But there are deep, deep flaws in the academic research model, if not in the methods employed—flaws that severely limit the knowledge we gain. The social sector continues to outsource knowledge creation to the academic sector, which is operating according to the rules of academe, not in the public interest. It’s time to free the knowledge, and social sector actors have a key role to play.

What are the problems with the academic research model?

First, the primary purpose of academic research is status within academic communities. To advance—and attain any job security—academics have to publish research in academic journals. Thus, academics are biased toward research that will be publishable in academic journals.

The academic journals, in turn, are biased toward novel research. This means they are generally not interested in research that confirms earlier findings, or that adds nuance and practicality—the kind of knowledge that social sector actors need—to earlier research. And that means that research doesn’t get done. The journals also have strong biases for positive results, which yields suspect research. Recently, studies have suggested that up to 80 percent of published medical research can’t be replicated (and therefore the results are not trustworthy). There is no reason to believe that social science research is significantly better.

Finally, there are strong incentives to lock up knowledge and data—both for journal editors and for researchers. The best research is based on a great deal of data collection, data that can turn into lots of published papers if the researcher keeps the data to themselves. Meanwhile, journal publishers have incentives to make subscriptions very expensive and private.

As a result of these dynamics, useful knowledge for the social sector coming from academic researchers is severely limited. Happily, the academic publishing model is likely in its death throes. More and more people are questioning the value and the business model of walled-garden, peer-reviewed academic journals. Recently Princeton University adopted a policy that prevents Princeton academics from granting copyright on their research to closed journals. Princeton’s move could be the start of one of the most socially important changes of our time by generating a torrent of open-access academic research.

But there is more to be done. Here’s what the social sector should do now to free the knowledge:

1) Don’t wait for academics to do quality research on issues you care about. The toolkits for designing studies and surveys are easily available. Start building knowledge on effectiveness of your programs now.

2) If you do work with an academic, require that any resulting papers be published in open-access journals or be made publically available.

3) Post the results of research you sponsor or are involved in and submit it to knowledge repositories like IssueLab.

Collectively, we can free the knowledge from the shackles of academia and make our whole sector more effective. 

My own research in Pakistan confirms this. Most borrowers (all women) that I spoke to in semi-rural areas around Lahore mentioned various humiliation rituals that microfinance organizations have devised to shame them into returning their money. Because of cultural reasons, women are particularly vulnerable to public shaming, and loan officers often resort to this. To avoid losing their honour in small, close-knit communities, women are often forced to borrow from their family members, feudal lords, and even the local moneylender, until there are no more people left from whom they can borrow. This is the point at which many break down.

There are two sources of pressure between borrowers and microfinance institutions (MFIs). For borrowers, the pressure comes from the fact that most MFIs charge exorbitant interest rates, ranging between 30 to 50 percent, and sometimes more. These rates are justified by MFIs on the grounds that the operational costs involved in disbursing, monitoring, and recovering thousands of microloans are exceptionally high. On the institutions’ side there is a strong desire to scale-up quickly and thus attract the attention of large lenders (such as the World Bank) or international investors. In scaling up, loan officers are under tremendous pressure to reach their quotas, often at the expense of due diligence. In other words, loans are given out to borrowers who realistically could never pay them back.

There does appear to be hope, though. One organization is bucking this trend with a more sensible—and just—business model. Akhuwat began in 2001 as an experiment. Its charismatic leader, Dr. Amjad Saqib—a civil servant in a previous life and keen to follow Islamic principles—decided to forego charging interest from borrowers entirely. This decision means several things: he must keep operational costs extremely low and Akhuwat must rely on donations from more prosperous members of society. The fundamental premise of Akhuwat is to establish partnerships between more-affluent and less-privileged citizens. Importantly, donations are also solicited from borrowers who make very modest donations (often 2 cents a day), but who welcome the opportunity to be “givers.”

