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*Bruce Nussbaum, Contributing Editor at Businessweek, moderated the discussion for this conversation:
Jacqueline Novogratz*, Founder and CEO, Acumen Fund
Jacqueline talked about her experience rebuilding a marketplace in Rwanda using micro-financing. She asked a Rwandan who lost everything in the fire that burned the marketplace who was selling a few bundles of baby clothes why he was selling baby clothes. He replied, “If all you have is hope, that’s what you sell.” In her discussion, Jacqueline made a great point that charity misses the opportunity to let people help themselves. The Rwandans didn’t want grants, they just wanted loans. They wanted to be able to pull themselves up. The other great point she made was that charity is the most flexible capital we have, and so we can take more risks with it, but we can still demand rigor.
Jacqueline also told a story of how she found a sweater that she gave to Goodwill 12 years earlier on a child in Rwanda (talk about inter-connectedness).
Jason Fried, Founder and CEO, 37signals
Jason talked about the value of sharing information about your company. In other words, why aren’t companies more like cooking shows? Why aren’t companies teaching us what they know: here are all my ideas, for sale, buy this, and you can do it too. He said its especially valuable for small businesses; instead of out-spending the competition, out-teach and out-share the competition.
At his company, they won’t hire people who have a spelling mistake on their resume, and they don’t hire someone who doesn’t use a mac. [Awesome.] They have communicated this and a lot more through their blog. Jason made the point that having an audience is really special, especially for a small company that doesn’t have a huge marketing budget. They come to you; they come to the blog or follow them on Twitter or see a live show. In a live show, they take questions that people write in question on a live Q&A – they get 600-700 questions an hour and they answer 30-40 in an hour. Then they took all the essays and blog content and turned it into a book on pdf and a conference session and created revenue off of free content.
Lastly, Jason made a point I’ve heard before but is worth repeating: Ideas are free, it comes down to execution. Competitive reasons aren’t good reasons not to open your company, businesses are way too paranoid.
Matt Cottam, Co-founder and CEO, Tellart
Matt began the project he shared with the question, “What would the nursing home of the future look like?” The research team went to an assisted living facility to get a sense of what it was like to live there, interviewed experts, and talked to families. There is no system for healthcare, its remains in disconnected silos and is intensely complex. It might be better to think of it as a non-system surrounded by a variety of drivers and influencers (insurance, medicare, etc.)
The other half of the puzzle comes from the demographics of our country. There is a strain on society now because of the aging population, but it’s going to a HUGE strain when the baby boomers get older. A nursing home costs $80,000 a year for a room. Even now, there are more nursing homes than McDonalds, and we’re about to have double the number of people at age 65+. One expert called the boomers the “silver tsunami” (by the way, 1 out of 4 Americans is a boomer).
The outcome of the first phase of the project is that there is a huge market both nationally and internationally for better design in nursing homes and assisted living, literally, everything you touch. They are now moving into phase 2 to bring some of these ideas closer to fruition.
James Ludwig*, Vice President of Global Design, Steelcase Inc.
James had a conversation about his research on Gen Y and how they are different. As a cusp Gen X/Gen Y myself, I was interested to hear his insights.
- Generation Y is potentially the most connected generation we have every had.
- Gen Yers don’t collectively hold one view, it’s a fragmented set of views. This generation doesn’t have a consensus on anything.
- Gen Y is creating incredible pressure to move up in the corporate world at the same time as boomers are working longer.
- Gen Y has high expectations and some sense of entitlement.
- They’ve had a host of experiences, more than generations before at the same age.
- They are tech savvy.
- They value authenticity.
- They want to build on and have a connectedness to past work experiences.
- They value sustainability (they don’t want the company they work for to be evil).
- They demand the best in technology (the best and the most current, now and at all times- they need the best tools to keep them at the cutting edge and keep them developing professionally.
- They are more accustomed to the collaborative problem-solving because it is taught in the university.
- The youngest people in the company are teaching the higher-ups how to change their culture (something the higher-ups recognize that but are grumpy about).
