Latest Updates: movement creation RSS

• Storytelling & Four Shifting Forces

  Jocelyn Ling 2:27 pm on October 22, 2012 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: collaboration (21), creativity (7), data (3), design (13), movement creation, storytelling (5), technology, Visual Thinking (2)

  Back in New York, I attended one of the best Cre­ative Morn­ings ses­sions, a cap­ti­vat­ing talk deliv­ered by Jonathan Har­ris on the sto­ry­telling. I’ve blogged before on decon­struct­ing the power of sto­ry­telling, and if you’re look­ing to under­stand more about this, Jonathan Har­ris’ projects are absolutely remark­able. They have ranged from doc­u­ment­ing an Eskimo whale hunt to cap­tur­ing human emo­tion on the inter­webs to inter­view­ing Tibetans on hap­pi­ness. Here’s his Cre­ative Morn­ing talk and my visual notes from that day:

  
  

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  So my notes couldn’t quite cap­ture the tail bit of his talk (I basi­cally ran out of space!), but essen­tially, he high­lights key trends that he is observ­ing in our evolv­ing world of tech and storytelling:

  1) Rise of Social Engi­neers: Never before has there been such a small sub­sec­tion of soci­ety ( aka. soft­ware devel­op­ers in tech star­tups who are hav­ing a big effect of mil­lions of human through design of software.

  2) Urges & Out­comes: All tech extends some pre­ex­ist­ing urge. What is the urge within humans that needs to be enhanced?

  3) The Ethics of Code: How can we reg­u­late soft­ware? Could there be a self-directed eth­nics from the cre­ators of soft­ware? This ties in back to point 1 on the respon­si­bil­i­ties of a social engi­neer, given their wide-spread influence.

  4) Heal­ers & Deal­ers: Star­tups are basi­cally falling into two buck­ets: heal­ers and deal­ers. Heal­ers: mar­ket­place com­pa­nies that con­nect peo­ple. e.g. kick­starter. Deal­ers: Atten­tion economies that take up your finite resource aka. time by con­vinc­ing peo­ple to spend time on their product/sites. e.g. facebook.

  ***

  All in all, I was very struck after the end of his talk with this question(s): what kind of pres­ence do you want to have in this world? Am I a healer or a dealer? As our world’s lan­guage con­tin­ues to trend towards a technology-based one, how do we posi­tion our­selves to become cre­ators once more, instead of just cura­tors of information?

  For now, I sup­pose I am sat­is­fied with being a Healer in the invest­ment world. The big­ger pic­ture of all of this, is won­der­ing, as an investor, what trends in soci­ety do I want to help accelerate…

   

• My Week's Discoveries: Malaysia

  Jocelyn Ling 9:17 am on August 31, 2012 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change (28), collaboration (21), creativity (7), design (13), designthinking (2), education (12), empowerment (13), impact (23), innovation (13), inspiration (21), movement creation, social enterprise (4)

  So, I’ve been in South East Asia for the past three weeks, namely Malaysia and Sin­ga­pore. The trip has been long time com­ing as I haven’t been back to my home coun­try in over five years, and boy — am I ever glad I did. I have never been so inspired, hum­bled and proud of my fel­low coun­try­men for the incred­i­ble work that they are doing in South East Asia. If you have the priv­i­lege to be involved with their orga­ni­za­tions or have a cof­fee with these remark­able indi­vid­u­als, I assure you that it will be time well spent. Also, given that today is Inde­pen­dence day in Malaysia, thought it would be timely to share a few of my dis­cov­er­ies with you.

  1) Malaysia Social Enter­prise Alliance

  This is a Malaysian orga­ni­za­tion for social enter­prises and entre­pre­neurs with solu­tions to some of the most urgent social prob­lems in Malaysia and glob­ally. One of their more notable endeav­ors is Change­Week­end, a 9–10 month pro­gram as a facil­i­ta­tive plat­form that would equip orga­ni­za­tions with design think­ing and devel­op­men­tal skills. Even more incred­i­ble is the dri­ving force behind all of this is a won­der­ful lady, Ellynita Lamin, who has a heart of gold and is trail­blaz­ing her way in this part of the world. Don’t just take my word for it, check out what one of the local news­pa­pers has to say about her work too!