Akhuwat runs a tight ship. I have visited several offices of Akhuwat, including the head office. In contrast to many other MFIs, where CEOs and CFOs have their own offices in plush buildings, everyone at Akhuwat sits on the floor in a single room. For disbursement of loans and information sessions, Akhuwat uses religious spaces, including mosques and churches. And unlike other MFIs, Akhuwat employees volunteer 20 percent of their time.

Akhuwat’s reliance on local donors means that unlike other donor-dependent MFIs, it is not under pressure to scale up quickly. This means it can do more due diligence and closer monitoring. The absence of interest also means the organization is genuinely seen to help clients rather than fleece them—a common perception of many other MFIs.

Akhuwat’s model is groundbreaking because it challenges deeply entrenched assumptions about economic behaviour—assumptions the entire microfinance edifice rests upon. For example, economists would have us believe that in a case where a single borrower takes out multiple loans, she would pay back the creditor charging the highest interest first. In fact, driven by the desire to keep Akhuwat on their side, many borrowers are returning instalments to Akhuwat first. Moreover, by giving back to the organization, borrowers are developing a strong sense of ownership and self-esteem (in the sense that they are not just borrowers but also donors).

Similarly, rather than financial penalties and threats of destroying social capital (mechanisms on which other MFIs rely), Akhuwat takes advantage of normative pressures connected with religion. Its use of mosques and churches reinforces this while breaking down religious barriers and taboos, such as women and non-Muslims entering mosques. Similarly, the organization invites Muslims into churches. And as Akhuwat tells borrowers they are doing a good deed, there is an expectation that borrowers will help others, and be honest in their dealings and businesses.

Akhuwat, then, represents the best in society: the willingness and enthusiasm of individuals to help others and sacrifice themselves; the moral obligation that comes with religion to help others but not the prejudices; avoidance of any strong-arm tactics; and helping others not just financially but by transforming their world views. In short, it is a model all social entrepreneurs should ignore at their peril.

One of the most interesting new organizations is MASS (Mobilizing Architecture to Serve Society), led by recent Harvard grads Alan Ricks and Michael Murphy. The pair, along with co-founder Marika Shioiri-Clark, now an IDEO.org fellow, built a 150-bed, 60,000-square-foot hospital in rural Rwanda last year with Paul Farmer’s Partners in Health. The Butaro Hospital was constructed by hundreds of local residents and, in the words of design advocate John Cary, writing in GOOD, “is breathtaking for its setting…design, and craftsmanship. It’s a job-creating, people-healing, field-innovating success story with origins in a most unlikely place.”

MASS architects worked in collaboration with infectious disease specialists from Partners in Health and the Harvard Medical School to innovate new ways of laying out and naturally ventilating the hospital, in an effort to reduce the transmission of airborne disease. The design also made use of local materials—most notably, the volcanic rock from the Virunga Mountain Chain—reducing the cost of the hospital to roughly two thirds of what a hospital of this size would typically cost in Rwanda.

Murphy, who received the 2012 Designers of the Year Award from Contract Magazine, a design industry publication, took some time to speak about his work and how it’s progressing the public interest design movement:

Courtney Martin: How is your approach different than previous humanitarian design interventions?

Michael Murphy: While our project is driven and inspired by “humanitarian” and “social” architects, what we learned in Rwanda is that all design has this potential—and architecture should be rated by humanitarian and social principles.

CM: The hospital in Butaro has been held up by many as a success. But success isn’t just about the product—the building itself—but about the process. What are you most proud of about the process that you and your collaborators pioneered?

MM: Building processes are usually not configured to serve communities in the most productive way possible. With Partners In Health, we decided to act locally to serve the community. We thought, How many local laborers could we hire? How many local materials could we use? The result was we hired 12,000 local people, and were able to customize nearly every piece of furniture, every window, and every door on site. That type of complete design has been lost in architecture, but it is completely available if we redesign the process of building.

CM: Buddhists talk about the value of “beginner’s mind”—being largely inexperienced so you don’t eliminate possibilities or accept the status quo. Do you see that quality of mind at work in MASS’ first undertaking?

