Jim Goes To Davos

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2007-02-06T13:07:00.000-08:00

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The Many Davos

2007-01-31T10:51:00.000-08:00

Amazing how fast we slide right back into "real life." Davos was only a couple of days ago and already I'm neck deep into my normal work.

It is worth taking a moment to reflect on the many faces of the Davos experience. Each person attending has many options to choose among, and you can't do it all. Here are just a few of the Davos' I saw in action last week.

Deal Davos (aka bilateral Davos)

You come to Davos to meet with a handful of specific people who are also there at the same time. Your time is dedicated to a moderate room in some Davos hotel, as your team runs a steady stream of key customers, suppliers and potential partners through. Davos as nexus for minimizing global travel.

Political Davos

You see Davos as a place to get exposed to leading politicians from around the world, where you can hear Tony Blair, Angela Merkel and King Abdallah of Jordan and a hot of others. A place where American politicians get exposed to world opinion and protest, not so much from the folks outside the gates of the WEF, but from leading businesspeople around the world.

Educational Davos

You get educated on the big issues facing your business and society (often the same issues). Top experts explain these issues with a depth and sophistication you rarely get elsewhere. You have interactive workshops and role playing with 40 other CEOs, digging into issues from completely different vantage points. I especially enjoyed the Digital Piracy workshop where a handful of us had to develop and present the "Commercial Pirate's Manifesto!"

Sporty Davos

You get to drive fast cars. Ecologically friendly fast cars. Skiing and sledding and snowboarding and cross country. Parties of every way shape and form, especially tuned for customers. Music and arts experiences.

(Global) Society Davos

You can spend all of your time on social issues, hanging with the heads of NGOs (the international name for nonprofits), major labor unions, religious leaders and of course the social entrepreneurs. You can learn more about the environment, about human rights, about development aid, about the digital divide, about microfinance, about healthy food and about disaster response. I was excited to be part of two sessions about improving disaster response through technology and corporate engagement with NGOs.

Ideas Davos

You get to see lots of inventions and new company ideas: a huge variety. I saw a 3 Watt LED light bulb as bright as a 60W bulb but cool enough to hold in your hand. I saw a pair of adjustable eyeglasses for kids in the developing world that cost less than $1 a pair to make. I heard about medical advances to combat strokes and diabetes. My favorite of these was an invention that you swallow and it takes pictures of your digestive tract, instead of needing the dreaded sigmoidoscopy. It was nicknamed "the light at the end of the tunnel!"

Young Davos

You get to meet up and coming business, media and political leaders: the people who will likely be at Davos in the future. I enjoyed seeing Mayor Gavin Newsome and his girlfriend, who I thought was just a gorgeous actress but also turned out to be a top Stanford Business School graduate. Plus, the WEF is staffed by an army of brilliant young people eager to change the world, people like Jesse Fahnestock who used to run Bookshare.org for us.

Friendly Davos

You get to spend lots of time with people you know through Davos over the years or other aspects of your life. The pressures of day-to-day work aren't there, and you can spend an hour impromptu with someone you had always wanted to meet. In a past year, I got to spend an hour chatting with David Baltimore, Nobel Laureate and then-president of Caltech, my alma mater. At an alumni event, I would get 60 seconds!

Conclusion

You can't do it all, as I said above. The hardest decisions to make are what to not do. What blend of the Davos cocktail will you have is a big challenge. For example, I decided this year to avoid political Davos because I thought other things were more important to my work. The richness of the experience lets you give up on some parts and still feel like you didn't shortchange yourself. But, it's very hard to get enough sleep!

I walked away with easily 60 business cards of people with whom I should be following up. Some of them will get involved with Benetech and that will be great. Some will send new people my way and vice versa. Some of them are on similar paths to mine and I know we'll be helping each other advance. Davos is just another branch of the great karma bank.

Hope I get to go back again!

