Be Fearless

5 Quotes To Inspire You To #BeFearless

Posted on by Case Foundation

Make big bets and make history. Experiment early and often. Make failure matter. Reach beyond your bubble. Let urgency conquer fear. These are the five Be Fearless principles that serve as the common thread for groundbreaking, problem-solving success. Nonprofits, philanthropy, individuals, startups and corporations have leveraged these principles to bring forward world changing inventions, to shift our mindsets of what’s possible and to solve persistent social problems.

Our CEO, Jean Case, explained what the principles mean in our initial Be Fearless episode on Facebook Watch. Storytelling is not only a way to bring to life the historical and contemporary Be Fearless champions who have changed the world, but also a way to lift up those undiscovered fearless changemakers that inspire you. Through our Finding Fearless campaign, we’ve heard from people around the world with examples of a wide variety of people and organizations putting the Be Fearless principles into action. The stories we receive will have a chance of being featured in Jean Case’s upcoming book or uplifted by the Case Foundation in our work and we continue to review stories posted on the site on a daily basis.

But stories don’t always need to be long to be impactful. We have seen a single quote inspire changemakers to move to action, to overcome their fears and take the steps needed to start them on the path of transformational change. To inspire you and to remind you of those inspired by #BeFearless, here are some of these quotes.

On making big bets

On experimenting
 

On failure

On reaching beyond your bubble
 

On urgency
 

We hope these words of wisdom from changemakers of all backgrounds and perspectives inspire you to take a fearless approach to your own work. And we hope they inspire you to share a story, whether it’s your own or a story you love. If you’re looking for even more Be Fearless inspiration, check out our show on Facebook Watch, head to our Be Fearless hub, and tweet at us using #FindingFearless.

Looking for Fearless

Posted on by Case Foundation

This fall, I will be tackling a new endeavor: writing a book about the Be Fearless principles that will feature remarkable stories of fearless people and organizations that embody them. The book will be grounded in five principles that together represent keys to creating the “secret sauce” that can bring about transformational change. Being fearless means setting audacious goals, acting urgently and boldly. It means experimenting, taking risks, being willing to strike unlikely alliances and accepting the possibility of failure while still pressing forward.

Since launching our Be Fearless work at the Case Foundation, we’ve highlighted and written about many wonderful stories of fearlessness—those inspiring people and organizations that started with a big bet, took risks, built unlikely partnerships, remained undaunted in the face of failure and used urgency to help conquer fear. These stories run the gamut from those more familiar—from President Kennedy’s moonshot, to two-time Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie’s pioneering work on radioactivity, to modern day Elon Musk—to lesser known contemporary tales of remarkable people and organizations who are doing remarkable things. Many of these are highlighted on the Be Fearless website and featured on social media through events like #FearlessFriday.

We live in a time when the world demands we build innovative, new approaches. And we know there are stories of fearlessness playing out across America and around the world every day. We know that there are many individuals who have lived the principles of Be Fearless through time, but whose stories may not be known. Their stories run the gamut: from business owners to nonprofits leaders, from those trying to make a difference in their communities to those launching a startup. These are the people and organizations who have brought us unique inventions, great discoveries and impacted the lives of others, and they have done so fearlessly.

And that’s where you come in.

We want to learn about these stories so we can highlight their successes, the challenges they overcame and their Be Fearless thinking to both raise the profile of their stories and to provide compelling role models for those who will follow in their footsteps. No matter the focus, no matter the scale, no matter when or where they lived, if you have a compelling story about an individual or an organization that you think embodies the five Be Fearless principles, we want to hear it.

To make it easy to submit the story you want us to know about, we’ve created a simple template that you can find at FindingFearless.org. There, you can post short descriptions of what inspires you—whether it’s from your own journey or that of another individual, nonprofit, corporation or startup—and how they put Be Fearless to work. We have a team of researchers prepared to dig deeper, should we select the story to be highlighted in my book or to lift up through the Case Foundation.

