What Business School Hasn't Taught Me

After reading a reflective and inspiring post from one of my friends and classmates about what 4 months of business school has taught her, I found myself doing the opposite. Instead of reflecting on what I've learned, I've been reflecting on what I haven't learned. For what it's worth, I'm not necessarily expecting to learn these things in business school, I merely catalog them here as a way of encouraging myself to learn these things on my own. Here are the three biggest gaps I can think of:

1. Structuring Unstructured Problems

Something that has been surprising about business school is that most of the business problems we study are already neatly summarized - whether it be in the cases we read or in the projects that are outlined by clubs who sponsor consulting projects. What I've found to be excruciatingly hard in my professional life (whether it be at work or volunteering) is that the most difficult part of any project is getting it off the ground and defining what it should be. This is precisely the exercise that business school eliminates from the problem solving process in cases, community consulting projects, or other challenges.

Defining problems takes a keen mind, discipline, experience, and many other strategies and attributes. It's hard to do generally, and even harder to do quickly, effectively, and cheaply. This is one of the things on my list that I would've expected business schools to emphasize. Instead of learning to "deal with ambiguity," we're learning to deal with ambiguity in predefined contexts and archetypes.

2. Understanding he responsibility that comes with the education provided by a top 10 business school

At my school, and presumably other top 10 schools, we're not strangers to the fact that we're going to a world-renowned business school. I've heard more than once, for example, that we're in the top .1% of all students studying management worldwide. Our institution implies that we are being groomed to be some of the world's most capable business leaders.

But what is the responsibility that comes with the purported power than many of us will have to influence the study and practice of management? Do we have obligations to advocate for fairness and responsibility? Must we think at all about the health of an industry and do we ever need to put the needs of that industry or the needs of society before that of the firms we are stewarding? What are the virtues we must exude as business leaders?

Sure, we have to take one required ethics or business law class, but this response seems to have a base rate bias. If ethics and responsibility matter more when you have power, shouldn't ethics and responsibility be more core to our academic experience than having a single class about it? Not to sound tired with a comic book cliche, but doesn't great power - that we will supposedly have - come with great responsibility?

3. Raising the ability of those who have not cultivated their own talents

One of the very strong realities which was tough to understand when I started working is that different people in the "real world" have different skills and abilities*. Not everyone has the had the opportunity to cultivate their talents as much as others. Consequently, some people aren't as capable as others.

In college, and even high school, I was surrounded by extremely talented people - this is a consequence of having privilege, I get that. But that's not what every organization and every team is like. Talent is spread disproportionately across our companies, institutions, and society, which means that some teams don't have very much talent. The chance that I'll be surrounded with an all-star team for every challenge I ever have is unlikely. Because of this reality, I think it's basically essential to learn how to help others raise their own abilities and cultivate their talents.

There doesn't seem to be any acknowledgment of this reality in business school. Even if it is acknowledged, this is something we don't really get the opportunity to learn about and deal with because we're not often around dysfunctional organizations. On the contrary, the organizations that the school chooses for us to work with on action-learning projects are handpicked so we can avoid dysfunction! In the instances where we work with dysfunctional organizations, presumably by accident, those stints only last a few weeks. This short time horizon makes it easy to work around problematic individuals, rather than work with them.

* - When I say this I don't imply that people are stuck being less talented than others, but that different people are at different stages of their own development. There also could be valid reasons that they are more or less talented in a given discipline, some reasons may even be outside their control.

Wrap up

Most of you reading this know that I attend the Ross School of Business. Most of you don't know that I've had a really difficult and interesting time adjusting to business school. I still think it's an exceptional school (with exceptional people, especially the faculty and staff). I present this merely as a way to reflect on my experiences thus far and hopefully improve upon them.

What's worse, however, is that I hardly think Ross is unique in this regard. From reading about and talking to people at other "top" business schools, the more I think the sorts of problems I suggest are endemic to business schools themselves. If that's the case, we either have to acknowledge my concerns as irrelevant, transform the pedagogy of management, or accept that the topics I've presented are things we business students have to learn on our own.

Though Undervalued Now, Intrapreneurs Are Essential To Detroit's Future

In Detroit, we celebrate entrepreneurs - whether they be social, civic, or for-profit entrepreneurs - and rightly so. Entrepreneurs create new technologies and possibilities in the markets they attempt to serve and disrupt. What is also true, however, is that entrepreneurs are scrappy. Their resources are often limited, so it makes sense that successful entrepreneurs seem to have vision, ingenuity, creativity, drive, and a willingness to take risk - without these things, entrepreneurs would have no edge over incumbents because they certainly have less resources. Entrepreneurs make do and ultimately succeed with less resources than their corporate counterparts. In my mind, this is an oxymoron. Why are entrepreneurs the ones who change industries and social problems, even though they usually have less talent, money, or other resources?

The most obvious explanation is that entrepreneurs can work without the confining attributes of large, political, risk-averse organizations. Entrepreneurs don't have to cut through red tape like those in corporations do. Because they're freed from the confines of traditional organizations they have high "ROR" - or "return on resources." By this I mean, they have a lot of results, given the limited about of resources to which they have access.

But, imagine the value that would be created if the ROR of organizations with large amounts of resources were higher? A 10% ROR for a $1B company is much higher than that of a $1M company.

What's needed to accomplish an increasing ROR in large organizations is not entrepreneurs, but intrapreneurs. Intrapreneurship is not a well definied concept within society...yet. Here's a working definition:

A person within a large corporation who takes direct responsibility for turning an idea into a profitable finished product through assertive risk-taking and innovation.

These intrapreneurs might create new products or services to generate increased profits within a business. Or maybe an intrapreneur builds a new idea which increases the social impact of the organization. Maybe the intrapreneur changes the way a company works so that it's a happier, healthier, or more effective organization.

Much like the way countries can't always export their way out of recession, I don't think Detroit will become a more vibrant city if we only create entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship can't wholly replace the city's existing employment opportunities and industries except in decades, maybe. Entrepreneurship takes too long and is very risky, to name a few reasons. More than that, we have a tremendous amount of talent and resources in our local companies. To let those resources atrophy and become obsolete would be a waste and lost opportunity.

Imagine: Detroit could be a hub of private sector and local government intraprenurship and lead the nation in such efforts. We have institutions, companies, and industries ripe for a fresh approach. We have a dire need to adapt to changing economic, social, and civic realities. We also have a history of tenacious work ethic and ingenuity.

Detroit could be home to the world's best intrapreneurs and we would be better for it.

The Detroit Bankruptcy Conversation Nobody Is Having + Ideas To Make City Government More Accountable

I had the privilege of seeing Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr give the keynote address of the Revitalization & Business Conference, which occurred last Friday at Michigan's Ross School of Business. Generally speaking, I was very impressed with Orr and his sharp intellect as well as his thorough understanding of the issues facing the city. What Mr. Orr didn't discuss, however, (nor is it something widely discussed in news coverage about the bankruptcy) is the need to keep local government accountable and responsive to citizens' needs. I intend to start that conversation in this post. Surely, part of the reason Detroit had to file for bankruptcy was an institutional failure. During the past few decades, nobody really raised a flag calling the actions of civic leaders into question...at least in a way which was strong enough to avert Detroit's financial disaster. Nobody was watching the evolution of City Council's policies closely enough to prevent malfeasance or corruption. Nobody fact-checked City Hall's promises or management practices to see if they were legitimate. And now, Detroit is in bankruptcy and nobody is having a conversation (it seems) about how we can better keep our institutions accountable and our local government responsive to citizen's needs. Let's start now.

The way I figure it, there are a few stakeholder groups which, when working together, can hold local government accountable and efficient: City Hall (the executive branch), City Council (the legislative branch), the public (the citizenry and NGOs), and the press (the fourth estate). The judicial branch also has a role to play, but I'm leaving them off because I know very little about the courts. Here are a few ideas for each stakeholder group on how they can help hold local government more accountable. By experimenting with and implementing such ideas, I believe we'll be less likely to have another meltdown in the City of Detroit. These ideas are brief concepts - teasers, if you will - to be used as a starting point.

Citizen Marketing Strategy (City Hall, City Council, Public)

Marketing strategies are very powerful things. In them, you analyze your customer, your own capabilities, and what other organizations are doing to serve that customer. Then, you segment the market (put customers into unique groups, basically), target a segment, then figure out how to provide a powerful benefit for that segment. The whole point of marketing strategy exercises are to understand a real need that a specific type of customer  has and then provide a real benefit to that customer, and do this all with a lot of discipline and rigor.

I think we could stand to see this sort of thinking utilized by local government. Imagine if all stakeholders - City Hall, City Council, the public, and the press - worked together to put together a marketing strategy for the city's citizens. First, they'd understand broad needs. Then, they'd try to cluster folks into different groups of unique needs (e.g., tech entrepreneurs, unmarried yuppies, young families, low-income elderly, etc.). From there, you could create detailed personas of what each of those customer segments needed.

The way this would help with accountability is that government could focus on the targeted customer segments they were designing a product or service for. We, as the public, could force government officials to talk about who they are trying to benefit with each policy they create, and thus hold them accountable for results. In my opinion, it's very hard to see if local government is actually effective if they can operate in platitudes of serving the "public interest" broadly. Having targeted segments would make them dig into real customer needs and provide government an invaluable to way to focus their efforts when deploying products and services.