  2) Teach for Malaysia 

  Teach for Malaysia (TFM) enlists Malaysia’s most promis­ing lead­ers to improve edu­ca­tion in Malaysia. It mod­els after Teach for Amer­ica, where it is a two-year, fel­low­ship pro­gram where fel­lows are placed in local schools. Besides the fel­low­ship, the team has not only enlisted an incred­i­ble amount of sup­port from pri­vate and the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion, but clear strat­egy and vision in how fel­lows can trans­form Malaysia’s edu­ca­tion sys­tem from inside out. Change is on the hori­zon. This ini­tia­tive is par­tic­u­larly close to home for me as I went through the pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tem in Malaysia (yes, just like the adorable kids in the video!) and to get a glimpse of what TFM is up to, check out the video below.

  3) Week­end: The Week­end Movement 

  This is a com­mu­nity of peo­ple that is cre­at­ing a week­end move­ment where they come together to build projects, cre­ate solu­tions and bring great ideas to life. So far, their week­ends con­sist of Hack Week­end, Make Week­end and Change Week­end, and I’m sure it doesn’t stop there. The week­ends are designed to kick­start inno­va­tion and new projects. If you ever are in Malaysia for a week­end that coin­cides with one of their work­shops, def­i­nitely don’t hes­i­tate to check it out!

  4) Malaysia Design Archive 

  This is a beau­ti­ful project com­bin­ing design, his­tory and preser­va­tion of cul­ture. The project traces, maps and doc­u­ments the devel­op­ment of graphic design in Malaysia to pro­tect our visual his­tory. Malaysia’s his­tor­i­cal design influ­ences are par­tic­u­larly fas­ci­nat­ing as this is a meet­ing point and cul­tural cross­ing of the East and West — from ornate Islamic texts, to Chi­nese cal­lig­ra­phy and Euro­pean engrav­ings. As you browse the site, the graph­ics tell a won­der­ful story of Malaysia’s cul­tural trans­for­ma­tion. I highly rec­om­mend you start here.

  5) Other notable mentions:

  • SOLS 24/7: edu­ca­tion pro­gram in Cam­bo­dia, Laos, East Timor, Malaysia and Thai­land that has edu­cated over 80,000 youth.
  • Gawad Kalinga: Build­ing com­mu­ni­ties through tourism, social enter­prise, dis­as­ter relief, recon­struc­tion and devel­op­ment to end poverty.

  Thanks to Ellyne, Shie Haur, Nicole, Tas­nim and John for inspir­ing this post.

   

• On What is Possible and Impossible

  Jocelyn Ling 4:16 pm on June 21, 2012 | 1 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change (28), inspiration (21), motivation (12), movement creation

  “When you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you are doing. This is great. Peo­ple who know what they are doing, know the rules and they know what is pos­si­ble and what is impos­si­ble. You do not, and you should not. The rules on what is pos­si­ble and impos­si­ble in the arts are made by poe­ple who have not tested the bounds of the pos­si­ble by going beyond them. And you can. If you don’t know it’s impos­si­ble, its eas­ier to do. And because no nobody has done it before, they haven’t made up rules to stop any­one doing that par­tic­u­lar thing again.”

  - Neil Gaiman, 2012 Com­mence­ment Speech at the Uni­ver­sity of the Arts

  Neil Gaiman Addresses the Uni­ver­sity of the Arts Class of 2012 from The Uni­ver­sity of the Arts (Phl) on Vimeo.