I have no doubt that our Be Fearless work at the Case Foundation and the stories I will highlight in my book will be made better through the contributions of others. I invite you to join us on this exciting Finding Fearless journey.

Be Fearless Spotlight: From Transactional to Transformational, Fearlessly

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This Spotlight is a part of a special blog series curated by the Case Foundation featuring Be Fearless stories from the field. Follow along with us as we meet people and learn about organizations that are taking risks, being bold and failing forward in their efforts to create transformative change in the social sector. This Spotlight is authored by Edward D Breslin (@NedBreslin), Chief Executive Officer of Tennyson Center for Children (@TennysonCenter), and a 2011 winner of the Skoll Award For Social Entrepreneurship.

“It seems impossible. I mean, every child, as in EVERY child,” she said the filled-to-capacity room of therapists and social workers who make up the Tennyson Center’s Community Based Service (CBS) corps. The weight and possibility of the big bet, driven by urgency, was settling on all.

Tennyson is generally known as a Colorado-based residential treatment facility for children experiencing trauma from abuse and neglect. And while we do have beds for kids whose families have disintegrated, our programs transcend that narrow definition, led in many ways by our CBS team.

CBS is made up of exceptional therapists and social workers who meet loving parents in their homes and at their schools to help kids remain locally integrated. CBS sees the kiddos they work with as part of a larger community, and they understand firsthand how big the problem of abuse, neglect and mental illness are throughout the state. Demand for our services is growing as educators, parents and local first responders see the impact of our work, and my colleague, in her emphasizing every, knows that a commitment to every child means a lot of children.

She paused after taking in the totality of our commitment, and looked at her colleagues before saying, “But that is why I dedicated myself to this profession. I want to be part of a broader solution that helps every child, not just some children. And I believe we can do it. In fact, I know we can.”

Her colleagues nodded approval, and the meeting rightly shifted to how we can succeed rather than if we should even try.

I have been here before, and it’s a magical moment when staff shift from fear and transactional mindset to a big, bold move designed to address a fundamental problem at scale.  In other words, when an organization decides to Be Fearless.

I served as CEO of Water For People when we launched Everyone Forever, which reimagined the way we, and in effect the international water and sanitation sector, operated. Instead of installing projects in a random assortment of villages—choosing some and bypassing others—we decided to unleash our ambitions in a new, bolder and more scaled way. We were making a big bet in hopes of making history. We targeted all villages in districts and cities across the world, saying we would not rest until every family, every school and every clinic had access to water and sanitation services and never needed international aid or philanthropy again.

People scoffed, saying it was not possible. This was expected, as we generally live in a world of small thinking and caution, where bold mission statements about solving problems are not matched by the programming needed to actually solve them. Everyone Forever tapped people’s deep desire to actually solve the problem, stated our ambitions starkly and unashamedly, and put our reputation on the line with a commitment to verify results for 10 years after the work was done. We were not interested in helping some villages or installing a water point and having it fail at a later date. We were committed to solving the problem, boldly, fearlessly and permanently.

But to our surprise, many people and organizations actually came along with us on our fearless journey. In some ways they had to—what is the alternative? The urgency for a solution pushed us and others to conquer our fear. New districts not part of the original Everyone Forever push demanded similar support, donors started funding along more ambitious lines focused on full coverage and demonstrated results over time, and sector work started to shift from village to district-wide interventions with a plethora of actors who all had a role in solutions.

The critical step with Everyone Forever was not a new funding source (we realigned existing funding and lured new donors over time), a detailed “plan” that laid out every step along the way (we would iterate, learn, pivot and eventually build out plans) or wide agreement from external players (who eventually came along as the path cleared for them too).

No, the first step was belief that came from the heart and reconnected staff to their purpose, unleashing their passion in new ways while fearlessly putting our reputation on the line to become transformational instead of transactional. We tapped people’s desire to actually solve a problem, and pivoted against the fear that keeps most small.