Open Data (City Hall, City Council, Public)

Many states and municipalities are making some of their data publicly available. By doing this, citizens can analyze the data to look at the "proof in the pudding" as to whether their municipal government is actually running with integrity and efficiency. As is often said in journalism, sunlight is the best disinfectant. Moreover, governments can engage citizens in understanding and solving problems if they make data available for analysis. It's a win-win for everyone - we have more accountability and a way for many great minds to be helping the City improve services to its citizens

City Council Clubs (Public)

I think it's pretty important for citizens to participate in public meetings because it allows them to get information and because it puts citizens in a position to scrutinize (or collaborate with) public servants. The problem is, it's a lot of work to go to a city council meeting every time. So, I proposed this idea on this blog a few weeks ago which basically works like this: citizens get a group of their friends together and take turns attending public meetings and reporting back to the group. That lowers the transaction costs of doing so and gives citizens a constant presence at public meetings.

Citizens' Corps (City Council, Public)

One of the ways to increase accountability is to involve citizens more intimately in the political process. I also saw this in the private sector working as a consultant. The idea is that if you have more citizens dialogue with legislators about ideas, the ideas will be more responsive to their needs. But how could you do this? You'd create what I call "a Citizens' Corps". It's akin to a "change agent network", from corporate transformation nomenclature.

Each City Council member would get a group of community leaders with diverse perspectives together from their ward, kind of a kitchen cabinet. Then, the City Council members would have informal meetings with this Corps to discuss city issues. Sometimes this might be a way for citizens to make their Council member answer to them. Other times, maybe the Council member needs feedback, vis-a-vis each Citizens' Corp member getting feedback form his/her affinity group or neighborhood. Still other times maybe the Council member needs to communicate a message to citizens via the word of mouth generated by the Citizens' Corps members.

Basically, this vehicle is a way to create a network of committed citizens who have informal influence in their respective social groups. This network can be used to create two-way dialogue between Council members and everyday citizens.

Detroit Government News Hub (Public, Press)

Obviously, the press play a critical role in holding local government accountable. The difficulty is, search costs for articles are often high for finding local government news, and, mundane topics/meetings are never covered. I propose creating a curated blog network of city affairs. It would work like this. The press would create a website that consolidates all quality news articles about city government. Each article would be tagged with subject matter, committee names, council members, and any other relevant metadata. This metadata would allow the archive of articles to be easily searchable. Moreover, readers of the blog could submit articles they find useful to the curator, making it easier for the curator to do his/her job. Finally, say an amateur blogger or videographer attends a meeting of some sort in the city. This person could do a quick write up and submit it to the curator for inclusion on the news hub.

This sort of idea would help citizens follow issues as they transpire and be alerted to relevant articles about city government. By having easily accessible information, citizens can help each other stay informed about local government and hopefully make better political decisions / become more politically active. More political activity on the part of citizens would lead to more accountability.

Issue Prioritization & Goal Setting (City Hall, City Council, Public)

Governments often have long lists of (unpublished) priorities every year. In the Federal Government, for example, it's hard to keep track of all the initiatives the President and Congress want to push through. Say though, that the President had a list of his top 20 priorities for the year with a scorecard for success on each issue. First of all, If this were the case the public could weigh in on what the priorities should be, which is a valuable exercise to occur publicly. Second of all, the public would then have a somewhat objective way of judging whether the public servant is accomplishing his goals.

I think we could do this at the municipal level, too. Both the Mayor and City Council should make a list of their top 10 priorities for each year and provide a rubric for measuring success. That priority sheet could be refined with public feedback, provided online. Then, the public could track progress throughout the year or over the course of a term. Having the priority sheet would help the public help government keep track of its priorities and accomplishments.

External Feedback (City Hall, City Council, Public)

Independence is at the core of accountability in public accounting. Basically, you get someone to audit you every year to make sure your company is not misrepresenting finances. Why not get a similar perspective from outside Detroit to provide an independent critique of management and operations in the City? That could be a great way to infuse our thinking with some fresh perspective.

This idea wouldn't have to be limited to financials or operations, either. Non-profit organizations could bring in leading thinkers to weigh in on Detroit and how we do things here in an intellectual setting. As a community that's pretty insular - in my opinion, Detroiters actively avoid ideas that aren't homegrown, far too often - deliberately getting outsiders to challenge our thinking would probably make our ideas much better (this part of the idea isn't mine, solely, Detroit Harmonie is working on this.)

Conclusion

Perhaps these are wild ideas (but come on, they're not that wild). They certainly aren't perfect. The point is, however, that we need to proactively try to work together and keep our governmental institutions running effectively and responsively. You'll notice that all these ideas involve the public in some way. Why? I believe it's the public's responsibility - more than anyone else - to hold our government accountable. Indeed, we are our government.

This is the conversation about the Detroit bankruptcy (on improving accountability and responsiveness) that nobody is having. So, I invite your feedback, criticisms, questions, or full-throated support. By discussing these ideas we are more likely to improve them and implement the best of the lot. And implementing ideas which help government stay accountable and responsive would be a great step for our City.

Thinking We Just Need To Fix Education Is Missing The Point

Almost every conversation I have about domestic politics, economic development, or social justice devolve into a discussion about one thing: how we need to "fix education." Now, after getting to know some inner-city teachers and interacting a little bit with Detroit students, I've come to realize that "fixing education" is missing the point. It might even be a narrative hijacked by interests who want to distract every citizens from deeper, more systemic issues. First, I'm beginning to agree that the real issue in education is not education itself, but poverty. This is the idea is that kids who are poor are put in a position to fail in the classroom. One, because they have a lot of other issues which prevent them from learning (hunger, health issues, instability at home, etc.). Second, because they are poor they are in schools without adequate facilities, enough individual instruction, or support services like mental health or social workers. So, the kids who need the most help to benefit from the so called "great equalizer" of education, receive the least.

So, at very least, we should expand the conversation about education reform to include poverty alleviation. Doing any less would probably be a waste of time. If we can't address poverty and basic needs, any education reforms would be difficult to implement effectively. What gets me about this "fixing education" mantra is that it distracts from the bigger issue of poverty alleviation. To me, the real issue is not common core standards, class sizes, vouchers, or teacher pay. The issue, straight up, is poverty. From my perspective, improving poverty makes any education-specific reform much easier.

But I'll concede, maybe there is some merit to arguments against poverty programs along the lines of effectiveness or the need for individual responsibility. Maybe bedeviling the education system isn't really a conspiracy to distract people from transfers of wealth through poverty programs. I disagree, but let's say that it is so we can keep this conversation going.

What I find flabbergasting, however, is that there's almost no discussion about reforming deep-seeded political institutions that probably contribute to poverty, inequality, and a need to "fix education." I'm talking about things like gerrymandering, voter suppression, campaign finance, lobbyist influence, legal access and the like. These exclusive political tools and techniques make it extremely burdensome for people who are oppressed or exploited to stand up for their own rights and participate meaningfully in the political process. Right now, people with money and rule-making capabilities are the ones who have a disproportionate ability to exercise their political rights. Because of this, rules get written and laws get passed which helps those with power and wealth to keep power and wealth, at the cost of those who do not. And then, inequality increases.

This cycle perpetuates poverty, which in turn breaks the education system. Without inclusive political systems, we won't have inclusive economic systems, and without equitable economic systems education will falter and entire generations of children will be left behind. The real system to "fix" is not the education system, what we really need to reform is the political  system.

In my heart of hearts, I worry that making the education system a punching bag is a sleight of hand to redirect citizen's attention away from political reform*. This would presumably be to preserve entrenched political and economic interests.

So here's the skinny. Respect if you want to "fix education", because yes, our kids deserve better. But the next time you or someone you know says that "we need to fix education" I urge you to inquire about whether they think about anti-poverty programs or about political reforms (ask them about non-partisan redistricting commissions for example, that's my #1 or #2 issue). If they're unwilling to address poverty and political reforms, they might be a phony when it comes to "fixing education."

* - Also, cut teachers some slack. They have one of the hardest jobs in the whole country!

About My Mustache, Mental Health, and Auto Repair

About My Mustache In case you haven't heard of it, Movember is a movement that aims to bring attention to important mens' health issues. Those who participate in Movember grow a mustache for the month of November and raise money and awareness about the charity's major issue areas - prostate cancer, testicular cancer, and mental health. The proceeds from this worldwide effort fund projects on these mens' health issues around the world.

I'm writing this post to express why I'm supporting this cause. Here is the story behind my mustache.

About Mental Health

My story begins several years ago, when I graduated from the University of Michigan in May of 2009 with an undergraduate degree. Despite the fact that I was scheduled to begin a job later that summer (we were still in the throes of an economic slump when I graduated, so many friends of mine weren't so lucky) I was under a lot of stress. I had lots of free time and stability in my upcoming job, but I didn't know how to deal with the fact that many of my friends were leaving Michigan. Throughout the summer - despite the fact that I had no responsibilities and was having fun - I was curiously alone, literally and figuratively.

The first 2 years of my job weren't too bad. I was cutting my teeth in the consulting game and had a lot of support around me. I was still living in Ann Arbor, so I had some support at home, too. My work travel was still fun. I could fly anywhere I wanted on the weekends (usually to see friends) for free. But then, I was staffed to a very hard project. The travel got to me and I felt deprived of authentic human connection. My friends were beginning to leave Ann Arbor again and when I moved to Detroit, I had to start over in a new city.

More than anything, I felt so much pressure to date, and I wanted to. The problem was, no girls really wanted to go out with me at the time. All this stress was piling up and I didn't know what to do about it. I first grew irritable. Then, my personality started to change. I closed off to friends and family, and I was definitely suffering alone - but I didn't even know how to interpret what was going on in my heart and mind.

This devolved into not so ideal behavior. I spent a lot more time at bars and "partying." I became focused on pursuing relationships for the sake of relationships, not because I had a real connection with someone. At work, I became an unreasonable cynic and contemplated getting a new job. It honestly was the hardest time of my life. Despite the fact that I was able to run several miles at a time and bench press more than I ever had, I was ill. In retrospect, I recognize that it was some degree of mental illness.