   

• How to Create an Impact Investing Movement

  Jocelyn Ling 11:19 am on April 27, 2012 | 2 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change (28), collaboration (21), empowerment (13), impact (23), impact investing (12), innovation (13), movement creation, storytelling (5)

  I’ve been stalk­ing the impact invest­ing space closely for the last few years and it seems that across research papers, from the recently released Acu­men Fund-Mon­i­tor Group: Case for Phil­an­thropy in Impact Invest­ing (which is a great read!) to goals of foun­da­tion tack­ling impact invest­ing — a sys­temic issue that resur­faces is the lack of infra­struc­ture to help peo­ple iden­tify and func­tion as a part of the impact indus­try. A recent con­ver­sa­tion with a friend on move­ment cre­ation sparked this idea on fig­ur­ing out how to build this infra­struc­ture. It also reminded me of a old twit­ter exchange I had with Steve Wright (Grameen Foun­da­tion) and Kevin Jones (SOCAP) on the value of mar­ket­ing and sto­ry­telling in the social con­text. A snip­pet of our con­ver­sa­tion is below:

  

  I believe that marketing/value-positioning is an under­val­ued prac­tice in the impact invest­ing space. How­ever, if we’re look­ing to expand the space beyond those who care about the impact value of cap­i­tal, we have a to start look­ing at cre­at­ing a move­ment of impact invest­ing — a sus­tain­able and scal­able plat­form. We have to look closely on how we can cre­ate pull-factors needed for a suc­cess­ful impact move­ment. Now, I am not as naive to think that the world of phil­an­thropy and for-profit invest­ing should cease to exist. What I am sug­gest­ing is that the movement’s aim is to help the gen­eral pub­lic and those in the invest­ing world to have a third way to think about cap­i­tal: a blended value of cap­i­tal and impact.

  So, this is my attempt to build this movement’s basic frame­work and my vision of what core ele­ments of an impact invest­ing move­ment would con­tain and look like.

  Defin­ing the Movement’s Core

  Edu­ca­tion is the key to the move­ment and a first step is shift­ing people’s per­spec­tive to a third way to think about cap­i­tal. I would like peo­ple to think of their port­fo­lios as fol­low (Note: the pie charts below are based on a hypo­thet­i­cal way to think about cap­i­tal — main point is to illus­trate the inclu­sion of impact invest­ments when an indi­vid­ual thinks of capital):

  
  

  I believe the core of an impact invest­ing move­ment should be two-fold:

  1) The choice between impact and profit should not be a binary one.

  2) Close the men­tal dis­con­nects and iso­la­tion between the dif­fer­ent com­po­nents of the Impact chain of cap­i­tal: (Input –> Out­put –> Impact)

  Dis­tinc­tion of Tar­get Groups 

  Just like the ‘real’ invest­ing world, in the impact invest­ing world, there are two dis­tinct investors to tar­get: Insti­tu­tional and Retail. By the nature of the way that cap­i­tal flows into the space, influ­ence on the retail end is bot­tom heavy + per­sonal and on the insti­tu­tional side, it is top heavy and polit­i­cally bar­ri­ered. (Side­note: A great report to read to under­stand the institutional-policy rela­tion­ship in impact invest­ing writ­ten by Pacific Com­mu­nity Ven­tures & Har­vard Uni).

  Another tar­get group (and this is admit­tedly the harder group to pen­e­trate than the for­mer) would be both insti­tu­tional and retail invest­ment advi­sors. Straight away, the inher­ent chal­lenge to cre­ate this move­ment is how to cre­ate a simul­ta­ne­ous pres­sure on both ends and in each respec­tive groups.

  Five Strate­gies

  In cre­at­ing this ‘pull’ plat­form, because cap­i­tal flows through a sys­tem through an impact chain, the plat­form should become the mech­a­nism by which ‘push’ plat­forms must engage in. The graphic below illus­trates this point using the recently announced Mor­gan Stan­ley Invest­ing with Impact plat­form. The idea is that on Mor­gan Stanley’s end, they can only get so far by engag­ing their cur­rent clients. How­ever, if they look beyond their Invest­ing with Impact plat­form, and engage in a mid­dle ‘pull’ plat­form that edu­cates the masses, their mes­sage and reach would more than double.