In that same fearless spirit, at Tennyson, we’re excited to launch Every Kid Forever in a host of Colorado counties with clear intent this year.  We are now supporting two additional counties (Weld and El Paso) in addition to our historical work in Denver, and will roll out a further 3 county-wide initiatives in the coming years based on experiences gained.

We are be reaching beyond our bubble to align our funding and programming with other government, school, corporate and nongovernment allies who, collectively, will work to ensure every child in target counties experiencing trauma from abuse and neglect, suffer from autism and depression or anxiety, and whose behaviors undermine their ability to thrive at home and school, get the support they need to thrive. We will not be satisfied with helping some; we insist on surging forward to help all.

And if we succeed, we hope that such ambitious programming will spread with or without Tennyson so that the collaborative solutions we are building and the scaled impact we all are having makes others say, “We can do that. We can even do better.”

Make no mistake—we have taken the most important step. We will shift finances, build on strengths, realign with others and surge forward with raised expectations so that no kid falls through the cracks because people’s bolder purposes have been unleashed.

Why would we do anything less?

Getting In the Arena: Good Ideas and Innovations Often Come From Unexpected Places

Posted on by Case Foundation

Through the first 20 years of the Case Foundation, we’ve covered a lot of ground and been to a lot of places. Along the way, we have found that innovations come from people and places that might surprise you. While news reports focus on the power of Silicon Valley or financial centers like New York and London, we have found numerous great ideas and passionate innovators in places policymakers, funders and trend watchers have often overlooked.

Three U.S. cities are great examples of the excitement and innovation that we have found:

Pittsburgh: In Pittsburgh, we found a unique combination of incubators, accelerators, universities, tech companies and investors, driving this former steel town to experience a resurgence in the form of a technology boom. While many still think of Pittsburgh as the Steel City, the engineer and technology ecosystem that has sprung up in the aftermath of the collapse of the steel industry in the 1980s is one of the reasons that Ford pledged in February to invest $1 billion over five years in a Pittsburgh-based company specializing in artificial intelligence and autonomous car engineering. This community of innovators, incubators and educators is creating a wide range of interesting projects. Pittsburgh innovators we met ranged from Courtney Williamson, founder of AbiliLife, a biomedical company that engineer’s devices for Parkinson’s patients to Vaish Krishnamurthy of CleanRobotics, whose Trash bot uses artificial intelligence to sort recyclables from waste, to Matthew Stanton and Hahna Alexander, cofounders of SolePower*, a technology that uses a foot-powered energy generating insole that can be used to charge portable devices—something of particular interest to the U.S. Army. Even the accelerators in Pittsburgh like AlphaLab Gear bring a unique vision that reflects the best of the region where they are located, supporting hundreds of innovators, expanding understanding of the excellence of the companies in the area and attracting significant outside capital to the region.

Durham: On our recent visit to Durham, we found a renaissance is occurring in the city. Yes, there are tech stories to tout, but the real story is of citizens, companies, institutions and Duke University coming together to invest, expand and reclaim downtown Durham for growth while ensuring that all that defines this community as a thriving, American town includes those who have stayed and those that played a role in making Durham, well…Durham.

At American Underground hundreds of entrepreneurs—from single person startups to ventures like Fidelity Labs, Fidelity’s R&D and innovation catalyst unit—sit side-by-side, creating new companies and pursuing new business ideas in a space where they can also receive the training, accelerator classes and support from Google for Entrepreneurs that rising startups need to take their great ideas to the next level. And we saw the American Tobacco Campus, where local business leaders had transformed the abandoned corporate headquarters of the company that marketed “Lucky Strikes” into a multifaceted center that housed restaurants, businesses and cultural hubs—like the local NPR affiliate and the YMCA—that are helping fuel the dynamic ecosystem that downtown Durham has become.