In the worst weeks, I couldn't complete the sentence, "I feel..." out loud. I cried myself to sleep more than a few times. It was a farce, it seemed. In those days, I thought crying yourself to sleep was something that only happened in movies. And I thought it only happened to women. I thought something was wrong with ME in particular. I kept wondering, "I've been through so much in my life, aren't I stronger than this?"

Luckily, one of my best friends - we'll call him Bryan - recognized this. He was going through mental issues himself and he shared his story with me. He shared that he had been seeing a counselor. He gave me a book which introduced me to emotional health and spirituality. More important than anything was that he forced me to talk when I couldn't talk with anyone else, and he made feel safe by listening intently. From there, he helped me open up to a small group of close friends who shared about their own battles with mental health.

Over the course of about 18 months, I started to get mentally healthy again. I'm so thankful for Bryan and those close friends. Without their help, I would've never understood then mental health was a real issue (for men in particular) and that you could actually work on it.

About Auto Repair

It's kind of like auto repair, I think. Many systems in your car have to be maintained over time. The engine, the A/C, the oil, the tires, the brakes. No car was built to not have maintenance over the course of time. I think addressing one's own mental health is a similar kind of preventative maintenance. Like oil changes, if you keep up with them, your car runs well. If you don't, your car breaks down.

Moreover, if you teach yourself and learn from others, there's some basic auto repair that you can do own your own. Maybe you can change a flat tire. Maybe you can change your oil. Maybe you can top up your fluids and vacuum your back seat. But like mental health, not every single auto repair is something average people can do on their own. Maybe your engine blows a gaskette. Most people don't have the tools to assess and repair that issue. for that you have to go to a mechanic (and it's totally okay see one)...an auto therapist, if you will. Similarly, I think it's completely reasonable to go to a "mental mechanic" or counselor for your mental health.

If we seek help from others to take care of our cars, surely we can ask for help when taking care of our minds, right?

And that's why I grew a mustache - to create a safe space for men to talk about mental health, and to then start healing.

----------

**If you care about this cause, I would appreciate it if you took a small step for it, today.

You could...share this post with someone. Or even better, ask someone how they're feeling today and tell them your mental health story. Maybe write your own blog post (if you want, I can post it anonymously on CivicYuppie.com). Definitely check out the Good Men Project.

And if you're so inclined, donate to the cause on our Movember Team Page.

A Civics Idea: "City Council Clubs"

The political system in our United States are highly influenced by special interests. And, we should expect it. But, I have an idea on how to combat this. If you want to go straight to that idea, jump to it. The next section lays out the rationale for this idea. Rationale

Let's use a hypothetical example. A special interest, may gain or lose $1 million after lobbying the government for 100 hours. A regular citizen, when faced with the same issue, might gain or lose $10 after lobbying the government for 100 hours. In situations like this (where a special interest has a lot to gain and regular citizens don't gain or lose much as individuals, for the same amount of effort), regular citizens don't have a real incentive to take action or participate in the political process. They have to expend a lot of effort for something that doesn't affect them much, so regular citizens make a better use of their time.

As a result, special interests rule. Not because they are (necessarily) doing anything wrong or devious, but because the rest of us stay home. This would be fine, except it's not uncommon to the interests of a few to be bad for everyone else.

But what if we could change the balance? There are three ways to do this, as I see it:

• Give regular citizens more of a stake in the issue (i.e., increase how much regular citizens feel they gain or lose to more than the figurative $10 I've mentioned)
  • I don't think this is possible. It would require telling people what matters to them and forcing them to adopt what you tell them. Even if it was possible, I wouldn't want to do it because it's manipulative and/or coercive.
• Force people to participate in civics (e.g., require people to vote or attend public meetings)
  • This is possible, except it's somewhat "unamerican" to do this. Also, it would take serious changes to law as it stands today. I don't want to wait that long and I don't have the money to wage this sort of campaign.
• Lower the effort required to participate in the political process (e.g., knock down the time required for a regular citizen to follow issues. Say making that figurative 100 hours 1 or 2 hours)
  • I like this option. It's possible and it doesn't necessarily cost much. Many people have tried lowering the cost of information, and that's great. unfortunately though, you can't make people consume political information. If it's free (or more free) it might reduce a barrier, but it's still a lot of work.

So, I think I have another idea on how to lower the effort required to participate in the political process. For discussion's sake, I'll call it a "Council Meeting Club."

The Idea: Council Meeting Clubs

I don't have time (or interest) to attend every city council meeting or city commission meeting. The problem is, it's hard to influence the decisions made at meetings you don't attend. Moreover, If you don't influence those meetings and participate, people might (intentionally or unintentionally) make bad decisions on your behalf.

But, I think I could make time for 1 or 2 city council meetings every three months, couldn't you? That's exactly what I want to do.

We have groups of friends already. Our friend groups probably have reasonably similar political interests. I know a lot of yuppies, for example, because I am one. Even if we disagree on things, my friends and I have similar values which tend to give us similar political preferences. So, why don't we all share the load of participating in local government?

Maybe we could each make a group of 15-20 people who are reasonably similar to us in some way - say values, our neighborhood, or some other affinity we share. Then, we create a schedule and everyone in the group attends a city council meeting and reports back what happens to the group in a quick e-mail the next day. Maybe there was an important decision. Maybe in the next week there is a topic being discussed which merits more people attending the meeting. If you make a group, there would always be at least one person there to keep the group informed.

By having this rotation it accomplishes a few things:

1. The burden is shared across many people, making it easier to stay connected to the political process
2. By being in a small social group with a modest commitment, everyone has an incentive to participate (because if you drop the ball, you look foolish)
3. It's more fun, so you get the added value of social interaction by being a part of one of these groups
4. It's harder to free-ride because if you don't pull your weight, you don't get the information that the group creates

Also, I think you could apply this approach to civic participation and government accountability at any level. I just happen to be using City Council meetings as a backdrop.

---

Detroiters: Does anyone want to actually try this?

Anyone: If you try something like this, will you let me know how it goes?

The World When We All Own Our Own Data

I don't think we've even started scratching the surface of how our world could be made much better when it's enriched with data. One day, I think, we'll have software that helps us live our day-to-day lives with great ease. Maybe our bed knows exactly how to wake us up or our data exhaust could help us live healthier lifestyles. Maybe our cars will all talk to each other so that there's never a traffic jam again. Maybe we can more accurately manage and distribute food so that we almost never have spoiled leftovers. For this, somewhat idyllic, reality to come to life all of the data we emit hves to be networked. Software and machines will have to interface with lots of different kinds of data going between systems so that the data from one part of our lives can mash up with another part to create exponentially more valuable information. For example, how could we ever avoid traffic jams if our cars didn't talk to each other AND to our calendars?

I can see this happening in one of two ways. First, all the services we use in our lives (e.g., Amazon, Facebook, our cars, our personal fitness devices, our clothing, our e-mail...whatever) could negotiate agreements to combine and use data. Facebook would have an agreement with Google to share data and both would have an agreement with Amazon to share data, for example. This would require billions and billions of micro agreements between data producing companies and data consuming companies allowing access to data by us, the user. Maybe we as users wouldn't even get a say. After all, if companies own our data, do we even have a right to sway how it is used?

Or maybe, we as individuals could own all our own data. We could hire a data management company of our own choosing and that company could manage all the negotiations of access to our data for us, depending on our preferences. The data-based services we receive from companies - like facebook, our health insurer or even our grocery store, among other things - would be different based on data sharing preferences...the more data we elect to share, the more valuable services to us would likely be from all providers.

I like the second scenario much better (where individuals own and control access to their own data), because it simplifies the process of brokering access to data and it allows individual consumers to maintain the level of sharing they are comfortable with. Moreover, individual companies don't really have an incentive to play nice with their competitors for data-sharing purposes, even though it might be valuable to their shared customer (e.g., do you think facebook would ever share data with Google?) So if individuals don't own their own data, those data might not be shared as much. To be sure, in a world where individuals owned their own data, it would take a set of common standards for all companies to make sure the data were mashable between all companies using it. This isn't trivial. But honestly, I think it's possible.

I don't know when it will happen or what it will take, but I want to own all my own data even if it's just so I can share them again. I think by making such a move we'll be on the verge of a renaissance in consumer technology and we'll have a much better world as a result.

--

It seems like there might be a few services that are starting to explore this area, pretty cool. There are also many legal questions here. I'm curious to see how the question of data ownership comes into the political, legal, and regulatory realm.

Brain Drain Follow-up: Reasons Why Companies Obsess Over "Attract and Retain"

In my last post, "Focusing on Michigan's Brain Drain Is a Miss", I criticized the common dialogue in our state about "brain drain" and its emphasis in local politics. After thinking on it a bit, I'd like to offer up a few reasons why attraction-retention programs seem to be en mode and how we might use different approaches to do something different, namely advancing comprehensive policies focused on developing vibrant cities. First, let me clarify my position. I don't disagree that brain drain is something worth mitigating. What I criticize are programs that are narrowly focused to combat brain drain via attraction-retention approaches. These "attract and retain" programs that might provide generous subsidies for relocation or create [poorly designed] job databases seem to be the wrong approach. Rather, we should focus on creating strong communities and vibrant cities that people want to move to and that increase the likelihood that innovative job growth occurs. In other words, we should be creating amazing opportunities for talent to develop (so that people want to come here over other places). To paraphrase my (supremely intelligent) friend Chad: it's not that you either combat brain drain or build great cities....building great cities is the best way to combat brain drain.