Malaysia Party

2007-01-28T04:23:00.000-08:00

Every year there's a big party at the WEF on the last night (Saturday). Countries vie to sponsor the main event, throwing a big show and serving up their best food. Of course, the reason is economic development. After the opening show, we were treated to a short video extolling the virtues of investing in Malaysia. Knowing their audience it prominently featured a beautiful golf course (and of course beautiful Malaysian women). I was surprised how attentive the audience was to this commercial. Willing participants in a transaction of an evening of entertainment for a four minute video.

The Malaysians had brought a dance troupe, and it was fun. It had more of a feeling of a traditional cultural experience than last year's India party (which was Bollywood to the max). After singing some Malaysian songs, the four top singers switched to popular (American) music. Lots of Motown. And of course, we were dancing up a storm. There was also two other venues for music: one was sort of a jazz nightclub with jazz duos and the other had South African singers followed by recorded dancing music.

My challenge on these parties is that they go very late. Because I'm staying at the Schatzalp, the last train up the mountain leaves at 2 am. If you miss it, the next train is at 6 am! And, there were some people who ended up on the 6 am funicular. Of course, I caught the 2 am train and ended up in the lounge of the Schatzalp talking about the OLPC (One Laptop per Child) project and getting a CD of Amazonian music from my Brazilian buddies (the big column in Brazil's major Sao Paolo paper was entitled (Jungle Boys go to Davos!).

Saturday in Davos means protesters

2007-01-28T04:03:00.000-08:00

Over the five years I've attended the WEF, the level of protesting has gone way down. I like to think that inviting social entrepreneurs and other representatives of wider society has played a role in this. Of course, the issues are different and the U.S. presence seems lower.

I did run into a nice protester on the street. Uli was protesting against the Swiss banks taking five times more money in from the developing world than it puts back out. His direct concern was about corrupt elites that stash their ill-gotten gains in Switzerland. He was advocating for legal changes that would allow more transparency in such cases and permit countries to recover looted assets. We had quite a pleasant chat.

Of course, not all of the interactions were pleasant. One night after a party, one of my fellow social entrepreneurs got hit in the head by a snowball thrown by some punks shouting slogans. However, my buddy felt it was just drunk kids acting up rather than a political act!

Social entrepreneurs at Davos

2007-01-27T10:47:00.000-08:00

People are often surprised when I tell them how social entrepreneurs are well received at Davos. We're full participants in panels, including being speakers. I think the reason for this integration is the strong support of the WEF's founder, Prof. Klaus Schwab, for the regard of social entrepreneurs.

One great example of this was a major reception held last night with the following hosts: Marc Benioff (CEO of Salesforce.com), Prof. & Mrs. Schwab, Michael Dell, Peter Gabriel (rockstar and founder of Witness), Alan Hassenfeld (Hasbro) and Marilyn Carlson Nelson (Carlson Travel). The reception was held in honor of social entrepreneurs and marking the release of a new book edited by Marc Benioff entitled The Business of Changing the World, which is a compendium of essays about business people and their engagement with the social sector. I had some great conversations with people explaining what Benetech does.

Talking to other Social Entrepreneurs

At least half of the highpoints of this week in Switzerland are the interactions I have with other social entrepreneurs. I feel very much at home with these folks, which are my peer community. Last night I was talking to John Wood about his book, Amazon.com: Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. He gave me the direct advice of a social entrepreneur in the middle of marketing his first book: immensely useful.

Moving on to dinner, I sat next to Garth Japhet of Soul City in South Africa, a doctor/social entrepreneur who leads an organization that uses media to influence behavior that affects HIV/AIDS. Garth was able to give me (in less than ten minutes) the reason why HIV spreads so much more quickly in southern Africa than in most other places in the world. He explained that immediately after infection, you are extremely infectious for around three weeks until your immune system beats HIV down to nearly indetectable levels. He noted that while southern Africans do not tend to have a larger lifetime number of sexual partners, they tend to have longer term relationships with multiple partners at the same time. Because a person might be with several long term partners in that several week initial peak infectivity, you will infect several people (and you are less likely to use a condom since it is a long term partner and not a one night stand). And if your partners are similarly oriented, they could infect several more people. Garth noted that a single infection leads to many more infections given this profile compared to societies where you might have as many sexual partners over your lifetime, but where the likelihood of having multiple partners during this three week period is much less.