Detroit: Detroit’s rebirth can only be described as epic. Left for dead by most after the 2008 economic crisis, visionaries like Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert and entrepreneur Tom Kartsotis have helped not only build strong companies, but create thousands of jobs for out-of-work Detroit citizens, giving them an opportunity to prosper as part of the modern economy. Gilbert, who moved Quicken Loans and all of its employees to Detroit, has invested heavily in Detroit real estate, helped dozens of startups, and now employs an estimated 12,500 people. (daveseminara.com) The portraits of those who have found jobs at the companies that have started in Detroit since the Great Recession or started businesses that are fueled by this resurgence highlight how new skills and a new way of thinking about work is being created in the shadows of the once great automobile industry. Detroit’s renaissance is also thanks to the visionary collaboration between the private sector and leading philanthropies, including our colleagues at the Kresge, Ford and Kellogg Foundations. Their work in bringing all sectors of the society to the table is a key to the broad based impact the economic and social revitalization has has had. Detroit has a long way to go, but the new ideas and optimism coming from this city sets a great model for others to follow.

While the names of the local startups and visionaries are often the first thing that one remembers from these trips, one of the great advantages these cities have is community and all the diversity of actors that brings with it. It is as if they have chosen to turn their backs on the “go it alone” mentality and see a competitive advantage in getting as many sectors of their society as engaged as possible. In Pittsburgh, the role of Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh, as well the role of Deloitte, Accenture and Barclays in innovation initiatives cannot be left out of a proper telling of the rebirth in Pittsburgh. While touring the American Underground facility in Durham with Doug Speight, the CODE2040 Entrepreneur in Residence and guru behind many Durham startups including Cathedral Leasing, he mentioned that women lead 29 percent of the projects housed in American Underground’s Durham sites and 28 percent are minority led. This was evident as we walked the hallways, and it makes American Underground one of the most diverse incubators in America, reflecting the fabric of the Durham experience. And the breadth of the players involved in rebuilding Detroit—from automobile companies to community organizers and political leaders, to philanthropists and entrepreneurs—highlights both the scale of the task and how they are committed to ensure as many as possible share in the benefits of rebuilding as possible.

This spirit is not limited to the United States. Great ideas and innovation, informed by the unique perspective that different lifestyles and backgrounds bring, are found worldwide.

While touring Africa, we met numerous entrepreneurs who were crafting new innovations informed directly from their personal experiences. In Nairobi, we visited a sanitation company, Sanergy. Sanergy’s vision is bold and robust: attack a massive hygiene and sanitation problem across communities by not only providing toilets to underserved areas, but by building a comprehensive entrepreneurship-driven model that creates jobs in underserved communities. Converting the waste into organic fertilizer, insect-based animal feed, and renewable energy, Sanergy’s model is emblematic of new approaches we saw throughout Africa.

In Iceland, I met Thor Sigfusson, the leader of the Iceland Ocean Cluster. This startup accelerator in Reykjavik houses 80 startups that are building businesses to use 100% of the fish—from salmon skin clothing to cosmetic products made of fish bones to nutrition and medical supplements from organs of the fish. The idea is that if more fisherman could capture value from 100 percent of the fish, they would need less fish take to make a living, leading to more sustainable fishing practices for the whole country. And given that Iceland takes 80 million cod out of their waters, their impact could be significant.

And as co-chair of the U.S.-Palestinian Partnership (UPP), a public/private partnership launched after the Annapolis peace talks, I saw firsthand the progress that can be made when communities are given a chance and the tools to innovate. UPP promoted economic and educational opportunities for the Palestinian people in order to facilitate progress toward a two-state solution, wherein Israel and Palestine can live side by side, in peace, security and prosperity. Linking support of young entrepreneurs by world-class tech companies like Google and Cisco, and launching the first-ever Venture Capital fund in the West Bank, represented hope and promise for new economic activity, particularly in the impressive IT sector in the region. This, coupled with affordable loan programs for small businesses, the building of new youth centers, helping to foster tourism, and leading business delegations, contributed to increase economic activity and helped demonstrate that the West Bank is open for business and that great ideas and innovations come from all places, including the West Bank.