Anyway, the thrust of my point of view on why folks might obsess over things like job boards, living incentives and other attract and retain policies: employers focus on the costs that they bear and make decisions based on those costs. This is reasonable.

Employers bear a lot of costs when acquiring new talent. One such cost is a search cost - the cost of finding talent and hiring. Another cost is a relocation cost - the costs of getting someone to move from one place to another. A third cost is retention cost - the more people leave your company, the more you have to repeat the costly process of hiring. A fourth cost is training cost - you have to use time and resources to give hires the skills they need to succeed on the job. There are more, too. I'm just generalizing some of the most understandable and commonly discussed costs. These costs are all real, hard, dollars, and do not even include the costs of morale, lost productivity, etc.

Because these costs are the "direct" costs of talent, that is the costs of talent management that directly hit an organization's bottom line, organizations actually care about them. These are costs you can't argue with. Organizations, particularly businesses, usually make decisions on these costs because they can see them directly. That's what is visible on a financial statement and thus what shareholders and analysts measure a business on, generally speaking. Money talks, but more importantly it also tells a story about the economic realities of that business. That story, as told by financial statements, is how decisions are made.

So it should be no surprise that we see the traces of Detroit's regional talent strategy - if you could call it that, it's not very strategic - focus on some of these things (the impact on costs are in parentheses):

• Job Boards like MI Talent Connect (reduces search costs)
• The Live Downtown Program (reduces relocation costs)
• Live Work Play Initiatives (you could argue that these might affect retention costs)

Now, let's look at some of the costs and revenues that are NOT directly measured by employers (and some snarky conclusions in parentheses related to the role of business. Looking through the lens of business is critical because business is current THE power player in Detroit city affairs).

• Transportation Costs - employers don't pay to get their people to work (So should we be surprised that public transit isn't robust in Detroit?)
• Cost of Basic Education and Skills - employers don't bear the cost of their people learning to read, learning calculus, or going to college (So should we be surprised that scant attention is paid to really bolstering the performance and affordability of public K-12 schools or universities? To be fair, the business community is starting to act in this arena)
• Opportunity Cost - employers don't measure the money they could've made if they were more innovative (So should we be surprised that we don't have more of an emphasis on density, cultural institutions, and public dialogue - i.e., some of the things that really drive people to innovate within a city?)

I don't think we should be surprised with the attract-retain strategies that we have, because the business community is simply acting in its own interest - to reduce its direct costs of talent. And this is a problem, I think, because some of the stuff like job boards, the Live Downtown Program, or so called "Live Work Play" programs don't seem to be moving the needle on Detroit's resurgence (in a broad sense), by themselves. My guess is that the attract-retain strategies are unsustainably expensive in the long term, as well.

I think the strategy of building strong communities and vibrant cities is attractive for two reasons: 1) it addresses the direct AND indirect costs/revenues I've listed, and, 2) it has spillover affects that affect more than just the economic viability of companies...it also improves social welfare (happiness, health, etc.)

How strong communities and vibrant cities affect direct and indirect costs/revenues of talent

Here's some qualification of my assertion above - that creating great cities addresses direct and indirect costs/revenues:

• Search Costs and Relocation Costs- If you have a great city, the city PULLS people interest with less effort on the part of individual businesses. Thus it takes less time, effort, and money to find qualified candidates who want to work in Detroit. Consequently, employers have to pay less of a premium to attract talent

• Retention Costs - If the city is strong and there are more job opportunities and people actually want to live here, there's less turnover (i.e., there's less of a "I'm in Detroit until I find a job in Chicago" effect). If more opportunity produces a spike in turnover, it probably means talent quality is at least higher and there is quality talent to fill openings

• Training Costs - Vibrant cities are places where people can learn from other smart people. There are lots more opportunities to learn and grow as a professional as a result, like skills-based volunteering, talks, or workshops

• Transportation Costs - Cities with transit systems provide an opportunity to lower the total overall cost of transportation for residents, both in terms of time, money, and the headaches of traffic. It's a form of compensation, in effect, which lowers the cost of living and allows employers to pay less. More importantly, it opens up new talent pools because more talent can move within the city

• Basic Education Costs - Strong communities and vibrant cities probably educate their kids better. I'm not an ed expert so I'm not supremely confident about this, but that's my intuition. At very least, strong communities probably give the opportunity for a better education to a larger portion of its residents

• Innovation Opportunity - When smart people bump into each other (this is obviously simplifying the issue, but this is a whole research paper in itself, but don't worry, one is coming) is when innovation happens. That's when value creation opportunities happen. That's why there's this dialogue on cities = innovation. If people in the city are more innovative and good at innovating, that probably translates into individual firms that already exist as well

Actions to consider

Let's assume for a second that strong communities and vibrant cities are a better option than some of the "attract and retain" policies currently used in Detroit. Even if that's the case, how do we actually get there? This, again, is a blog post in itself, but let me suggest a few ideas which form an ad-hoc list for considering this question:

• Talk in a language business understands - businesses are driven by what their financial statements say (because that's what shareholders care about...I think this is foolish, but let's assume we can't change this immediately). So, give them a case that they can take to their shareholders. We need to create a business case (detailing revenues and costs) for why a comprehensive strategy to bolster communities and cities is the best option

• Strengthen other institutions - other institutions, like government, are often better suited to address to broad public concerns (like creating vibrant communities). If we strengthen civic institutions to displace the headwinds in civic life created by business, the public sector can lead the charge to create strong cities. In Detroit, maybe this means being more active as a citizenry or building up the capacity for transformational change within city government

• Recruit big players - if we have a big player in our ecosystem that's not accountable to shareholders, they can be a leader in creating a vibrant city which provides political cover to other, smaller players. That way, the smaller players could use the big player as an example when justifying decisions to their own shareholders. I suspect Dan Gilbert is having this effect in Detroit - he can do what he wants because he's wealthy and his own boss, giving other community leaders increased tacit permission to follow suit

• Focus on our broader narrative - I alluded to this in a previous post - [link]. If we have a broader narrative of why we want to have a city, it allows people to create a moral case for change, instead of just depending on a cost/benefit analysis

I welcome your feedback. This issue is debatable and important.

Focusing On Michigan's Brain Drain is a Miss

The conversation about brain drain in our state is common and (sort of) well researched. This entire discussion, though, is problematic.  Averting brain drain via direct programs is the less effective (and probably more expensive) strategy. Creating strong communities and vibrant cities is a better course of action. Breaking down the issue

Check out this chart below. Give it a look over and then I'll explain what I am trying to convey. A quick definition - the way I "talent performance" is this: talent performance is the product of talent quality and talent quantity --> Talent Quality x Talent Quantity = Talent Performance.

These axes are representations of the level of talent performance in Detroit and the State of Michigan more broadly. The bigger the bar, the better our talent is performing and the better off we are with regard to talent. For discussion's sake, let's say the top graph is the current level of talent performance. The baseline level there is represented by the dotted line.

The middle graph represents brain drain. Basically, in brain drain people leave the state, which lowers our overall level and quality of talent. These departures decrease the level of talent performance in the state, hence the smaller bar. The distance between the two dotted lines is the effect of the brain drain. Now, as people are leaving the state, lawmakers and business leaders are trying to respond by wooing talent to prevent them from leaving, or wooing talent outside the state here.

This is a reasonable strategy, except that it's a foolish one. Wooing talent is very expensive. You have to give departing talent lots of resources and you have to 'wine and dine' them, so to speak. You have to invest lots of money in programs and you might even have to subsidize their wages. All this is very pricey.

What's worse is that all this time and money spent on wooing talent doesn't really have ripple effects to the rest of the citizenry. If you woo someone to Michigan by paying them more, for example, it doesn't make a neighborhood in Detroit directly better, the only person that benefits substantially is the person who was wooed. The dollars you spend don't have effects on other things to make other parts of society or other people better, in a meaningful way. And, if you spend money to woo someone, that person may never be fully satisfied unless you keep wooing them which burns even more of hole in the state's pocketbook. Just like subsidies for other products and services, once you provide a subsidy, people start to expect it.

The bottom graph, demonstrates what happens when creating an environment  that develops talent and gives it the space to grow on its own. Said differently, this is a representation of what happens when you make communities better and make cities more vibrant. By improving the environment for talent, the talent that is already here gets more effective and performs better. The baseline level of talent performance increases; the bar gets bigger without more people needing to be here. Moreover, when you create a great environment, people come here on their own. People want to be part of excellent environments so they find their way here because they see opportunity, prosperity, and happiness. You don't have to woo them with one-off programs or compensation packages. This is much cheaper than rolling out the red carpet to bring people to Detroit.

Make no mistake, building communities and making cities more vibrant isn't cheap or easy in the absolute sense. In fact, it's probably expensive and really, really hard. But it's still better than wooing talent in an ad-hoc fashion because the dollars spent to make cities and communities better has all sorts of unrelated positive effects. The people in the community probably become happier if their community develops. There's probably lower levels of crime. People are probably more educated and involved in government and other aspects of civic life. By building communities and making cities more vibrant, the dollars spent provide returns years and years later. The people being wooed to come here are definitely NOT the only people who benefit substantially from the effort. On the contrary, when you build communities and cities, the whole community benefits.

Here's the takeaway: we should be focused on creating a great environment for talent by building up our communities and creating vibrant cities instead of trying haphazardly to prevent brain drain at high cost. That's ultimately what will be more beneficial for the city and state in the long run. Trying to combat brain drain directly is expensive, and it might not even work.

Moreover, this is possible - saying, "it's too hard" or "we don't know how" is a poor excuse. The work I was part of at the Center for the Edge is a great piece of research explaining the framework for thinking about how to create innovative, performance-improving environments. Also, look out for a report coming through from Detroit Harmonie soon. I can't really discuss it yet, but it's cool stuff.