Like many of my conversations with social entrepreneurs, I feel like I have a window into a crucial social issue from someone with an unparalleled vantage point. And, I get to have at least a dozen of these in-depth conversations every time I come to Davos!

The Kinds of Things You can Do at the WEF Davos

2007-01-25T08:47:00.000-08:00

Davos is more than eating, drinking, and paneling (speeches). Significant numbers of other activities are here, and they are often unusual.

Cool cars

Every year Audi offers advanced driving courses. This year, BMW has a significant presence with its hydrogen-powered 700 series sedan. There are a handful driving around, as well as display units. Outside my hotel there is one of these, up on top of the mountain. You can ask for the chance to drive one, too!

Dialogue in the Dark

Andreas Heinecke is a social entrepreneur that I met over twelve years ago. He runs an experiential exhibition where you have the chance to spend a couple of hours doing everyday tasks in complete darkness, with blind people as your guides. It's obviously not the same thing as being blind, but it does prompt some reassessment of disability and ability, and for many people it's a chance to lose some of their fears about the dark (and maybe even blindness!).

Know Your Numbers

PwC runs a wellness test opportunity where they take your blood and give you a cholesterol test as well as a high blood pressure test. I thought I knew all about this subject, but I learned a tremendous amount about my particular type of lipid issues (low good cholesterol and high triglycerides). I went two levels deeper into the science of my particular issues and learned about a special test developed by UC Berkeley (an hour away from where I live). Very enlightening, and maybe will help reduce my chances of heart disease!

Funny Quote of the Day
I was in a session on disaster preparedness, and the guy next to me showed me an email on his BlackBerry. At first, it was a generic message from a WEF meeting organizer apologizing that their session had been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. However, I burst out with a snort when I read the final line:

We deeply regret this incontinence.

Internet Governance

2007-01-25T08:20:00.000-08:00

I attended the Internet governance panel this morning (lest you think that Davos is all play and no work). Fascinating panel: Vint Cerf (Google), Michael Dell(), John Markoff (New York Times), Hamadoun Toure (ITU), Jonathan Zittrain (Oxford) and moderated by Paul Saffo (Institute for the Future). Just a few snapshots:

John Markoff did an effective job of telling us how bad things are. Botnets (infected PCs under the control of bad guys) represent over 10% of the PCs connected to the Internet. Microsoft Vista illegal copies are already for sale in China, in spite of Microsoft's efforts. According to Microsoft, over a third of illegal copies of their OSs come with trojan infections pre-installed. He noted that Microsoft has spent tremendous amounts of effort in Vista protecting premium content. By extension, wondered what things would be like if Microsoft had spent as much efforts on protecting your private information. His bottom line:

It's as bad as you could possibly imagine!

Jonathan Zittrain made a strong analogy that the Internet today is as structurally weak as AT&T's telephone network was back in the days when you could get free telephone calls using a Cap'n crunch toy whistle.

I can't quote Vint Cerf or the ITU guy (didn't ask permission), but they brought good perspectives to the panel. Michael Dell stayed on corporate message. Wasn't clear that we made much progress on the stated topic, but I did miss the first few minutes!

Davos Flavor

2007-01-24T23:28:00.000-08:00

I hope to share a little of the flavor of Davos as we get into what's going on. Davos is a little mountain town in a valley with ski slopes on both sides. There are basically two main drags around the town, an upper one and a lower one, that meet at the two ends of town and make a long winding oval. City buses and shuttle minivans circle around the town, mainly running around the racetrack (which is one-way in several areas). The Congress Center is in the middle, and that's where the big events happen. But many other events are scattered around the hotels of Davos, and it can take 25 or 30 minutes to walk between the most far flung ones.

Last night I went to the Blogger's nightcap at a hotel at the eastern end of Davos. I came out after midnight and found that there were no buses or shuttles running anymore, so I just walked back to my hotel's funicular. That's not a term I use frequently! It's a train that takes you from town level up 1000 feet to the Schatzalp hotel, which sits well above the valley. Like several hotels in Davos, it's a former TB clinic, and was featured in Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain." I hadn't eaten dinner, and so ended up getting food at the one bar I found open while walking more than half the length of the main drag! I ran into some fun Brazilian social entrepreneurs I hadn't met before (based in the Amazon) and we ended up drinking beers and swapping stories well into the night.