  

  I believe that a suc­cess­ful impact invest­ing ‘pull’ move­ment would con­tain the fol­low­ing practices:

   1) Rad­i­cally lower knowl­edge barriers

  The land­scape of impact invest­ing is slowly com­ing to light. There is great research and data that heav­ily sup­ports the sec­tor. How­ever, bite size pieces of infor­ma­tion are far and few in between. Investors and advi­sors need under­stand: the rea­son for impact invest­ing, proof of con­cept, and how it would affect an institution’s or individual’s port­fo­lio. The knowl­edge bar­rier should also include a way to dis­sem­i­nate authen­tic and real sto­ries (see: twit­ter exchange above) about impact invest­ing and the results of the invest­ment — a form of curated ‘entertainment’.

  2) Uncover and dis­rupt offline analogies

  Most form of human inter­ac­tions sur­round a pre-existing way of think­ing. e.g. before email, peo­ple would send let­ters. In the case of think­ing about cap­i­tal, the tip­ping points of where some­one starts to think about money is in the edu­ca­tion sys­tem, with a focus on uni­ver­si­ties and col­lege (typ­i­cally an individual’s first expe­ri­ence in man­ag­ing a sub­stan­tial amount of money).

  3) Empower key com­mu­nity leaders

  I’m a big fan of Seth Godin’s prac­tice of build­ing tribes. Peo­ple are more pas­sion­ate about this issue than you think they are. A great orga­ni­za­tion that organ­i­cally (and per­haps unex­pect­edly) tapped into the power of tribes is Acu­men Fund. (Full dis­clo­sure: I cur­rently vol­un­teer with them, and this is by no means a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of their per­spec­tive on the mat­ter. Just my own). Acu­men Fund cur­rently has 12 volunteer-led chap­ters around the world that sup­port and spread their cause. These chap­ters are going into local com­mu­ni­ties with a depth and reach that Acu­men would not have been able to achieve just by themselves.

  4) Reduce friction

  Think­ing about cap­i­tal — can be an over­whelm­ing expe­ri­ence, espe­cially on the retail side. The move­ment needs to cre­ate a fric­tion­less and sim­ple expe­ri­ence that cat­alyzes ‘pull’ for trans­ac­tional activ­i­ties. A great exam­ple of this prac­tice is by Learn­Vest, a bud­get­ing and advi­sory plat­form to help indi­vid­u­als achieve their goals. Sim­ple and clear. I envi­sion a suc­cess­ful impact invest­ing plat­form to embrace a sim­i­lar fric­tion­less user experience.

   5) Get­ting started

  No sin­gle agenda or strat­egy is equally rel­e­vant to all tar­get groups. I see two main engage­ment strate­gies embed­ded in the move­ment, which in some cases can be exe­cuted sep­a­rately or com­bined. One is a online-mass led propo­si­tion with mul­ti­ple knowl­edge engage­ment pieces. The other is a high-touch with direct chan­nel dis­tri­b­u­tion. The lat­ter would fit in more with the advisory/‘push’ plat­form engage­ment tar­get group whereas the for­mer would fit into a engag­ing retail investors. The high-touch com­po­nent is def­i­nitely more of a chal­lenge as we would be look­ing at a tar­get group of banks/corporations/venture cap­i­tal­ist that have sys­tems in place in order to achieve exe­cute their busi­ness model.

   ***

  There are mul­ti­ple ways to con­tinue to build out this frame­work. The points above are merely a start­ing point in the basic wire­frame of this impact invest­ing move­ment. All ideas are wel­come, and if you want to have a brain­storm ses­sion about this — hit me up!

  Thanks to Erika, Jo-Ann, Steve and Kevin for inspir­ing this post.