MM: Of course we were completely naive about how to build a hospital, or even how to build an architecture firm. But that naïveté forced us to dive in, move to Rwanda, and really work closely with the doctors and the community to find the core issues this building needed to address. On the ground, we were able to ask, Can a hospital, the facility itself, also heal patients?

CM: I know you’ve been heavily influenced by radical architects of the past. Tell me a little bit more about that.

MM: There is a long and sometimes buried history of architects committed to articulating the socio-political impacts of design and architecture. Some of the Team Ten architects did this, but chief among them was Giancarlo De Carlo, who was deeply influential in this movement and has been largely forgotten.

CM: What have you learned from the local laborers that you’ve worked with?

MM: The results of hiring only local labor on the hospital project were profound. First, we found we could actually build cheaper and faster than if we’d been forced to import labor and machinery. The second thing we learned was that a locally built job force is like a giant educational and economic engine. We were able to customize much of the hospital, building furniture, details, and intricate stonework because of the close relationship with the laborers. It was a profound lesson that puts into question our increasingly prefabricated methodologies of construction in the U.S.

CM: What is the biggest challenge facing young architects and designers who want to do work for the public good?

MM: I think the most profound challenges are starting and sustaining a practice financially. The public good should, of course, be the goal of any architecture or design firm; however, funding vehicles don’t necessarily follow that logic. Young designers are finding their own strategies. Pro bono is one way. Sponsored research support from larger firms or universities is another. If they can fund a “proof of concept,” for example, often markets and new work follow. The more we can encourage this work, the more diverse and public-focused we can be.

CM: The connection between the homes and buildings we live, work, and heal in and our public health are finally become part of the public dialogue. What do you think is most important about this connection?

MM: Most important is that buildings are not objects, but systems that play a crucial role in providing the services they are meant to house. If we focus only on the “objectness” of buildings, we will fail to see the opportunities to make the building function and perform for its long-term goals. A good example of this can be found with ventilation and airflow. While building the hospital, we realized that too many buildings incubate and cultivate diseases that are killing people, so we focused a lot on designing so that fresh, clear air circulated. If buildings can kill, they can also heal, and our firm is focused on that as our principle mission.

CM: What’s next for MASS?

MM: MASS is getting involved in policy work at USAID, writing a primer for health facilities globally, finishing up a school in Rwanda, and an assessment of the health care delivery program of Cincinnati Children's hospital's Cerebral Palsy program.

It is important that India finds a new model of development—one that does not bank on scarce public and philanthropic capital, and one that ropes in the power and expertise of strong stakeholders, such as the fast-growing India Inc.

The work of social entrepreneurs in India over the last decade exemplifies the power of a business-led development model. Their work has demonstrated that business can “do good” while creating value for itself and that scarce philanthropic capital can and should be used thoughtfully. The microfinance institutions in India fittingly illustrate the significant scale and impact that ingenuous startups can achieve—in 2010, close to 100 million households were accessing microloans. This, however, is not enough; the impacts of social enterprises are often localized, and multiple factors constrain their scale, including lack of access to financing and talent, lack of familiarity with business and scale, and lack of an enabling policy environment. Every conversation we have with a social entrepreneur reveals a rewarding but challenging journey.

Given the magnitude of India’s challenges, it’s imperative that big business gets involved, and that it integrates development and sustainability concerns into its core strategy. Development needs smarter solutions, and greater thought and investment than corporate social responsibility grants can offer. Looking to the poor as consumers, producers, or actors in their value chains will bode well for its long-term value creation. Big business brings distinct strengths, including experience building large-scale value and brands, and deeper pockets. Take the example of Britannia, a food company that incorporated health and affordable nutrition into its business strategy. In 1997, it adopted the corporate mantra “Eat healthy, think better.” It cut out trans-fats, and reduced sodium and sugar levels from its products, and fortified many with iron, vitamins, and micronutrients. Britannia’s popular biscuit brand, Tiger—now fortified with iron—sells 3 billion units every year. A third of its consumers come from households that live on less than US$25 a month.

