Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

I just finished reading Kentaro Toyama’s new book, Geek Heresy, tackling the cult of technology as a cure-all for society’s ills. He’s a geek (former Microsoft Research guy) who is making the case that technology doesn’t make the kind of social impact it claims to deliver. There’s often more value to me in reading iconoclastic books than feel-good affirmations of popular icons! For example, I extracted many insights about the international development field reading books like Easterly’s Tyranny of Experts or Maren’s Road to Hell. Toyama offers up strong criticisms as well as constructive advice about how to best apply technology to social problems. At the same time, there are some flaws in his arguments that are worth pointing out. Smashing Icons Toyama’s central thesis is that we tend to overstate the benefits of technology as a magic bullet. He’s countering the world view that the technology just needs to get in the hands of the poor and miracles will happen. He broadens this ...

Thanks to being a Skoll Award winner, I am frequently blessed with the opportunity to hear from the world’s most inspiring leaders. Whether it’s local in California, or at the Skoll World Forum in Oxford, there is a regular chance I will have my mind expanded. The latest Skoll opportunity came along with the recent visit of Mary Robinson to Palo Alto. She hit the world stage most notably as Ireland’s first female president, and has continued to campaign for the world’s most vulnerable people, especially women. Mary spoke privately to a small group of social sector leaders at the Skoll Foundation offices. I want to share just two insights from Mary that made a big impression on me. First, she saw 2015 as having two watershed events. The first was the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations. These goals commit all countries of the world to make progress on critical social objectives, such as ending poverty and hunger, improving access to clean water, e...

My favorite conference of the year is the Skoll World Forum in Oxford. That’s still the case even after attending the Forum for eleven straight years as of last week! Why, after all these years, do I love going back? First and foremost, it’s the people. This is my posse, the global social entrepreneur community, as well as the people who appreciate and support them. Everybody there understands the issues at the intersection of social good and innovation at scale. That is why conversations at the Forum start where conversations elsewhere end. Thanks to the environment of trust and effectiveness, there are nearly one hundred people on my list of follow-ups from last week! The programming also works well for me and most of my fellow social entrepreneurs. That’s no accident: since its inception, the Skoll team has continuously improved the Forum. The event starts with two-and-a-half days of the Skoll Convening: a gathering of all of the current and former Skoll Awardees . This year’s...

We've just launched Benetech's new website . This is my Welcome post that originally appeared on the new Benetech Blog . On behalf of the Benetech team, including our Board of Directors, I’m delighted to welcome you to our new website and formally introduce our newest program area: Benetech Labs ! At Benetech, our goal is to create positive social change through technology. Telling our story is an important way we’re able to accomplish that goal—it allows us to generate the interest and support necessary to develop technology that helps countless people around the world. With this new site, we hope to better share our story and the impact of our work in a clear and consistent way across our four program areas , which encompass a diverse set of initiatives, products and services. Look around—there’s a lot that’s new. We’ve updated our brand identity. We’ve made things more engaging, adding more images and video along with the ability to share and comment on content. We’v...

Martín Burt is one of the greatest social entrepreneurs I’ve had the pleasure of knowing for many years. So I was recently taken by surprise when I discovered by mere coincidence that he had become the Chief of Staff for the Interim President of Paraguay, Federico Franco! It turns out Martín was asked by Franco to join his administration when he took office in June 2012. He will serve in this position until Franco finishes his term in August 2013. I found it incredible that almost no one in the social entrepreneurial field knew about this and decided a blog post was in order! Martin Burt at SWF10 Martín is a pioneer in applying microfinance, youth entrepreneurship and economic self-reliance methodologies to address chronic poverty. A citizen of Paraguay, he is the founder of Fundación Paraguaya , a financially self-sustaining social enterprise that promotes entrepreneurs in Paraguay and Africa through microcredit and entrepreneurship education. He is also one of the creators of ...

I was recently at the Skoll World Forum, probably the best conference in the world for meeting with top social entrepreneurs. As a longtime member of the Skoll community, I prize this week for the opportunity to talk frankly with peers about our biggest mutual challenges. Peer learning is the most valuable opportunity for a field that has no operator's manual -- like social entrepreneurship! The constant theme is raising money for our social enterprises. But not just any money -- we talk about the most difficult money to raise: the unrestricted funding that is the lifeblood for a social entrepreneur. This kind of funding is essential for innovation, for responding to time-critical opportunities, prototyping new ideas and getting them to the point where they are a saleable product to customers and/or issue-focused donors. But, unrestricted funding is far harder to raise, because the donor is investing in the leadership of the organization as opposed to a specific set of deliverab...

I greatly enjoy talking to students, and I am now in Ottawa, Canada, just having spoken to an incredible group of students, Engineers Without Borders Canada . Now, I had heard of EWB before, but I hadn't grasped how large, sophisticated and ambitious an organization this is! I'm at the annual Canadian EWB conference (each of the EWB country groups is independent of the other), and there are hundreds and hundreds of students here. Mainly engineering students, but as EWB Canada has grown and matured, they've increased the size of their umbrella and welcome non-engineering students. Oh, and at least half of the engineering students here are women. Hint to the profession: if you link engineering to helping people rather than gadgets, women seem to be more interested! Dr. Pamela Hartigan, head of the Skoll Centre at Oxford University's Said Business School, noted in her keynote that EWB was the largest single source of Skoll Scholars at Oxford. That made me realize how im...

