not in sequence.

  In addi­tion, the recent finan­cial cri­sis has shaken people’s con­fi­dence in old approaches. Gov­ern­ments, also, are increas­ingly intent on fig­ur­ing out how to do more with less, and are mobi­liz­ing impact invest­ing cap­i­tal to com­ple­ment gov­ern­ment spending.

  4) If you had one mes­sage for this com­mu­nity, what would it be?

  Let us all go from rhetoric to action. We need to see real deals pro­lif­er­ate that gen­er­ate social impact and finan­cial return. We also need to rec­og­nize that we are part of a longer-term move­ment to change the fun­da­men­tal sys­tems and mind­sets that cur­rently limit us.

  5) What was your favorite aspect in work­ing on this book?

  It has been a great honor and intel­lec­tual priv­i­lege to work with my co-author, Jed. He’s a real vision­ary. By its nature, impact invest­ing will be best when it brings together peo­ple from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, even if that is not always the eas­i­est and most com­fort­able way to work. For me, work­ing with Jed was a real-world man­i­fes­ta­tion of this idea—we brought dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives and expe­ri­ences to the process and chal­lenged each other to both broaden and sharpen our ideas. I hope the result is more inter­est­ing and insight­ful for our readers.

  Antony Bugg-Levine is the co-author, with Jed Emer­son, ofImpact Invest­ing: Trans­form­ing How We Make Money While Mak­ing a Dif­fer­ence (Wiley, 2011) which will be released in early Sep­tem­ber and is avail­able now for down­load as an e-book. The opin­ions expressed in this arti­cle do not rep­re­sent the offi­cial views of any insti­tu­tion with which he is affiliated.

  Photo credit: Jai Catalano

   

• SOCAP, Here I come!

  Jocelyn Ling 5:04 pm on July 24, 2011 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: collaboration, impact (17), impact investing (10), journalism (5), social finance (7)

  I am SO excited to announce that I have the priv­i­lege to cover SOCAP 2011 Con­fer­ence in San Fran­cisco on behalf of socialearth.org I’ve been fol­low­ing the con­fer­ence from afar for the last few years and to be attend­ing and writ­ing about the con­fer­ence is one of my dreams come true! (Thank you socialearth & SOCAP!)

  SOCAP is a orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated in explor­ing the inter­sec­tion of money and mean­ing. Their annual con­fer­ence in San Fran is THE event to attend for lead­ing global investors, inno­va­tors, cura­tors and social entre­pre­neurs to build this social cap­i­tal mar­kets space.

  I will be pub­lish­ing a few pre-conference pieces and will write through­out the con­fer­ence on socialearth.org. I will also be live tweet­ing dur­ing some key speeches (will be reveal­ing who as the con­fer­ence draws closer!) — so fol­low me on twit­ter if you want to be updated! If you are plan­ning on attend­ing, pre­sent­ing or speak­ing at the con­fer­ence, I would love to be in touch. You can con­tact me here. I would seri­ously love to hear from you.

  My goal at the con­fer­ence not only includes high­light­ing and report­ing the event, but to also: 1) deepen my per­sonal under­stand­ing of this inter­sec­tion; 2) meet other indi­vid­u­als who are pas­sion­ate about this cause and 3) learn about oppor­tu­ni­ties and ini­tia­tives in this inter­sec­tion of money and mean­ing. Who knows what we may cre­ate after this!

  Check out more about the con­fer­ence here.

  

   

• Designing a better world - together

  Jocelyn Ling 11:11 pm on July 6, 2011 | 4 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: collaboration, design (5), empowerment (7), impact (17), innovation (8)

  I just spent the last 3 hours play­ing around OpenIDEO and it is absolutely fas­ci­nat­ing. Seri­ously. To the point that I lost track of time just read­ing con­cept after con­cept, explor­ing the inter­face and past chal­lenges. I had signed up in August last year, but never really got around to sit­ting down and tak­ing a crack at it. But now that I have… I really don’t know what I was wait­ing for!

