The Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability class has launched several internationally known start-ups (including Embrace, Driptech and D.Light.) But main route for student teams to get their life-changing products into the hands of people in the developing world is by working with NGO partner organizations.
Working with partners is the quickest way to market: it eliminates the need to create a business model and distribution infrastructure, so that students can focus on getting the best possible product to people who need it.
Professor Jim Patel, who founded the class, and Erica Estrada, who teaches the class and directs our Social Entrepreneurship Lab, discuss why this is such a critical route-to-market for students in the class:
A splendid and courageous new book, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, by Andrew J. Bacevich of Boston University (and for many years previously, the U.S. Army), describes with lucidity the degree to which the power of the American presidency over war and peace has been weakened in our day, and, in important respects, superseded.
One might call this a silent coup against the presidency, but a coup implies intention: a responsible actor who sets the coup d’etat into action for a defined purpose. The argument Bacevich makes implies that a coup can be institutional or intellectual, and come from outside as well as inside government. Its characteristic is to create a situation in which a president is no longer free to act as he might wish, because all of the doors except one have been closed.
The name of the bureaucratic game, of course, is to remove all realistic alternatives to the Pentagon's preferred decision before that decision is made. Pfaff's discussion is based on Andrew Bacevich's new book “Washington Rules.” I have not read Bacevich's book yet, and will not be able to until I return to the states in November, but I have read several reviews and from that perspective can say that the behaviour Pfaff describes comports well with behavior I witnessed in my years in the Pentagon.
The picture is more subtle and far more complicated than that portrayed by Pfaff, however.
The 2010 Right Livelihood Awards go to four recipients who will share the € 200.000 cash award:
NNIMMO BASSEY (Nigeria) receives an Award “for revealing the full ecological and human horrors of oil production and for his inspired work to strengthen the environmental movement in Nigeria and globally”.
Bishop ERWIN KRÄUTLER (Brazil) is honoured “for a lifetime of work for the human and environmental rights of indigenous peoples and for his tireless efforts to save the Amazon forest from destruction”.
SHRIKRISHNA UPADHYAY and the organisation SAPPROS (Nepal) are recognised “for demonstrating over many years the power of community mobilisation to address the multiple causes of poverty even when threatened by political violence and instability”.
The organisation PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS-ISRAEL (Israel) is awarded “for their indomitable spirit in working for the right to health for all people in Israel and Palestine”.
QuoteJakob von Uexkull, Founder and Co-Chair of the Right Livelihood Awards, noted after the jury decision:
“True change starts at the grassroots level: physicians who did not wait for politicians before acting to end unnecessary suffering in the Middle East; villagers who work themselves out of poverty; and environmental movements which unite the victims of ecological devastation. Combine this work on the ground with targeted advocacy, for example for the constitutional rights of indigenous people, and you understand why this year’s Right Livelihood Award Laureates yet again offer role models, whose work and commitment can be replicated throughout the world.”
Robert David STEELE Vivas Click Here to See Personal Page
ON INTEGRITY
1. Integrity is not just about honor–it is about wholeness of view, completeness of effort, and accuracy or reliability of all of the elements of the whole.
2. Industrial-Era Systems do not adapt because they lack integrity and continue to pay for doing the wrong things righter–the Pentagon is a classic example of such as system.
3. In the 21st Century, intelligence, design, and integrity are the triad that matters most. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is the non-negotiable starting position for getting it right, and this is crucially important with respect to the sustainability of the Earth as a home for humanity.
Click on Image to Enlarge
4. Integrity at the top requires clarity, diversity, and BALANCE–it makes no sense for a Secretary of Defense to continue to screw over the 4% that take 80% of the casualties, spending 80% of the Pentagon budget on the 20% that do not take casualties (occupants of really big expensive things that do not actually go into harm's way).
5. Integrity can be compounded or discounted. It is compounded when public understanding demands political accountability and flag officers ultimately understand that they have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution, not support the chain of command. It is discounted when flag officers are careerists, ascribe to rankism, and generally betray the public interest in favor of personal advancement.