As I noted in my first blog on my African trip, I was delighted with the entrepreneurial culture in Nairobi, Kenya. A social entrepreneur who very much exemplified this was Stephen Muthee, founder of Daproim, a data entry social enterprise based in Nairobi. We were introduced to Steve and Daproim through the great offices of Leila Janah and Samasource, the "Give Work" people. Leila's dream has been to connect the people of East Africa with dignified digital work, and connecting Steve to our Bookshare team has been highly successful for Daproim, Samasource and Bookshare! It's part of what we call our social enterprise supply chain. It's so cool to come into an office in Nairobi's Central Business District and see a couple of dozen people working on transcribing textbooks for Bookshare's users with print disabilities. Steve wanted me to work my way around the office shaking everybody's hand! I was happy to thank everybody for their work on behalf ...

I've just ended an exciting three week long Africa trip to Kenya, Tanzania and Ghana. There are so many exciting people and organizations to talk about! One of my very first meetings in Nairobi, Kenya, was with John Kipchumbah (Kipp) and Philip Thigo of the Innovation Program of the Social Development Network. I dropped in on them because Kipp had been trained on our Martus human rights software years ago and had been helping human rights groups in the region with using Martus. However, I was thrilled with the incredible range of activities I heard about during our dinner together. Kipp explained that they wanted to take a broad approach to improving human rights, and so had expanded into other areas in the social sector. They felt these new initiatives would all contribute to a better human rights environment in the region. One of the first areas was a budget tracking tools for Kenya, to make it easier for people to learn about budgeted amounts for their areas. Huduma mak...

When I can find the time, I jump at the opportunity to visit universities. It stimulates the same pleasure center that brainstorming does for me! The universities I visit tend to be full of students and faculty committed to doing important and innovative work. My recent visit to Caltech was no exception. Of course, I have a soft spot for Caltech, having gotten my two degrees there. It was a class at Caltech that prompted me to first think of making reading machines for blind people, my personal jumping off point that led me to found Benetech (hmm, name similarity probably not a coincidence!). I no longer do any of the scientific work I was trained to do. But, Caltech taught me how to size up a problem and model how a system works: skills that have been indispensable in both my entrepreneurial and social entrepreneurial pursuits! The most exciting thread of the day concerned sustainability. I was turned on to climate and energy issues six years ago by reading Caltech professor David G...

[Note: this is part one of seven posts on the Benetech Truths .] The world has big problems. We need fresh, original solutions that are better than the status quo. Technology has revolutionized business, but bringing those breakthrough developments to government, education and the nonprofit sectors can take 5, 10, even 15 years. It doesn’t have to be that way. We’re convinced that there are many innovative social applications of technology could make a 5X or a 10X or even a 15X improvement over status quo solutions. At Benetech, our team is committed to using technology to drive positive social change. We want to see technology serve much more of humanity than just the richest ten percent. We use technology to create products and projects that serve humanity where the market will fail to go because they offer modest financial returns. To create these breakthrough solutions, our team uses its skills to build upon the incredible talents and productivity of the larger tech community. We...

One of the great memories I have of last week's Skoll World Forum is Willy Foote of Root Capital kicking off the Skoll Convening (the grantee meeting just before the Forum) with this ash-cloud inspired song: “Floating in this Cloud” How can I scale the impact of my work? Should I partner or go it alone? How many funders do I really need? And how many miles have I flown? Yes, and does it make sense, to hire a COO Given how much this outfit has grown. The answers, for now, are floating in this cloud The answers are floating in this cloud How can I find the kind of hires that I need Before we all just explode? How can I build a strong culture for us all Before we burn out from overload? Yes and how many times must I change my strategy Before I get on a steady road The answers, for now, are floating in this cloud The answers are floating in this cloud (Repeat) And when will I know my work has been done That the impact will forever be How will I measure my mark on the world That it not...

Benetech has spent a good part of this last year thinking about what's next for our mission and our team. A crucial part of that effort has been to identify what we think is uniquely true about Benetech. This portion was an internally focused effort based on conversations with our team. We came up with the following truths as part of that process. You might call them Benetech's values, but we didn't look at traditional organizational value statements while drafting these truths. Writing them down has been powerful for us: these truths articulate who we are and how we do things at Benetech. We're striving now to fully live up to them! Benetech Truths 1 We are committed to social change through technology. Benetech is a Silicon Valley nonprofit organization developing innovative technology solutions with a primary goal of positive social change rather than profit. 2 We get stuff done. Benetech has a record of success in securing funding, creating partnerships, and d...