And, that's a key part of the Davos flavor. Yes, you are meeting people you want to meet or people you already know. But, the magic comes when you let serendipity lead you forward. Almost everyone here does something interesting, and you are more likely than not find a common interest with someone you would never would have a priori guessed would be passionate about human rights, or technology, or the political situation in Bangladesh, or environmental change, or...

And of course, the best place to meet people are in the six person minivans. Last year I jumped into one and sat across from George Soros. People are accessible and interested in knowing more about everybody, and it creates a real opportunity to accelerate three month's of new meetings into three or four days.

Schwab Social Entrepreneurs Summit 2007

2007-01-23T03:08:00.000-08:00

We're wrapping up an intense couple of days here in Zurich, and I take the spectacular train to Davos this afternoon. The event here in Zurich is the Schwab Social Entrepreneur Summit, where roughly a hundred social entrepreneurs get together with global leaders to advance the movement.

Sunday was a day of content aimed just at the social entrepreneurs. We discussed leadership, recruiting and succession, among other topics. This content has been driven by requests from the SEs themselves, looking for help in developing their leadership style and their organizations. Many of the SEs are senior, having been leading their organizations for longer than a decade, and many longer than that. Succession issues: how do we build an organization that will outlive our involvement, and how to approach recruiting a successor to the founder, was a session that I moderated. My panelists were Jeroo Billimoria, a serial social entrepreneur from India who founded Child Helpline in India and took it global (as well as starting three other social enterprises); Tom Friel, the Chair of Heidrick & Struggles, the global recruiting firm; Bruce Pasternak, CEO of Special Olympics (and the first CEO not from the founding Shriver clan); and Jennifer Broggini, board member from TechnoServe (member of the search committee that found successors to her father, the founder of TechnoServe).

On Monday we were joined by a dazzling array of global leaders who are interested in social entrepreneurship. Schwab Foundation board members Paolo Coehlo (the noted Brazilian author), Zanelle Mbeki (first lady of South Africa) and Hilde Schwab, the co-founder of the Schwab Foundation. Notable attendees included Larry Brilliant, the head of Google.org, Jonathan Greenblatt, founder of Ethos Water, Ron Grzywinski, founder of ShoreBank, Tim Wirth, head of the UN Foundation, Matthew Bishop of the Economist, and scores of other similar luminaries. The foundation community was also well represented, especially the Skoll Foundation. Skoll and Schwab have the two leading social entrepreneurship networks for senior practitioners, and it's great to see them working together to advance the movement.

Tuesday was kicked off by Jacques Aigran, the President of Swiss Re, the insurance company that hosted the summit at their elegant facility in Ruschlikon, a suburb of Zurich.

Aigran noted that Swiss Re was interested in several aspects of the SE field, including bringing insurance to the developing world, as well as being involved in the global warming crisis (which he feels will disproportionately hurt the poor in the developing world). Hilde Schwab declared the Schwab commitment to making social entrepreneurs better known throughout the world. Her best example was Muhammed Yunus, who is also a board member of the Schwab Foundation, who of course won the Nobel Peace prize last year. She noted that Yunus worked for twenty years before anyone in the West noticed!

Out of all the panels I attended, I especially wanted to let you know about the kickoff panel on Monday. The panel was moderated by Greg Dees of Duke University, one of the leading business school professors tracking and analyzing the social entrepreneurship movement. He pointed out that SEs are all about breaking away from charity and alms giving and focusing on pragmatic problem solving. Mirai Chatterjee of the Self Employed Women's Association in India explains social entrepreneurs as private initiatives that used business models around financial sustainability, self-help and empowerment. Her inspiration for this work included Gandhi, who of course was all about self-reliance!