These are just a few of the hundreds of examples of innovators and entrepreneurs who are Getting In the Arena in communities worldwide. We have found innovation in all sectors coming from all corners of the world. As we look forward to the next 20 years of work, we believe that the next great ideas will come from these overlooked people and places and, frankly, this makes us more excited than ever to see what they create and to identify what we can do to support their efforts to get the attention, and investment, they deserve.

*Disclosure: Jean and Steve Case are investors in SolePower. 

Be Fearless Spotlight: Washington Area Women’s Foundation

Posted on by Case Foundation

This Spotlight is a part of a special blog series curated by the Case Foundation featuring Be Fearless stories from the field. Follow along with us as we meet people and learn about organizations that are taking risks, being bold and failing forward in their efforts to create transformative change in the social sector. In this most recent spotlight, we had the chance to sit down with Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat, President and CEO of the Washington Area Women’s Foundation for a Q&A about how the Women’s Foundation is living the Be Fearless principles in their work.

Q: What does your organization think it means to Be Fearless?

A: For Washington Area Women’s Foundation, to “Be Fearless” means to stand when others are sitting, raise our voices when others choose to be quiet and push harder when others choose to give up. Being fearless means believing that all girls in our community can grow up with a clear vision of a future beyond poverty. The mission of The Women’s Foundation is to mobilize our community to ensure that economically vulnerable women and girls have the resources they need to thrive. Our overall goal is to move all women and girls currently living in poverty to a place of consistent economic stability—and to get there, we must Be Fearless.

Economic security has been central to our mission since our founding, but it’s not enough to simply say that we are working with low-income or economically vulnerable women and girls—we are being intentional and explicit in our language and our actions. We are letting urgency conquer fear and are no longer leaving unsaid the realities facing women and girls, and the ways that race and ethnicity further contribute to that reality. It’s for that reason, and many more that on January 21st, we launched #our100days, a way for everyone in our community to Get In The Arena and take action. Every day we provide a single task that can make our communities better for the women and girls who live in them.

We believe that every woman should have an equal opportunity to achieve economic security and with our fearless and bold vision, we are continuously forging ahead towards that goal.

In an effort to further address the disparities facing women and girls at the intersection of race and gender, we officially launch the Young Women’s Initiative (YWI) this spring, centered around the voices and lived experiences of women and girls of color, coupled with reaching beyond our bubble and building partnerships across multiple sectors to increase opportunities for more equitable outcomes for young women and girls of color in the Washington region.

Q: What goals are you working towards at your organization and how do the Be Fearless principles help you achieve them?

A: With the Be Fearless principles, we can affect real change and we’re not asking for permission to do it. With #our100days, we’ve managed to connect with the community through social media and our email database, and we’ve received real feedback on our action items and work, and have made collective strides to help our Grantee Partners and other community organizations. With #our100days, people can Get In The Arena by doing anything from donating baby clothes to a mother in need, to highlighting women in our communities who have made an impact on our lives.

Moreover, through our YWI, we will initiate policy changes and increase programmatic investments to alleviate the racial and gender disparities placed on women and girls of color in the District. We are in the midst of several convenings with local policymakers, community activists and low-income women and girls of color. Innovation happens at intersections, so making space for these partnerships will help to uncover barriers and identify potential policy solutions as a part of our racial equity and policy initiatives.

Q: What “big bets” have you and the Women’s Foundation made, and how have those goals paid off?

A: At The Women’s Foundation we are firm believers in the saying, “Don’t talk, act. Don’t say, show. And don’t promise, prove.” Our big bet is our public commitment to advance equity for women and girls of color and tackle systemic and structural racism head on so that we can truly advance our mission and ensure that all women and girls in our community have the opportunity to thrive.

Our advocacy agenda is informed by the insights and lived experiences of those who are most impacted. Through our work with #our100days and the development of YWI, we have been engaging our community and seeking their feedback regarding potential solutions that address their most pressing concerns. These solutions serve as the foundation of a larger community action plan, inclusive of a set of recommendations which will inform our advocacy and grantmaking agendas, in addition to identifying potential improvements for current direct service provision and service alignment.