6. Integrity is ultimately a natural attribute of large groups, and emerges from self-organizing over time. The Declaration of Independence from the United Kingdom is one example; the break-up of the Balkans another; the pending secession of Hawaii and Vermont from the United STATES of America a third. Legitimate grievances give the aggrieved the moral high ground–this is a power no government can repress.
7. Universal access to connectivity and content is a means of accelerating both public access to the truth, and the power of the public to off-set “rule by secrecy,” which inherently lacks integrity across the board.
EXCUSES most commonly heard:
1) I work for the government, we serve the public, I consider myself part of the government, not part of the public, and indeed, choose not to vote or otherwise be active as a citizen.
2) The public elects the politicians, they appoint the leadership, serving the chain of command is how one serves the public.
RIPOSTE:
1) Citizenship trumps occupational role. Every employee is supposed to be a citizen first, a public servant second. They swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution, that includes a responsibility to protect the public from predatory government actions – the recent assassination of a US citizen without due process is a reprehensible example of what happens with uniformed officers and civil servants become morally disengaged.
2) Information asymmetries between the public and the government are such that a democracy demands whistle-blowers and open government. Rule by secrecy is a form of tyranny, a means of avoiding accountability, and ultimately a clear and present danger to the Constitution, the Republic, and the public interest. Because of their Oath, it can be said that government employees have a special responsibility to detect and confront fraud, waste, and abuse – and certainly to disobey and declare illegal orders and plans or programs inconsistent with the Constitution, such as wars not authorized by Congress, or assassinations not based on the rule of law.
In brief, all of our government employees have been “coping out” and failing to live up to their fullest potential as citizens and human beings. To be silent and complacent is to be a slave, not a citizen. Any employee of the government that fails to think about the Constitution and their role in defending the Constitution at every level on every day across every issue area, is failing to honor their Oath of office.
….in the future, any company that lacks a vital core of Gen F employees will soon find itself stuck in the mud.
With that in mind, I compiled a list of 12 work-relevant characteristics of online life. These are the post-bureaucratic realities that tomorrow’s employees will use as yardsticks in determining whether your company is “with it” or “past it.” In assembling this short list, I haven’t tried to catalog every salient feature of the Web’s social milieu, only those that are most at odds with the legacy practices found in large companies.
1. All ideas compete on an equal footing.
2. Contribution counts for more than credentials.
3. Hierarchies are natural, not prescribed.
4. Leaders serve rather than preside.
5. Tasks are chosen, not assigned.
6. Groups are self-defining and self-organizing
7. Resources get attracted, not allocated.
8. Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it.
9. Opinions compound and decisions are peer-reviewed.
10. Users can veto most policy decisions.
11. Intrinsic rewards matter most.
12. Hackers are heroes.
Phi Beta Iota: We've been skirting all of these since 1988, and even more so since we opened Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) in 1994. Please do read the full articulation, and pass it on. It's is the single best summary we have found to date.
Phi Beta Iota: This excellent but truncated report has the same problem we saw in Global Governance 2025–it just does not “get” the dual facts that a) governments no longer rule and b) connecting is not the main event–sense-making is the main event and it is 5-10 years off. THAT will be the revolution. Better–and earlier–insights remain those in 2002 Pinkham (US) Citizen Advocacy in the Information Age and Reference: Social Search 101. The future was defined in 1989, then again in 1992, 1998, and on and on. Connecting all humans with all information in all languages all the time is the end-game. Anything less lacks integrity.
The problem with not putting it all on the line is that it will never (ever) change things for the better.
Not much of a choice, I think. No risk, no art. No art, no reward.
Phi Beta Iota: The Weberian concept of bureaucracy is all about risk reduction and knowledge hoarding. Governments are not only bureaucracies, they are bureaucracies created in the wrong way for the wrong reasons. Public philosophy is now entering a new era, a renaissance. Eventually we anticipate overlapping governments that will be open, hybrid, strictly in the public interest with corruption impossible due to total transparency, AND governments will be intelligence-driven, about design, about the “art” of creating a prosperous world at peace that optimizes human creativity.