Matthew Bishop of the Economist Magazine made some interesting points. He continued the theme of claiming social entrepreneurial status (we had earlier heard that insurance was an SE as well as Gandhi), by explaining that the magazine had been started in 1843 to remove trade barriers in the UK, which were hurting the poor by driving up food prices. His analysis of global entrepreneurship is that it has gone through a revolution in the last thirty years, driven by transparency and innovation in capital markets. Breakthroughs by entrepreneurs are followed by productivity improvements embedded in more traditional organizations. He foresees a continued drive towards improving effectiveness as the relationships among states, corporations and private individuals evolve. We've come to recognize the limitations of the nation state, especially around innovation. He also forecast an evolution in capital markets and a rise of intermediaries in the SE field.

Roger Martin, dean of the U. Toronto business school, talked about the need to drive new skills into the business school community, especially improving the teaching of entrepreneurship and trying to teach empathy. Bill Drayton rounded out the panel. As the founder of Ashoka, the biggest and oldest global network of social entrepreneurs, he's known as the godfather of the movement.

The final quotes are from the man of the hour, Larry Brilliant, the new head of Google.org. Everyone in the SE movement is waiting to hear more about his vision for Google.org, since anything seems possible for Google. Larry described his ten months at Google as drinking from a firehose, and explained:

This is the morally most challenging moment in my life,
but I've never felt more alive!

He also announced that Microsoft (and I think Yahoo!) and Google are planning to work together in the area of disaster preparedness.

It was a gratifying couple of days, and I've only scratched the surface. But, tonight I'll be in Davos and getting ready for the next phase of this trip!

World Economic Forum - Davos 2007

2007-01-20T13:29:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year when social entrepreneurs get to hang out and carouse with the world's leaders. I'm en route to Switzerland for two conferences (or, a pre-conference and a conference).

This is where many of the key global players from the social entrepreneurship field get together, under the auspices of Klaus and Hilde Schwab. The first event is the Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur Summit. Klaus is the founder and head of the WEF. And, later in the week I move to Davos for the World Economic Forum - Annual Meeting 2007.

I very much enjoy blogging from Switzerland, and sharing my experiences. I feel it's a privilege to attend, and appreciate the enthusiastic engagement social entrepreneurs receive from the most senior corporate and government leaders. The leaders who take a week out to attend Davos are very interested in global issues, both as these issues impact their business but also their families and the world.

This will be my fifth Davos in a row, and I am definitely far more comfortable than I was the first time. The key epiphany I had was how human the Davos attendees are. This is a chance for them to interact directly with other people without the all-encompassing cocoon that normally surrounds them.

This is a place where their concerns for their children and grandchildren can be openly expressed rather than being deemed inappropriate for polite business conversation. These are real people who yearn to be part of the solution rather than the problem.

I look forward to sharing the (nonconfidential) parts of the conversations I have, and hope that at the end of this coming week you feel slightly heartened about the future!

2006-02-11T13:03:00.000-08:00

Davos retrospective

I'm looking back at my visit to Davos two weeks ago, and pulling together some of the highlights. I've also had the benefit of getting some great photos sent by other people that I can use (thanks, Marketa!). The big one was taking my son, Jimmy, with me. We had a great time, and seeing things through Jimmy's eyes was quite helpful.

People have asked if I've made any big scores as a result of attending the WEF this year. The answer is, I don't know yet! I made a bunch of new connections and strengthened many old relationships. I learned new things, especially from my social entrepreneur peers and other nontraditional attendees like the Young Global Leaders and the Tech Pioneers (the Forum invites a handful of new tech company founders to attend). Social change depends on people, and the best thing about the WEF is getting to connect with people who have greatly above average ability to influence social change, through their corporations, governments, NGOs (non-governmental organizations, the global term for nonprofits), churches/mosques/synagogues/religious institution and unions. I am certain that some of these people will directly benefit one of Benetech's projects, and probably by extension, other social sector projects (because we often make links among people with common interests or issues). One measure is that there are at least fifteen people with whom I have a specific follow-up task to pursue (I'll start on those right after this blog!).