We are solidifying an advocacy agenda, and a list of recommendations that are community-driven and reflect the lives of those most impacted. Through the parallel development of YWI and our advocacy agenda, we intend to create a positive ripple effect across society and ultimately improve the quality of life for women and girls in our community.

Q: Tell us about a time when your organization let urgency conquer fear.

A: A sense of urgency drives us. Washington, D.C. is one of the most powerful cities in the world, yet 1 in 4 women and girls in the region are experiencing economic instability and this number has remained stagnant for a decade. We know that despite the best efforts of many initiatives, generations of our region’s women and girls have grown up in poverty, with little hope of a brighter future—and we can’t let this continue.

The time is now for bold and ambitious changes that will eliminate opportunity gaps and structural barriers, directly increasing economic security for women and girls in our region. We are committed to both pilot new methods of philanthropy and community engagement to drive greater philanthropic change, and to advocate for improved policies on behalf of women and girls.

Last year alone, through our research, advocacy and grantmaking initiatives, we reached more than 3,600 women, and helped them increase their incomes and assets by $3.6 million. We will continue this multifaceted approach, using a racial equity lens to build pathways out of poverty for more women and their families. Currently 15 percent of Black women and 15 percent of Latinas living in poverty compared to 5 percent of white, non-Hispanic women.

We will fearlessly tackle racial equity head on to close the economic gap experienced by women and girls of color in the region. With #our100days and the Young Women’s Initiative, we will get in the arena and use our voice, our resources and the community we have created to remove the barriers women and girls of color face.

Feeling inspired? If you’re ready to begin your own Be Fearless journey start by downloading our free Be Fearless Action Guide and Case Studies.

Getting In the Arena: The Entrepreneurial Spirit

Posted on by Case Foundation

As we announced in January, the Case Foundation is committing its 20th Anniversary year to calling on all to “Get In The Arena.” And, while most of our efforts focus on how each and every one of us can take action on the issues and challenges that matter the most to us in 2017, we also are highlighting lessons we have learned from Getting in the Arena over the past two decades.  Our hope is future endeavors of others are informed by the sharing of past learnings.

It should come as no surprise that among the most important lessons we’ve learned is the power of the entrepreneurial spirit in driving innovation and impact across the social sector.

Of course, the entrepreneurial spirit has been central to the American Experience since our earliest days as a young nation. In his book Empire on the Edge, Nick Bunker writes the following on the founding of America: “It was always eccentric, the British Empire on the mainland of America. From the time of Jamestown and the Mayflower, almost every colony came into being by means of private enterprise. They were small, experimental ventures in search of profit, in search of God. Each one was a painful exercise in trial and error, with seldom a firm guiding hand from London.”  In other words, America was born of the entrepreneurial spirit.  And it is a common belief even today, that this has been the secret sauce that has powered our economy, built innovations to improve lives and forged new political and cultural systems and frameworks that have enabled the American people to thrive in what has become the longest-established democracy in the history of the world.

Too often, the entrepreneurial spirit is perceived to be of relevance exclusively in the business sector.  And yet, as my own career has taken me from the public sector, to a career in technology in the private sector, to my current roles in the philanthropic/nonprofit sector as CEO of the Case Foundation and Chairman of the National Geographic Society, I have come to recognize the critical importance of entrepreneurial approaches across all sectors.  Indeed, given that these sectors outside of business are usually focused on the human condition or more broadly on the needs of our planet, the challenges they face can be daunting. Perhaps there is no greater need for fresh approaches, risk taking and an eye toward innovation than in those sectors.