Let's get serious about building great communities instead of wasting our time on conventional wisdom of attracting talent solely to prevent brain drain. Quite literally, if we build great communities and vibrant cities talent will come. So let's focus on that.

---

Holler at me with stuff I should rehash. This is a pretty intense topic.

Why Are We Transforming Detroit? (Public Transit As An Analogy For Purpose).

The other day, Robyn and I were discussing how kids in Detroit get to school. Some of her students ride 2-3 buses just to get to her school, for example. I imagine that kids across the city choose schools because of accessibility and transportation options. In fact, I think it's reasonable to assume that's the case with many students across the country. Heck, a lot of people I've talked to in life choose lots of the places they visit based on accessibility and transportation, whether it's bars, churches, hospitals, or places to work. [Note: this post isn't a rant about public transportation in Detroit. I'm merely setting up an analogy to make the real point I want to convey easier to understand.]

Let's take the example of Detroit students going to school. What happens if their school moves to a new building? Many of them may have to stop going to the school because it's no longer possible for them to go there, or maybe it's too much of a hassle to take additional buses to get there. Why?

One reason is because the bus system in Detroit isn't frequent or widespread enough to be worth the cost and hassle. Take a look at the bus system maps for Detroit and Seattle (links below), for example. Notice how it would be really hard to get across the city (i.e., moving in and around the city's longstanding neighborhoods outside of the Woodward corridor) unless routes were extremely frequent (I'm obviously making assumptions...I don't have great data):

• Detroit Bus System Map (from 2008):
• Seattle Bus System Map (for NW Seattle)

Here's a takeaway for Detroit - people who probably need buses to get to work and get around the city probably have a really hard time doing so. This is an opinion, but I'd argue that people in the neighborhoods need transit the most and that a transit solution would improve these citizens' lives the most.

Enter M1 Rail

One of the exciting projects of this summer was groundbreaking on the M1 Rail Project which will connect Downtown and Midtown by streetcar. Which is great. I'll love it when done. But M1 only benefits you if you're going to be Midtown and Downtown a lot. If you're not a wealthy Detroiter who lives in Midtown/Downtown or frequently goes to Midtown/Downtown (i.e., if you spend a lot of your time in the neighborhoods I mentioned above), the M1 rail probably won't benefit you very much.

This might also be fine. But it raises a very important question in my mind: why do we want public transit anyway? Have we even articulated what we're trying to accomplish by having public transit? I feel like if you asked people this question before the proposal of M1 rail, there would be legitimate discussion between some of these "statements of purpose":

• Build light rail for its own sake because it sounds cool and will legitimize Detroit to people outside its borders - in this case you'd probably build rail
• Stimulate economic and civic activity by helping people who don't have other options participate in the economy and civic society - in this case you'd probably build a bus system
• Make Midtown/Downtown more vibrant (spin: benefit wealthy residents who want to live in a walkable community) - in this case you'd probably build a streetcar line

Here's the point: I have no idea why we wanted to build public transit in the first place. Because this underlying reason for taking the action of building public transit systems, I'd call this "purpose", is unclear, do we even know if we're achieving our goal? By funding a streetcar line, is the M1 rail project fulfilling the right need? Products and services a company or city chooses to provide can vary widely depending on the need it intends to address and how that need is articulated.

A major public infrastructure project ought to have a clearly identified and articulated need, I think. Doing so, would helps agents design the right product/service and be held accountable to results.

---

Detroit's Transformation: why are we doing it?

Similar to the M1 rail example, I raise the same question for Detroit itself: why do we want to make Detroit better? What sort of community are we trying to create, and why? Is it for the purpose of:

• Generating lots of wealth and prosperity for all citizens?
• Creating a cohesive community that has minimal conflict between different types of people?
• Helping citizens have lots of fun?
• Facilitating robust civic discourse?
• Improving Detroit's public perception to the rest of the country?
• Allowing talented people to accumulate lots of power and wealth if they are smart enough to do so?
• Bolstering cultural and artistic expression?
• Providing every citizen with the agency to reach his / her goals?

Which of the statements of purpose do we really care about as Detroiters? Detroiters? One might say "all of them", but that's foolish. Our city cannot be everything to everyone, nor could any city be everything to everyone. Even if we tried, there would inevitably be times where these different priorities would be in conflict or require tradeoffs. In those cases, which statements of purpose do we prioritize more?

(Note: this is often conveyed by leadership or an organization, like a mayor. This idea of conveying a common purpose that people buy into will be huge for the next mayor.)

Making Detroit better will require extreme amounts of collective action. In my experience, collective action requires shared purpose (not to mention shared vision for how this "purpose" looks like when you actually start building stuff). The way I see it, lots of people have lots of different ideas for what the purpose of transforming should be and why we should transform Detroit. If that's the case, collective action will probably fail or have lots of conflict.

Before we start trying to rebuild Detroit, we need a clear picture on what sort of community we want Detroit to be, and why. If not, I don't think our transformation efforts have a good chance of persisting.

The Many "Currencies" of Social Impact

After the fun commentary people had on one of my previous posts, "Why Business Must Do Good" (Published on Detroit UIX here, or this blog here). I wanted to go a little bit deeper on one of the concepts I introduce: different types of value. I'd like to try building up more knowledge on how those types of value might be stored or manifested in society. By figuring out how those types of value are stored, perhaps we can better measure them. If we can better measure them, maybe we can figure out how to create value more easily. ---

Currency was a pretty big innovation in human society. All of a sudden, we were able to store value in an object, which made it easier to exchange goods and services. For example, if you were a corn farmer, you no longer had to barter with bushels of corn. You could exchange your corn for currency and then use that currency to purchase other things. Because currency was accepted everywhere and didn't spoil the way corn did, it was very useful.

Currency, say US Dollars or Euros, are a method of storing economic value. But, as I pointed out in a previous blog post, there are different kinds of value. I'll try to brainstorm (at least as a first attempt) the different "currencies" that can be used to store different kinds of value: social, spiritual, and civic value. If the analogy holds, the currencies of value could be used to increase, build up, or expand that type of value if you add effort. For example, money (a "currency") + effort + ideas that can make money (another "currency") = economic value.

I'll begin by articulating economic value, and what some other stores of value might be.

The point of economic value is to meet material needs and exchange goods and services. This is the arena which addresses humanity's need to have basic human needs and comforts. As a result some currencies of economic value might be:

• Money - the more money you have the more goods and services you can exchange for
• Physical Assets - Stuff that allows you to make other things
• Contracts - Promises that people will pay you for something you've given them
• Ideas that can make money - think of patents, it something that will probably give you economic value in the future

Basically, anything that you'd find in the "assets" section of a company's balance sheet is a store of economic value.

The point of social value is to have an enriching community where people feel good. This is the arena which addresses humanity's need to have happiness. As a result, some currencies of social value might be:

• Relationships - connections to other people makes people happy
• Healthy bodies - being in better physical shape makes individuals better
• Environment - it's not pleasant to live in a place that's dirty or polluted
• Knowledge - an ability to understand how the world works
• Activity  - activities are opportunities to not be bored

The point of civic value is to have interactions between people be peaceful and create institutions in such a way where it allows people to reach their goals. This is the arena which addresses humanity's need to have agency. As a result, some currencies of civic value might be:

• Freedom - preclearance to do what you want and pursue your goals
• Rights - basic protections from institutions that people can claim
• Integrity / Trust - people keeping their word and acting consistently with their values
• Shared understanding - a common view of the world and acceptance of others
• Fairness - knowing that rules will be applied consistently and equally
• Institutions - systems and processes which govern interactions and provide heuristics for how to get along in civic life and discourse

The point of spiritual value is to have an understanding and acceptance of our humanity. This is the arena which addresses humanity's need to have meaning. As a result, some currencies of spiritual value might be:

• Inquiry - the ability to explore things and immerse yourself in them
• Expression - the ability to project who you are
• Wisdom - an ability to understand what life means
• Peace - feeling okay with who you are and your surroundings
• Reflection - being able to connect with yourself and understand yourself

Wrap up

Anyway, the whole point of this post is to get at the major assets (for a person, organization, society, civilization, etc.) required to have different kinds of value. The way I see it, by gradually getting deeper on value and how it's created, we might be able to start measuring value better. For example, say we determine that one of the assets of social value is indeed healthy bodies. Then we can start to ask, "what are the key indicators of healthy bodies?" Say we determine one of the key indicators is adequate exercise. Then from there we can create programs and organizations which aim to influence adequate exercise.

Obviously I'm making a lot of assumptions about how the world works. However, one has to start somewhere in a field that hasn't been developed, and then iterate.

Future of Auto #3 - Dealers of Tomorrow

I want to intern in Detroit this summer and I’m extremely interested in things like Consumer Insights, New Product Development, Future Trends Analysis, and Strategic Planning. Basically, I like building and launching new things. Seeing as how working in Auto is the likeliest of these routes (though not exclusively), I figured I’d see if I could actually come up with visionary ideas about the automotive industry. This post is the third installment in a series I hope to keep with over the next few months. In it I will try to empathize with different customer segments and think of new products or services that would serve them in fresh ways. If you think my ideas are legit, I’d appreciate your help in finding a sweet gig for the summer. If you think my ideas are far from legit, I’d appreciate your feedback.

---

One of the reasons I find the automotive industry very unique is because of how cars are sold. Think about it, how many products in the world have a named career path? In auto, you can be a car salesman, for almost any other product you're known just as a "salesman", except maybe for insurance. I think that's a testament to how special automobiles are in our culture and the uniqueness of automobiles as a product.