So, the highlights were all people. One terrific guy is Isaac Durojaiye from Nigeria. His social entrepreneurial effort is making plastic toilets (Porta-potties in California parlance) and providing them to unemployed widows and youth to create jobs. As he puts it: "shit business is serious business." One of the best memories of Isaac was standing in the Schatzalp hotel holding a laptop to his ear like it was a cell phone, because someone had made a Skype connection to Nigeria. Isaac is so big, it actually fit. Richard Branson loved Isaac's project when he met a dozen social entrepreneurs: I hope something comes of that!

Jimmy was very excited about the fair trade people. When I mentioned that Paul Rice, "Mr. Fair Trade Coffee" in the U.S., was one of the social entrepreneurs, Jimmy immediately wanted to meet him. Safia Minney, of Peopletree, makes fair trade fashion.

China and India were big topics of this Forum. China's social entrepreneurs are under-represented in Davos, probably because of the relatively tight control on such things in China. India and its neighbors are very well represented, partly because of the entrepreneurial culture of the region and because of the huge issues in the area. Plus, India threw one heck of a party on Saturday night, with Hindi pop singers.

Of course, part of the attraction of Davos is spending time with fun people in a mountain setting. The most fun thing I did was sledding down the mountain in the dark. We ate fondue. We danced at the India party. They don't call us "social entrepreneurs" by mistake! It might seem a little fluffy when we have such serious issues to work on. However, the chance to socialize with other people who understand your challenges is very welcome. Plus, getting a chance to eat and talk together is the best thing for serious collaboration. The real meat of any conference is not the program: it's the networking. And, that's the speciality of the World Economic Forum!

2006-01-30T09:34:00.000-08:00

Jimmy Does Davos

At the suggestion of Victor D'Allant (Mr. Social Edge), I've invited my 20-year-old son to comment on his experience accompanying me to Davos. Jimmy wasn't admitted to the core Forum events, but was able to attend about half of what I did.

My Davos Experience
-Jimmy Fruchterman

I really wasn't sure what to expect coming to Davos. When my father offered to take me I accepted without hesitation. Who would pass on Switzerland, not to mention a short jaunt to Austria and Liechtenstein? I tried not to prejudge the adventure, but of course I thought I'd see some famous people, go to some meetings which could be cool but I wasn't entirely confident I'd understand. Some of my expectations came true, some not.

I had the privilege of attending all the social entrepreneur sessions, and learned a number of things. Everybody there is smart, passionate, and doing wonderful things for the world, but they're still human. Many don't yet have the skills to sell themselves, and that was something I thought that 90% of them could have improved upon. They were generally much better one on one than in speaking to the group. Passion doesn't always translate into good communication of your ideas. And one of the major problems social entrepreneurs have is getting the word out properly. However, it is still very difficult to come out of these sessions not wanting to be one of them 10 years down the road.

I had planned on attending the Open Forum (anyone can attend) but ended up never making it into any of the sessions. The one that I had planned on attending was unbeknownst to me also being attended by Angelina Jolie, whose name I felt like I heard a minimum of three times a day. I learned that celebrity fever afflicts all types. The outcome of her attendance was that there were lines to get in hours before the event and I only showed up about 10 minutes early. Oops.

I was able to witness some protesters, and some odd behaviors amongst them. Several oddly dressed young men and women were passing out fake US dollar bills, and protesting for "the losers of WEF." Unfortunately I often felt that the protesters knew only what they were protesting against, and not what they were protesting for. Some of the ones I saw with my dad the next day were clearer in their message, protesting against China's mistreatment of individuals following a certain religion. There were also kids dressed up in worn suits smoking cigars blowing smoke in people's faces, seemingly trying to start a fight? I glared at them as they passed by hard enough that they didn't do anything to me. I also saw two of them posing with briefcases, not moving or even blinking, for the 5 or so minutes I observed them. But for the mist of their breath they could have been statues. I found this to be one of the more... creative protests.

I should wrap this up so I won't say much about the snowboarding, suffice it to say I thoroughly enjoyed a chance to get out on the slopes, and even got my dad to join me for a couple of hours on the slopes.