And, over the past 20 years, we have seen the entrepreneurial spirit thrive in non-traditional settings — across sectors, across our nation and around the globe. For example:

Launching Challenge.gov: Working with the White House as our partner, we co-hosted the White House Summit on Innovation that brought together 35 U.S. government agencies using contests and grand challenges to tap “the wisdom of the crowds” across the nation in finding solutions to major challenges faced by government agencies. We partnered with experts in prizes and challenges, such as the X-Prize, and used the Summit as training ground to encourage agencies to put forth challenges to drive innovation.  Some of our favorite outcomes of this work include:

An enduring outcome of this work is Challenge.gov, a site that anyone can access to find out what contests and challenges are active.  Since its launch in 2010, 740 challenges have been run on Challenge.gov, eliciting entries from 250,000+ citizens from all 50 states and a number of foreign countries. By challenging the status quo, leveraging the creativity and innovation of new audiences and tapping the entrepreneurial spirit of the American people, the U.S. government’s work was improved at a much lower than expected cost and more citizens than ever have been engaged.

Connecting frontier communities in Africa: Internet connectivity remains a major challenge throughout Africa. Yet companies like Facebook, Google and startups like BRCK* have developed non-traditional solutions to connect schools and villages that are on the edge, and past, the traditional internet and electric infrastructure. Overcoming the traditional mindset that pipes must be built and that wires must be strung to deliver access, and working around many of the government procurement barriers that have stunted growth in the past, BRCK has developed a connectivity device that can jump from Ethernet, to WiFi, to 3G seamlessly with an 8-hour battery life when the power is out.  This is why, a recent article in Forbes referred to BRCK’s innovation as a “clever confluence of technology and entrepreneurial spirit.” To overcome the connectivity problems, Facebook announced plans to lay over 500 miles of fiber cable in Uganda this year and has even experimented with drones to provide internet access to remote locations. And Google is stringing over 1,000 kilometers of fiber cable in two of Ghana’s largest cities to serve the growing number of internet provider companies in these cities. Thanks to private sector actors like Facebook, BRCK and Google, internet access can be found in hospitals, community centers, libraries, barbershops, even on buses, where it was never available before. These entrepreneurs have solved a long-standing problem by embracing the entrepreneurial spirit.

Democratizing access to information: In the past, access to complex data was often restricted to those in government or at major research universities. These restrictions were not based on national security needs, but by historical tendencies and entrenched interests. Today, across many platforms, we are seeing visionaries, using open source and crowd sourcing models to leverage wider communities to advance science, innovation and exploration.  For example, Sarah Parcak, an associate professor of Anthropology and director of the Laboratory for Global Observation at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has broken down the wall between academia and citizens, by sharing infra-red satellite imaging from commercial and NASA satellites with citizens so they can help identify potential archeological sites for further exploration. Her work in places like Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula has been groundbreaking, but her commitment to locating and protecting hundreds of thousands — even millions — of still undiscovered ancient sites that remain buried all over the world pushes the impact of her work to the next level.

Sarah’s launch of GlobalXplorer.org on January 30 embodies the entrepreneurial spirit in non-traditional areas that is so inspiring to us. This unique platform enlists a global community and enables anyone with an internet connection to discover the next hidden burial site or community using satellite technology. The platform uses satellite imagery provided by DigitalGlobe, and highlights content from National Geographic and taps the public’s time, brainpower and inquisitive nature, to map Peru in search of archeological sites hidden due to modern human activity.

And Sarah is not the only explorer and innovator working this way. We see numerous examples in the open source world where entrepreneurs and innovators are creating new and innovative platforms that are improved and updated by the wider community.

This isn’t a new idea. Every major advancement or breakthrough across society came from someone trying something that seemed a little crazy.  Long before President Kennedy ushered in an era of entrepreneurial efforts to get us first to the moon and then beyond, major leaps benefiting mankind had been the result of someone, somewhere making a commitment to #GetInTheArena with new ideas for solving old, daunting problems.  In fact, the Challenge.gov website proudly notes that similar challenges aided Charles Lindbergh’s famous transatlantic flight and the design for the U.S. Capitol building. Risk taking, a sense of urgency, a willingness to fail and a dogged perseverance are part of the formula that has defined the entrepreneurial spirit and brought us breakthroughs.  From where we sit, we are encouraged by the growing recognition and application of these tenets across the social sector, and around the world, and believe it bodes well for the future of innovation.

 

*Disclosure: Jean and Steve Case are investors in BRCK.

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