Because sales are so important to the industry, and because dealers don't seem to have changed radically in the past few decades, I figured I'd try to reimagine what dealerships might be in the future. Because dealers are a common link between many different types of customers, I'll provide a short description of every kind of dealer experience I can think of (at least in a first round of thinking). It would take much more market research to decide between this set of ideas.

Also, some motivation for this post: Apple has a unique retail experience for computers. If that's the case, it seems silly NOT to reimagine dealerships because the product (a car) is much more intricate than a computer and something people are as passionate about as Apple products.

Dealers as Auto Fan Clubs - for gearheads

There are some people who LOVE cars. These are the Top Gear-watching, horsepower-hoarding, car enthusiasts that see these products not as appliances but as works of art and human ingenuity. Why not interface with these people directly? I can see a dealership as being a community space for car lovers. Maybe you get a sneak peek at new models or features. Maybe you get to learn advanced auto-modding. Maybe you have a beer with other gearheads in your area. The dealership itself could be a place where people come together to share their love for automobiles. An added benefit to the OEM is that they can get valuable feedback from these super passionate, "extreme" users of their product.

Dealers as car support groups - for auto novices

Owning a car isn't easy. You have to maintain it, you have to understand how it works, and all this takes a lot of time. Why not have the dealership be an automobile concierge of sorts? Maybe if you have a dealer "membership", you pay the dealer a fixed fee (like a service package) and they take care of any repairs you need. You get an oil change and its free. They do basic maintenance on your car for you. They do all the taking care of the car, so the customer doesn't have to. Maybe they even teach you about how to take care of your car and give you opportunities to learn about car ownership. Think of it like getting an extended service contract or warranty for your vehicle and a car education to boot. The dealer would be a center of activity which helps people have a painless car ownership experience.

Dealers as urban convenience centers - for urban professionals

I used to work in the city and now I live in a smaller place. Something that was very annoying to me was always parking and doing minor repairs to my car - I could never find the time for something non-urgent. So, why not combine both these needs for urban consumers? The OEM would have a small parking lot, perhaps in a structure, and the driver would go to work...maybe by bus, subway, or bike share. While the driver is at work, maybe they can arrange to have basic car repair completed, maybe an oil change, new lights, a wash, tune up, tires, windshield wipers, etc. This would help with having a place to park, having repairs done, and having a hub to get people the "last mile" on their commute.

As far as this "last mile" stuff goes, I think that's a new business model in itself which I'll try to discuss in a future post as it is only peripherally relevant to dealerships.

Dealers as retail pop ups - for the spontaneous consumerist

You don't need much to sell a car. All you really need is, well, the car. So why not have a pop up on a busy street that has a small booth, but mostly just has models to test drive or inspect by passersby. That way it would keep "dealer" costs down and would still give potential buyers a chance check out cars as they walked by. This could be a fun and low-cost way for carmakers to give consumers exposure to their best products in an environment the consumer already is in...cities.

Dealers as classrooms - for the next generation of car owners, car dreamers, and car makers

Maybe car dealerships can be agents of social good, too. There are lots of kids that probably like learning physics, engineering, design, and similar things. With a curriculum built up for wide use, maybe car dealership could be an experiential learning environment for students across the country. After school students could go to the dealership and maybe a mechanic does a lesson with you. Maybe they bring in speakers who work in automotive engineering or design for sessions with parents and kids together. The dealership is a space that's not always 100% utilized that oozes engineering and design. Why not get other, younger people, interested as well?

Wrap up

Overall, I think dealers could go in many directions. But to do that, we'd have to think of dealers as more than "a place where cars are sold." I think we can, and should. As a bit of motivation / business case discussion - having an ongoing, positive, touchpoint with consumers is probably good for business. Once I leave the lot, I hate going to dealerships and mechanics. As a comparison, I love going to the Apple Store (or REI, for that matter) and kind of enjoy spending money there.

Show Me The Small Firms, Or, Why I No Longer Hate On Detroit Hipster Coffee Shops

I'll admit it, I've been a longtime critic of small-time Detroit entrepreneurs like the quintessential proprietor of a hipster coffee shop. These business owners, and those like them (e.g., food truckers, small-scale farmers, or yuppie-focused retailers), were people I often criticized because their businesses aren't disruptive. Those businesses probably won't "scale big" and they're not germinating from particularly novel ideas. I didn't think they'd really "move the needle" to make the city prosperous again, either. I actually still don't. But now, I'd like to eat my words - one micro idea that's actually executed is incalculably more valuable than a "big" idea that never makes it out of someone's notebook. Even if that micro idea is (another) **sigh** coffee shop.

For the past few months, I've read about or heard about many entrepreneurial success stories. Every big, global, value-creating company I've come across was started by a small group of people with a lot of discipline, passion, and luck. Apple didn't start off with hundreds of billions of dollars in shareholder value and neither did Starbucks. For that matter, neither did my mother's UPS Store franchise. All these business started with zero customers and dream. What they have in common is that someone actually did something to make these ideas into operating businesses. Once they were businesses in actual operation, it took a lot more work to make them profitable.

In Detroit, for a long time , I've been wishing for more people who had big ideas for companies or social enterprises. I even put a working group together to do some thinking about how to get people in Detroit to think bigger. The problem is that lots of people have big ideas (myself included) that they talk a lot about, but never do something about. Ideas that are never implemented never create any value - that's a fact*.

Let's go back to the hypothetical entrepreneur in Detroit starting a coffee shop. Say they produce one cup of coffee for one dollar and sell it for two dollars. That's one dollar of value that's created. That's one dollar more than a business with only the potential to create $1 billion (but that never gets started) will ever make. Potential doesn't pay the bills and doesn't pay wages either. What we need in Detroit is businesses that create value;  so many businesses only ever amount to potential value. I no longer care if the business is a coffee shop or a software company. Profit is profit and new jobs are new jobs**.

Moreover, if all businesses started as super small companies, who knows what the small businesses in Detroit could become? Maybe someone who opens a food truck will become a farm-to-table mogul. Maybe a retailer with an innovative twist will grow their operation into the next nationwide urban department store. Who knows. The way I see it, we'll be a lot more likely to have a big hit if we have many hundreds of seemingly small new businesses instead of only having one idea with a high likelihood of making it big. We need small firms. Lots of 'em.

Of course, I'd love it if lots of people in Detroit were starting edgy, disruptive companies left and right. I really do believe that those sorts of businesses will create more value in the long run. But maybe if we have more successful entrepreneurs - of all stripes - those entrepreneurs will help teach other entrepreneurs - of all stripes - how to make it. If we play our cards right, and mentor those who are up-and-coming, maybe we could have an entrepreneurship multiplier effect in Detroit and those people starting food trucks will help a nascent tech company get of the ground later on. I sure hope so.

Sure, for a long time I thought it was a waste of time and money to start these businesses and celebrate them as if they were "saving" the city^. You might've called me an "entrepreneurship snob", and if you did you'd be right. But I've come around. Now, if a business is actually creating value in the real world it's okay in my book, even if it's a small scale company. We can worry about launching big ideas once we have a largess of small-time entrepreneurs already crushing it on the streets of Detroit.

For what its worth, I think we can (crush it).

---

*- For my business school friends: Strictly speaking, you can never create value (i.e., have a difference between willingness to pay and cost) if you never produce and sell a unit, right?

** - I'm assuming here that the profit and new jobs aren't coming at the cost of some intolerable, social externality.

^ - For what it's worth, the media acting like Detroit is back because we've opened a few retail storefronts is incredibly foolish and shouldn't be what Detroit aspires to be. Why? Frankly, because I don't think that will generate a tremendous amount of wealth in the long run. But the media's savior-making habit is beyond the scope of this post.

Creating From What You Know

Today, the Ross Net Impact club had it's fall kickoff event. At this event, Seth Godman the Tea-EO of Honest Tea gave a talk. It was fairly good, but one thing about the origins of Honest Tea struck me more than anything else. Seth just created it, somewhat randomly. The story goes, Seth had a business school class and his professor asked a provocative question while discussing a case about the beverage industry: "What's missing from the beverage aisle?" Seth said, a drink that was "just a tad" sweet. At the time, he didn't think to start a company. Years later, he was visiting a friend in New York, looking for a beverage in a cooler in Central Park. His friend was perplexed when Seth exclaimed that he couldn't find a suitable drink (there were sodas and presumably other beverages). But, he saw something else...he saw that a tea drink was missing.

So from there, he and his original professor created Honest Tea.

The obvious thing, (that never seemed so obvious to me before today) was that Seth had a unique insight that a tea-based beverage was missing, because he himself was a low-sweetness tea drinker. He knew the market space, it seemed, on an intuitive level. Not so much to confuse himself, but enough to see a missing product and create something. This seems to be the right way to create products, understand a market / customer need and think about simple ways to close the gap.

When I think about Silicon Valley culture (and what I hear about it) I think of people that are simply looking to start companies. They are looking for gaps so they can fill them, for filling's sake - not for any intuitive or intrinsic reason. This seems contrary to how businesses actually start. Rather, it seems like you understand something well and then you just start seeing the gaps. You create from what you know, and looking at what you know in a new way.

This seems to jive with innovation and creativity (in social impact contexts or otherwise): the best solutions come from front-line, tacit knowledge. So long as they can get out of people's heads, of course. The magic of creativity and innovation, it seems, is when someone is fortunate enough to get a deeply held insight out of their heads so that they can build something from it. What is important is making the tacit first explicit, then tangible.

---

Some friends and I were talking about this after the event. One friend pointed out that what I seem to know is people. Which is true, I have cultivated an instinct about how to bring people together over the past 20 years, since I was six years old. Now, I wonder, how do I look at people / relationships in a new way so that I can start seeing some gaps that could be filled by entrepreneurship?