One of the highlights was going to several cocktail parties, in particular Friday night's Architects of Global Change party (honoring the social entrepreneurs), and the Google/Accel party. At the former I saw Michael Douglas and Peter Gabriel,so I did manage to get in a few famous faces. I also got to see that all the Davos people are completely human. They eat, they drink (too much at times) and at times the social interaction isn't all too advanced from a college gathering. At the Google party I had the pleasure of meeting Larry Page, who was down to earth and very friendly. I was flattered that he actually spoke to me and my dad for a while, and even more so that he remembered me when I saw him at the outdoors Sunday luncheon at the Schatzalp, which was spectacular. I was able to advise him from prior experience that he should be careful on how much hot food he put on his plate, as it generally got cold before you could get through it all.

My experience at Davos was deeply rewarding, and I really appreciate the Schwab Foundation for allowing me to attend.

A trend with legs as well as a heart - Business - International Herald Tribune

2006-01-28T02:06:00.000-08:00

Social Responsibility in Davos

I attended a great breakfast this morning on the digital divide. Now, digital divide has been a buzzword for a long time, but we've learned a lot from different initiatives and the ICT industry is very interested in continuing to work on the issue from a lot of angles. This morning's breakfast was a very active discussion with about fifty people from industry, government and NGOs (the nonprofit sector), ably moderated by David Kirkpatrick of Fortume Magazine. Many attendees were CEOs, SVPs and CTOs from their companies, as well as ministers of ICT. The discussions were interesting because groups that are normally at each other's competitive throat are trying to figure out how to advance social issues in the developing world like education, economic development and health, issues that redound to their long term business interests, but are not tied at all to next quarter's results!

Davos rules are that these conversations are off record. Without quoting anyone, I can tell you that people were really excited and engaged. It is gratifying to see the immense brainpower of top leaders figuring out how to drop rhetoric and talk about actual action steps.

I was quoted in a International Herald Tribune article today with a Davos byline entitled A trend with legs as well as a heart. Thomas Crampton has cast a critical eye on corporate social responsibility and does acknowledge that it is a growing trend that is actually part of good business.

2006-01-27T08:58:00.000-08:00

The Value of Attending Davos

Trying to explain the value of being here runs a real risk. I call it the name-dropping risk. There are so many cool people here, and in many cases this is my main opportunity to say hi to them in a year. The other thing is that I'm almost exclusively talking to people with an active interest in social entrepreneurship or a particular social cause. Serving society actively engages the great majority of people who are attending Davos.

For example, I got to talk to Sir Richard Branson (with a dozen social entrepreneurs), and Peter Gabriel. I went to a lunch with young global leaders with the guy who heads the Xbox360 project for Microsoft, Brian Behlendorf (Mr. Apache, the open source web server), as well as sitting next to John Wood, founder of Room to Read, and next to him was an gold medal winning Olympic athlete who works to help poor kids in war-torn countries learn to and have access to play. John Wood is writing a book on his experiences to be published this year, and I'm hoping to do the same next year. His advice was very helpful.

I was able to sit with big league Silicon Valley types, such as Larry Page of Google, the venture capitalists Ann Winblad and Vinod Khosla, and got to catch up with my Caltech classmate Bill Gross, Mr. Idealab and currently working on what we dubbed "half price solar." I tried to connect Bill with Bunker Roy, Mr. Barefoot College in India, who trains illiterate people to be solar power engineers.

So, back to the name dropping issue. I'm not here to be able to drop these names; I'm here because these people have the power and the inclination to improve our society. They control intellectual property, capital and expertise, all of which is needed to make the world better. This is a rare chance to bring up issues, engage the interest of these folks in hearing more. As I usually disclaim, I'm not here to ask rich people for money. I am here to ask world leaders in different fields to be interested in what our movement does and try to connect them to the right opportunities to make change. And some of those opportunities might lead to working with Benetech!

2006-01-26T10:16:00.000-08:00

The Voices of Davos

This meeting is all about conversations. It's an opportunity to connect with interesting people from around the world, all with important perspectives. I just want to share some of the voices I've heard so far this week. These are based on my contemporaneous notes. It will give you a great idea of why this is such a blast.