I'm having a conversation over at Social Edge on What Matters . Feel free to join in the conversation and share your views on the topic. Here's my kick-off post for the thread: I was impressed when I heard Tim O'Reilly, one of the main thought leaders in information technology, recommending to all tech folks last year that they Work on Stuff that Matters . Tim's point wasn't that all tech developers should go to work for nonprofits, it was that people should step back and think about what matters to them. Life is too short to throw your professional life away on stuff you don't care about. Like many techies, I came to work on technology because I loved doing it. We get a charge out of figuring things out, and understanding how the world works in a deep ways. Almost all the geeks I know want to do something important , something meaningful, whether exploring something new in cosmology, designing a building that could better resist an earthquake, cure a ...

I'm just wrapping up a week of conversation on Social Edge, entitled Travel Tips for Social Entrepreneurs . I'm fascinated not only with the big questions in the social entrepreneurship field, but also the practical practices of doing the job of social entrepreneur better. One of those practices is how to travel as cost effectively as possible. The conversation ranged over how to use Priceline, choosing socially responsible travel products and an idea for staying with other social entrepreneurs. Here's how I kicked off the conversation: We spend a lot of time talking about the big picture issues around social change. But, sometimes it’s important to get practical and talk about nuts and bolts issues. Being a social entrepreneur is all about doing more with less. So, how do you stretch your travel dollars? As a social entrepreneur who is typically on the road more than half the time, I find myself thinking about this a lot. What’s the tradeoff between saving time and sav...

One of the more interesting people I met at the Oxford Skoll meeting this year was Raja Moubarak, founder of Winquest . Raja is a seasoned business executive with senior level experience in multinationals (Coca-Cola, B&W/BAT, BOC Group, Societe Generale) in Europe, Asia and in multiple Middle East/North African countries (MENA), as an entrepreneur and as Managing Director of one of the oldest retail groups in the MENA region. His idea is straightforward: he believe the Middle East/North Africa region is ripe for values-centered for-profit social enterprises that can both make plenty of money and deliver social benefits. With his long expertise in bringing products to this region, he's working to find connections with companies interested in expanding into this area. But, just companies that have social good as a crucial part of their DNA. It's probably not a coincidence that the Obama Administration is focusing efforts on entrepreneurship in the Muslim world: there'...

I was impressed when I heard Tim O'Reilly recommending to all tech folks last year that they Work on Stuff that Matters . Tim's point wasn't that all tech developers should go to work for nonprofits, it was that people should step back and think about what matters to them. Life is too short to throw your professional life away on stuff you don't care about. Like many techies, I came to the field because I loved doing tech. We get a charge out of figuring things out, and understanding how the world works in a deep ways. Almost all the geeks I know want to do something important, something meaningful, whether exploring something new in cosmology, designing a building that could better resist an earthquake, cure a disease or design a new and faster chip. I see this hunger for meaning in most of the people I'm privileged to meet: from the college freshman to the fresh grad to the mid-career professional and the senior executive. We all want to work on Stuff That Matter...

My latest President's Update is up on the Benetech website. This update spotlights our new Benetech report celebrating twenty (!) years of technology serving humanity. When I first started Benetech, I never dreamed that we would actually be where we are today. Through the generosity of our committed supporters, Benetech has had remarkable success and I am proud of our impact in the fields of disability, human rights and the environment. Our report asks the question “How many people can a single idea help?” This is a question we ask every day at Benetech. As a technology company where social benefit—not profit—is the bottom line, we believe the knowledge is readily available to solve many of humanity’s most vexing problems. Our innovative solutions take the best of existing technology and adapt it at low cost to confront these challenges. In this time of social conflict, environmental destruction and economic uncertainty, the need for such a strategy has never been greater. We’re...

Great to see two social enterprise bloggers, Kylie Eastley of Tasmania and Tristan Pollock from Minnesota, won Halle Tecco's contest on Huffington Post to go to the Social Enterprise Alliance Summit later this month in San Francisco. I just heard from Jerr Boschee, the interim CEO of SEA, that registrations are already well ahead of past Summits, and that over 30% of the attendees are coming from outside the United States. This year's Summit is being held in conjunction with the Social Enterprise World Forum, which was in Australia last year and Scotland the year before that. Next year it will be in South Africa. We're excited to playing host to the growing global social enterprise movement, and I'm glad that Kylie will be blogging up a storm from down under even Down Under! This Summit will be my swan song in a leadership role at the Alliance. I joined the board ten years ago, and my term limits were extended to act in the chair's role these past two years, fo...

New ideas for Benetech projects come to us from interesting people all the time. The challenges that people bring are rarely technology problems: they are market problems. One repeating theme came to me during a recent and fascinating meeting with Professor Rebecca Richards-Kortum, the Director of Rice 360, the Institute for Global Health Technologies . Rebecca was looking for help with a familiar problem. Her students at Rice University have been busy inventing new tools and equipment for global health. Many universities do similar things, but Rice goes a key step further. Their students actually go into the field, work with local medical professionals, and learn their real problems, their real pain points. They design solutions in response to these pain points, and bring them back into the field for real-world feedback. So far, so good. But, what happens after doctors in Africa rave about how successful this or that invention are in their hospital? How do you go from ten or tw...