Allying / Coming Out In the (Private Sector) Workplace

Friday is National Coming Out Day and I wanted to soapbox a bit on behalf of allies everywhere as a result. I also picked up a nifty bracelet from the Ross Out For Business Club after signing the "Ally Pledge". Thanks peeps. ---

I had a work experience where I thought I couldn't be myself and it was the most stressful time of my life, to date. I even wrote a business school essay about it. It was TERRIBLE. I was always stressed, becoming less healthy, and I wasn't performing at my best. I felt incredibly lonely and was losing hope that my situation would ever get better. I thought about quitting or taking a transfer, often. My situation wasn't even that extreme.

The more I talk to friends, classmates, and colleagues now, I find that everyone feels this way at some point or another. The chorus of people I talk to agree that it is a terrible feeling that is dehumanizing. Yes, dehumanizing.

If I felt that way for superficial reasons (e.g., I wasn't doing the sort of work I liked, my sense of humor wasn't accepted, people thought I was a goofball), I can't imagine what it would be life to feel compelled to hide your sexual identity or something equally personal. I'm guessing it'd be about a thousand times worse. As a result, I don't think we should ever let someone feel compelled to hide their sexual identity. It's hurtful and it's not fair.

I don't think those who identify as L, G, B, T, Q, or even an Ally should feel unsupported, either, because coming out can be such a hard process anyway. On the contrary, because it's so hard (and might subject the person coming out to emotional, career, or even physical harm) I think any ally needs to be an extremely, visible, and active one. A quiet ally might as well not be an ally.

We owe it to our friends, family, and colleagues to be supportive allies precisely because being out is really hard. And after spending some time in private sector organizations, it's broken my heart to see friends (who I deliberately call friends, they just happened to be colleagues) have to hide parts of who they were. I know the relief of being able to talk about my wonderful girlfriend with my friends from work or school (which you can't do if you're not out). It makes you feel good when a caring supervisor asks you about why you're smiling when they know you went on a first date the evening before (which you can't do if you're not out). All my older colleagues (without exception) loved talking about their kids and to take that away from someone is hurtful and a damn shame (afterall, baby pictures are adorable!).

More than that, if we're not supportive allies, our LGBTQ friends may suffer in their careers - maybe because they aren't chosen for a project, because their life circumstances aren't understood, or any number of other reasons. As allies, we can't let anyone feel like they have a reason to think that a colleague who happens not to be straight is any less talented or employable than anyone else. On the contrary, diverse perspectives (whether from sexual orientation, race, SES, educational background, career history, interests, location, anything) make business better. Speaking from a place of "profit maximization", teams can't afford not to have different flavors of people on them and have those differences be open, visible, and usable.

So today, while eating my peanut butter sandwich in an empty classroom I say to my friends, whatever flavor of human they are: I support you. For those who happen to L,G, B, T, Q or any type of sexual identity, I'm your ally. I'll try my best to be a good one.

--

PS - Special thanks to my friend Gabriel for reminding our class about the Ally Pledge!

Why we need legislative responsiveness (and dunk tanks)

After the government shutdown, I was furious and hopeless. Furious because, well, how did this happen? More importantly, I was hopeless because I felt like I (nor any other citizens) had real recourse against legislators after the shutdown occurred. After all, we can't fire legislators, nor can we dock their pay, nor can we easily protest outside of their offices in Washington. In other words, we can't change their behavior by immediately making them feel the pain of their decisions. [For more discussion on response tactics like voting and campaign contributions (and why they don't work in this case), scroll to the bottom of this page.]

So with this in mind, I'd like to propose some radical (read: wacky) alternatives which might actually make legislators "feel the pain" when they make decisions that are bad or "feel the love" when they make decisions that are good.

How to make legislators feel the pain and love One easy translation from the private sector is to have variable compensation or "pay-for-performance". In such a scheme you could have citizens judge legislators on a number of criteria indicating good performance. Then, you could have a bonus pool for legislators who do well and no bonuses for those who don't. This would be difficult because you'd have to design the incentives correctly, but it's possible. This isn't radical, however.

Campaign contributions aren't a great lever to use, but I think campaign spending could be. What if we limited campaign spending by legislators based on how pools of constituents viewed their performance? Say you had three pools of constituents, people in your district, people in your state, and a national group of non-partisan political elites. After every session of congress, each pool of constituents would be able to allocate points to whichever members they wanted. Then, based on those point allocations on a session-by-session basis, legislators would have different spending ceilings for their campaigns down the road. This would give an incentive for legislators to be responsive to constituents, immediately, beyond vocal minorities.

Another lever one could use to punish misbehaving legislators is to control access to the chamber floor or the media. In this scheme, legislators who get more done or better represent the country would have easier access to make remarks publicly. If a legislator was being wholly unproductive, they'd have their time to speak capped. You could perhaps evaluate this based on a constituent voting scheme or by legislators policing themselves.

Finally, here's a funny one that might actually work. Below I discuss why shaming might not be good enough. But, if we're going to shame legislators let's REALLY shame legislators. Let's do a gong show. In this scheme, maybe we put a big dunk tank on the Capitol steps. Let's put a legislator above that aforementioned dunk tank. Then, we have a game show on a regular basis where a legislator gets grilled by a moderator. Then, people on social media vote as to whether that legislator should get dunked or not. If they get off the tank without a dunking, we'd make a big deal about it to really make them feel good about it. If they get dunked, we'd make them wear a "dunked" cap until the next dunking show. They'd look really, really foolish if they were dunked. We'd do say, 10 or 20 legislators during each show so that over the course of a term everyone would have to face the dunk tank.

Anyway, some of these are crazy, some are hard, and others are simple. Overall, though, I think there's many better ways to have immediate responsiveness of government. Surely, all these ideas are not ready for implementation. I merely want to provide a vision of alternatives that we might use. If there's big demand, I'll flesh one of them out. If not, I hope they help the readers of this post realize that responsiveness in government is difficult, but very important.

Extended Discussion on Voting and Campaign Contributions (and why they don't work): The two mechanisms we seem to have are voting and campaign contributions. Unfortunately, though, these happen every two, four, or six years which diffuses the effectiveness of those feedback mechanisms - if you vote for a congressperson every two years, they'll have no idea what the basis of your decision is. It could be because of the government shutdown or because you like their views on pet adoption. A vote isn't a great feedback mechanism if a legislator doesn't know why you vote and you vote very infrequently.

You could also communicate your viewpoint after an event by making campaign contributions for a particular candidate. But that runs into the same problems of diffusion above: no legislator can really know exactly why you contribute to them. They probably shouldn't anyway, because if you contribute for a specific purpose the legislator is running into a gray moral area (potential bribery).

Moreover, both these mechanisms don't actually impose a direct cost on a legislator...by not giving a vote or a contribution, you're simply withholding a future benefit. Legislators don't "feel the pain", so to speak. Also, I don't think shaming - for example through letter writing or social media - does enough because it's also diffused. On average, any legislator will probably get lots of different written feedback from constituents but they plusses will probably cancel out the minuses. Moreover, constituent letters and tweets are very easy to ignore, especially when media channels are already saturated with information.

Irrational Manager / Market Share Fallacy

Today, my strategy professor made a very wise point: only the irrational manager puts increasing market share ahead of increasing profits. A business intends to make profits, which gaining market share doesn't necessarily do. Increased market share may lead to increased profits, yes, but it's not a guarantee. So any strategy to increase market share should be rooted in an intent to increase profits.I think this also applies to the social sector. Lots of times, in my experience, social sector organizations measure themselves by serving more people or increasing the amount of programs they have. That's fine, but only as long as those increase actually make their communities better in a meaningful. Having more programs isn't intrinsically valuable. It's rare, in my experience, for social sector organization to make this connection (between programs and impact) clearly. This construct mirrors the irrationality of irreverent market share gain in the private sector:

• Increased Market Share = More Programs
• More Profits = More Impact

More programs doesn't mean more impact, just as more market share doesn't mean more profits. Not-so-good Managers in both sectors don't understand this fully. Increasing market share or programs makes you look like a better manager / executive, but it doesn't mean you are a better manager / executive.

The anecdotal difference, I think, is that founders in the private sector are crazy about profits whereas founders in the social sector seem more likely to be interested in their "market share" than their private sector peers.

Future of Auto #2 - Imagining Data (not tailpipe) Exhaust

I want to intern in Detroit this summer and I'm extremely interested in things like Consumer Insights, New Product Development, Future Trends Analysis, and Strategic Planning. Basically, I like building and launching new things. Seeing as how working in Auto is the likeliest of these routes (though not exclusively), I figured I'd see if I could actually come up with visionary ideas about the automotive industry.

This post is the second installment in a series I hope to keep with over the next few months. In it I will try to empathize with different customer segments and think of new products or services that would serve them in fresh ways. If you think my ideas are legit, I'd appreciate your help in finding a sweet gig for the summer. If you think my ideas are far from legit, I'd appreciate your feedback.

Note: I'm getting really excited about Auto. It seems like there are lots of ways to innovate this industry. It's wide open. The key seems to be to focus everything other than the car itself.

---

Update: As it happens, some friends who are more intimately involved with auto let me know that the transmitter portion of this idea already exists, but that the analytics is still underdeveloped. Though it makes this post a little less valuable, it probably makes the potential for a business a little bit more possible. Maybe one could collect more sophisticated data if necessary but then emphasize the analytics component.

My friend Cameron put it well, "The ability to capture data has far outpaced the ability to do useful stuff with the data."