Zanelle Mbeki (first lady of South Africa), talked about the opportunities in market failure. Pointed out that most of the public does not know what social entrepreneurship is, and that in the nonprofit world it is such a buzzword that all groups seeking funds are saying they are social entrepreneurs.

Paolo Coelho (Brazilian author, The Alchemist) talked about what we aren't willing to talk about: the role of love in what we do. He pointed out three kinds of love: eros, agape and philos. He focused on the last, philos, love of your neighbor, pointing out that this word is related to philanthropy.
He made it clear that we need to be less uncomfortable about this love: love is why we do what we do (he was speaking to social entrepreneurs, but he felt it was bigger). His closing remark to us was:
"In every single eye in the WEF, is this one sentence from McCartney and Lennon, 'all you need is love.'"

I have had great chats with different social entrepreneurs. Isaac from Nigeria makes mobile toilets and gives them to poor widows to use to generate income: "shit business is serious business." Sheela Patel of SPARC in Mumbai, India, and I talked about IT needs for her communities: the poor. Sounded like she needs something I've seen in Brazil, and so I hope to make the connection. She also explained that the illiterate poor women she serves are more committed to literacy for their children than for themselves.

Rory Stear, the head of Freeplay Energy, met with Nicholas Negroponte of MIT's Media Lab about their $100 laptop project. Rory is normally quite skeptical, but he was enthusiastic about the possibility that this would really make an impact. Later on, I had the chance to chat with Negroponte about getting a development unit to use to write software for this platform, and I was definitely encouraged.

Maritta Koch-Weser, the head of GEXSI, met in front of my poster at the social entrepreneur meeting, and we ended up talking at length about the kind of socially beneficial projects she wants to fund. Someday Benetech may have a project for them, but it was very important for me to understand what Maritta is looking for, since I run into great social entrepreneurial ideas every week that Benetech cannot begin to work on!

That's less than a quarter of the conversations I've had over the last day or two. I'm learning, connecting, exploring every hours. Really intense, but an opportunity not to be missed for the communities I serve, and of course Benetech!

2006-01-25T04:53:00.000-08:00

Putting the Social Into Davos

I arrived in Davos Sunday night for the Schwab Social Entrepreneur Summit. Dr. Klaus Schwab has made social entrepreneurship his cause, and over the past five year has brought social entrepreneurs into the World Economic Forum. That's easy for him to do because he founded the Forum!

Forty Schwab SEs are here, and a bunch of them are new. Many were picked through national efforts co-managed by the Schwab Foundation and major press outlets in each country. One of the highlights of any gathering of social entrepreneurs is simply getting together and swapping our experiences. For example, one of the issues we talked about was succession planning. How does a socially entrepreneurial organization grow and thrive when the founder moves on? It also touches on the fact that part of becoming a really successful organization means that you have to move beyond being so tied to the founder as an individual. I had the benefit of sitting at the table with Chris Elias, PATH's second CEO, and Bruce McNamer, Technoserve's third CEO, to get those perspectives of the leaders who followed the first social entrepreneur/founder.

Of course, we also have fun. We're all staying in the same hotel, the Schatzalp, which is 1000 feet above Davos. You take a train (well, sort of a funicular) up the mountain to get to the hotel. Night before last, a dozen social entrepreneurs took sleds down the mountain in the dark.

Great views, too!

The energy is great here as we get ready to tackle the main Forum. More as that happens!

2006-01-24T13:44:00.000-08:00

Anti-WEF Protest in Zurich

I'm not supposed to start blogging about Davos and the World Economic Forum until Tuesday, but the WEF found me in Zurich on Saturday night. My son, Jimmy, and I were wandering through the old town to find dinner and we ran into a good-sized protest against the WEF by a couple of hundred folks in black ski masks. They stopped right in front of us (outside the Zic Zac Rock Hotel) and someone did a five minute harangue in German over a megaphone. The protesters were pretty well behaved, and I didn't see a police presence.

The protesters lit off some fireworks: first time one went off I nearly jumped out of my skin.

The main thing the protesters were doing illegal was spraypainting hammers and sickles and anti-WEF slogans. I really liked the "Dance Out WEF," but we didn't find that part of the protest.