  OpenIDEO is an online crowd­sourced plat­form “where peo­ple design bet­ter, together for social good.” It’s a beau­ti­fully designed con­cept which high­lights 5 prin­ci­ples — inclu­sive, community-centered, col­lab­o­ra­tive, opti­mistic and always in beta. My favourite prin­ci­ple is the last one because it really reflects con­tin­u­ous learn­ing, improve­ment and evo­lu­tion. Some­thing which most plat­forms do not tra­di­tion­ally announce — usu­ally plat­forms aim to be out of beta mode, sig­nalling “per­fec­tion.” It is founded by IDEO, a design and inno­va­tion firm that lever­ages design think­ing  to help orga­ni­za­tions inno­vate and grow.

  I love crowd­sourced plat­forms,but here’s why OpenIDEO really stood out for me:

  1) Lis­ten­ing — there’s some­thing to be said about com­mu­ni­ties design­ing for other com­mu­ni­ties. It has a low bar­rier to entry and your expe­ri­ences and input can help shape a bet­ter con­cept. Alot of crowd­sourc­ing plat­forms are one way high­ways rather than two ways. I appre­ci­ate the open­ness of the plat­form where I can sim­ple “applaud” an idea to cre­at­ing a con­cept. My involve­ment is as much as I want it to be. Sidenote: thought I would share a really inter­est­ing info­graphic on a com­par­i­son of ques­tions asked to #askobama on Tues­day which breaks down the per­cent of ques­tions asked for twit­ter vs. jour­nal­ists. This dis­par­ity in ques­tions asked only goes to show how impor­tant lis­ten­ing is to what peo­ple want to know and need.

   

   

  

  Pic­ture credit: Info­graphic taken from boston.com

  2) Design — Of course! Great job to the team who designed this web­site. They paid such great atten­tion to detail to the point where you would even had a lit­tle heart next to the num­ber of peo­ple who had applauded your com­ment. Shar­ing the love via great design! 

  On a more seri­ous note on design though — I liked the fact that although there were sev­eral chal­lenges tied to a broader chal­lenge, the way the design was setup was so that con­cepts weren’t lost in the noise. Below is the cur­rent chal­lenge and we’re cur­rently in the con­cept­ing stage. The fea­tured con­cept ensures that the most pop­u­lar con­cept doesn’t just remain at the ‘top’ and the fil­ters at the bot­tom of the screen­shot ensure that each con­cept gets viewed. Get­ting proper expo­sure for each con­cept is impor­tant because I know sev­eral plat­forms that strug­gle to elim­i­nate the nat­ural bias of selec­tion by view­ing what you see first and foremost.

  

  3) Com­mu­nity — In a new plat­form, it really helps to have a frame of ref­er­ence on what to do. I really liked the fact they had a com­mu­nity tab that fea­tured their top con­trib­u­tors to the site. I was able to go into their pro­files and see what they have done and that def­i­nitely sped up my learn­ing process. OpenIDEO also inte­grated a design quo­tient into your pro­file, where it tracks pts on where and what you have con­tributed. I must admit it was very sat­is­fy­ing to see my points increase after con­tribut­ing to a con­cept. I now have 13 pts for collaboration!

  My only feed­back for the site at the moment would be in this sec­tion too. It would nice to expand the com­mu­nity sec­tion into one where I can search more than just the top con­trib­u­tors to the plat­form. The search func­tion on the RHS allows me to search for peo­ple but only if I know specif­i­cally who I want. It would be great to browse in what way peo­ple have con­tributed to the plat­form and con­nect with them. Although, for those inter­ested, there is an infor­mal  twit­ter list by one of OpenIDEO’s top con­tributer: @arjantupan/openideocommunity

  

  All in all, a great plat­form for an even greater cause. I highly rec­om­mend tak­ing this for a spin. If you do decide to cre­ate a con­cept, let me know and I would love to check it out!