---

Original Post: Tonight, I'm trying to get inside the head of people who manage fleets. Those people don't drive cars, their drivers drive cars. But, can an auto company provide them added value? I think so.

As I understand it, fleet managers probably want to know two things, mainly: how much their vehicles are being utilized and whether the cars need maintenance. Given this insight, it seems like there's lots of data that could be captured to help address those needs, with little inconvenience to the fleet manager or the driver.

Imagine this: an OEM installs a transmitter on every one of their fleet vehicles. This would tap into data about:

• The vehicle's condition: e.g., it's oil level, fuel level, engine wear, or any data that is already produced by the car or could be cheaply captured with an add-on sensor
• The vehicle's location: i.e., with GPS
• The vehicle's use: e.g., RPMs, acceleration, g-forces of turns
• Anyone interacting with the car: e.g., a driver driving the car, a mechanic

The OEM then transmits the data wirelessly to the cloud and runs analysis on individual cars and the health of the fleet. It could then sell this data, via a subscription service, to fleet managers looking for better information to manage their fleet of vehicles. For sophisticated client needs, maybe the OEM has a consulting business to develop customized metrics.

Maybe you could extend the use of the data by predicting when the fleet manager will need new parts for maintenance (e.g., when a vehicle needs an oil change), or by optimizing routes, or recommending ways for drivers to operate their vehicles more safely and efficiently.

Moreover, the OEM could open up the API to the transmitter's hardware allowing aftermarket sensors to transmit via the pre-installed transmitter. That way, the OEM's client could add data to the client's subscription, making the service more valuable for the client, which in turn boosts the OEM's positioning. Maybe you could even design the data in such a way so that it integrates into inventory or logistics systems already used by the client.

So now, we have a decently feasible business which has low capital costs (compared to producing a car) and the potential for ongoing returns. But wait, it gets better.

If you're an OEM, you now have lots of data about vehicles and their operation in the real world. You could mine that data to improve the production of automobiles themselves. Maybe you can detect defects or performance issues. Maybe you could see usage patterns and identify a new, underserved, customer segment. Maybe you could even scrub the data so it could be used by researchers to improve society.

But wait, there's more. If you perfect the technology on fleet vehicles (or even cars that you've leased to individual consumers) maybe you can develop a consumer metrics business which helps people improve the use of their automobiles in their own lives. Maybe you can recommend carpools. Maybe you help consumers have conversations with their kids who are new drivers. Maybe you can help people know when the most efficient time to go to the grocery store is. The possibilities seem limited only by the data that's collected and the imagination of the analyst.

This is fun.

Future of Auto #1 - The Shareable Car

I want to intern in Detroit this summer and I'm extremely interested in things like Consumer Insights, New Product Development, Future Trends Analysis, and Strategic Planning. Basically, I like building and launching new things. Seeing as how working in Auto is the likeliest of these routes (though not exclusively), I figured I'd see if I could actually come up with visionary ideas about the automotive industry.

This post is the first installment in a series I hope to keep with over the next few months. In it I will try to empathize with different customer segments and think of new products or services that would serve them in fresh ways. If you think my ideas are legit, I'd appreciate your help in finding a sweet gig for the summer. If you think my ideas are far from legit, I'd appreciate your feedback.

----

Speaking as a Millennial, It's not that I don't like cars. I actually really like cars. I grew up around cars. When I played with Legos as a kid, I used to make them into cars (full disclosure: and spaceships that doubled as cars). I think the technological innovations in cars are astounding and that the invention that's currently happening with in-car tech is fascinating.

The thing is, I wish I had a lifestyle that didn't require a car. See, I want to live in a city and walk places. But I still want to be able to use a car. And, I still want to own a car. I want some of the private benefits of having a car while still sharing the fixed costs of having a car with other people.

So, why not have some of the benefits of both with a shareable car? What if people who aren't necessarily family or members of the same household could own a car together, too? Maybe the beginnings of an idea could work like this:

OEMs would create leasing schemes in which the leasees can be of any association to each other. Maybe they're neighbors. Maybe they're friends. Maybe they're roommates. Maybe they just met and live down the street from each other. Under the agreement they would each pay for insurance and maintenance through the OEM and sign their lease together. They'd both have access to the car. And, it wouldn't be a generic car like Zipcars. It'd be one they picked all together.

A supporting technology for this idea would be a mobile app which helps the co-leasees share the car. The app would track mileage and usage so that the friends could split gas and maintenance (i.e. variable costs) quickly and automatically. This app could also be used by the friends to reserve use of the car at the times they need it, or maybe coordinate how they can carpool. Finally, the app could contain a unique identifying mechanism which allows the car to adjust itself to the driver's preferences, whether it's music, recently navigated destinations, temperature, or seating arrangements.

Of course, there are problems with this idea (e.g., who would want partial ownership of a car with a friend, especially if that person doesn't live within parking distance of your residence). I don't attempt to resolve all the problems here. I merely intend to lay out the beginnings of what could be a good discussion about the future of the auto industry and a potential product or service offering.

Business Must Do Good

Earlier this week, I penned a post titled, "Can business do good?" which I wrote in response to a bit of disillusionment I was feeling about the profit-maximizing vibes I've felt in business school and a near radio silence about the role of business in society. To be fair, I'm only in core classes now, but it's still disappointing...at least to me. Earlier I took the approach of being a gadfly - being critical without offering an alternative point of view. I'd like to present that alternative, more provocative point of view: business must do good. Not business can do good, not business should do good, but business must do good. Here's why I think so:

The Metaphor To have a healthy body, one must eat a variety of foods, at least in the long run. Let's say you grow your own food and you need fruits, vegetables, grains, and proteins to be healthy. Say you run out of fruits in your refrigerator, and you're hungry and the store is closed. So you eat vegetables, grains, and proteins. Say you don't eat fruits for a week. You'll still probably be okay, though you like fruits. You just go about your activities and you have lots of grains and proteins. You don't worry...you just keep eating.But say it's been several weeks. Now, unfortunately, you're starting to feel weary. You really need the nutritional value of the fruits. You start to catch more colds and generally feel malaise when walking around. But uh oh, now you're out of vegetables too. This only makes things worse and you start to feel worse whenever you get sick. Thankfully, grain is still cheap and easy to grow. Your ability to eat meat, however, is fading because you're less and less able to work hard in your garden to grow the things required to support livestock. In fact, your family tells you to stop raising and eating meat…saying you should focus on growing and eating grain.

The problem is, your body is less and less resilient the more you eat only grain. There's no telling how you'll react when you get sick. You'll probably respond very badly to ailments and will probably have to go to the hospital. Unfortunately, the hospital is expensive and it will take you a long time to pay off the bills…especially if you go back to a diet of grains after you're released.

The Metaphor, Explained This is a metaphor for how I think society works. We consume a lot of different types of value: economic, social, civic, and spiritual (grain, vegetables, meats, and fruits, respectively). And we can subsist on one type of value, perhaps, for a long time. The consequence is that it makes our society - the living organism that it is - weak and more unable to respond to shocks.

Economic value, much like grain, is easy to grow in a variety of climates and is reasonably consistent across the globe. It provides energy. It's satisfying and makes you feel temporarily at ease. It's easy to measure and store. It doesn't spoil quickly. It fills you up.

Civic, social, and spiritual value are much like vegetables, fruits, and meats. Everyone has different preferences with those kinds of value. They are harder to classify and they decompose much more quickly. It takes getting used to them to like them. They don't always fill you up as quickly as grain, so they seem less important to eat.

But these types of value are needed, much like in the example of the farmer, to have a healthy society. We need a mix of value being created to be able to prosper, I think. To put it into the nomenclature of a 4 year old and his parents…we need to eat our vegetables, which is to say that we need to create value beyond that which is economic to have a healthy society.

Note that there's a difference between the vehicle creating value (e.g., business, government, non-profits, hybrid organizations, informal organizations, etc.) and the value that those vehicles create. For example all these types of organizations creative a mix of value (e.g., non-profits create economic, social, and civic value…as do the rest of the value creating vehicles I've mentioned). I'm concerned with the value that's created and consumed, regardless of the vehicle that creates it.

The Argument For Why Business Must Do Good I'd contend that business is the vehicle that creates the largest amount of value in society (not necessarily the most important value…just the most). Think about how the largest companies have more assets and people associated with them than some nation states. They also make the resources of non-profits look like pennies on the dollar. This is especially true because government has become weaker in the past several decades, in no small part because of the influence of business interests.

I'd also contend that the majority of the value that businesses create - especially in this unfortunate era of shareholder capitalism - is economic value. When it comes to civic, social, and spiritual value, businesses might even consume more than they replenish.Because they are the greatest force in creating value of all kinds, and they are severely skewed in the type of value that they create, I'd contend that businesses must do good. Let me even reframe this notion…I contend that businesses must create economic value, but at very least also leave behind more civic, social, and spiritual value than they consume. If their net value creation leaves our stocks of value (e.g., the total amount of social, economic, civic, and spiritual value) lopsided, our society will be unhealthy.

They way I see it, in the long run if business does NOT do good, our society will collapse. Which is to say that if their net value creation doesn't preserve the balance and growth of civic, social, spiritual, and economic value, our society will collapse. As a result, I'd contend that business must do good.

The Corollary I don't think the other value creating vehicles that exist (government, non-profits, churches, etc.) are off they hook. They ought to help in striking the balance of value that's needed. I don't implicate them here because they're proportion of value creation is smaller and they're more conscious of the balance they need to strike (in my humble opinion) than is business.

I strongly believe, also, that we are all much better off when these stocks of value are in balance because they create synergies when they interact together. In other words, when these stocks of value are in appropriate proportion, our total amount of value grows bigger and faster than it would if our stocks of value were lopsided.