Such activity today, however, is in its nascence. For big business, the poor are still not a top priority when it comes to market opportunity, and it often struggles to understand or reach them. Many are not ready for a longer-term orientation to value creation and a higher appreciation of innovation needed to do business with the poor. Social entrepreneurs, on the other hand, are adept at creating business models for the poor. Their ground-up models and innovative solutions sync with client needs, whether that’s providing a collateral-free microloan, a portable toilet, or an energy-efficient stove burner. Opportunities exist to combine the strengths of the two for mutual benefit, faster scaling, and greater impact.

There are early examples of what such partnerships can achieve. Fab India, a popular mid-size retail brand in India, collaborates with producer-owned social enterprises across Indian villages, creating significant value to the artisans. One such enterprise, Rangsutra, is owned by 5,000 artisans and reports that artisan incomes have increased two- to three-fold since the partnership. This is still new and unfamiliar territory, and moving forward with these collaborations requires an openness to learn and engage differently. But if done right, they hold the potential to transform millions of poor people into powerful economic actors who can fuel India’s growth.

“Impact investing” is predicted by analysts to become a $500 billion industry. It has been growing in popularity in the past few years, attracting a diverse set of players with a range of expectations regarding financial returns. Across the globe nearly 200 impact investment funds are now registered and many foundations, networks, and mainstream financial institutions are becoming active in this space.

But the growing excitement around the overall market potential and the higher return expectations of some newer entrants raises a number of questions. Are we creating yet another hype based on a bubble filled with good intentions and hope? Are we too narrowly focused on financial markets and thereby missing out on more holistic approaches to support social innovation?

I have the pleasure to chair a group known as the Global Agenda Council on Social Innovation. This council is in a unique position to discuss such questions in a frank and open way. The council, initiated by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship in collaboration with its sister organization, the World Economic Forum and guided by Mirjam Schoening and Katherine Milligan, brings together leading academics in the field of social entrepreneurship, pioneers in impact investing, and globally recognized social entrepreneurs to address some of the most pressing issues facing the impact investing industry. Greg Dees, Jacqueline Novogratz, Alvaro Rodriguez Arregui, Andrea Coleman and Asad Mahmood are just some of the leaders who contribute to this generative effort ensuring that this nascent industry reaches its potential and promise.

In our discussions, a number of issues pop up again and again.

1.Many studies offer unrealistic estimates of the size of the industry, raising expectations beyond what the sector can currently deliver.
2.Despite the current focus on generating returns, subsidized capital from philanthropists or foundations will continue to be critical.
3.Local knowledge is highly underestimated but remains the “x” factor as social needs are related to problems with local root causes.
4.The needs of young social ventures requiring seed capital is largely neglected, indicating that the industry might under-invest in its future pipeline.
5.As more social ventures are involved in traditional capital market operations, there’s an increasing risk of mission drift.
These are just some of the trends identified by our group and that warrant honest debates and interaction among all the stakeholders involved.

My own conclusion for the future of funding social innovation is that we need to consider social and human capital as equally important as financial capital. We need to create a level playing field for investors and investees (social entrepreneurs and their organizations). Investing in the education and knowledge base of both parties will allow us 1) to better understand the nature and types of “risk” involved for investors and investees, 2) to generate new asset classes, investment vehicles and non-financial support activities that are reflective of local realities and challenges on the ground, 3) to develop meaningful schemes for evaluating outcomes and impact and develop fair schemes to compare social enterprises across issue domains and geographies, and 4) to speak with one voice when demanding new regulatory frameworks and legal forms.

I realized, when I arrived, that this group—largely comprised of academics from top institutions—was looking to BRAC to provide practitioner perspective and to help determine what research on innovation to prioritize. Most of the literature on innovation thinks of it as a process, or the assembling of fertile factors, rather than an outcome or orchestrated event (meaning you can’t lock people in a room and tell them they must innovate!). Many factors matter, including the vision and values at the highest level, individual personalities, how meetings are conducted, what behaviors get rewarded, and how learning is captured and shared. And yet there is still no universally accepted definition of social innovation. While one participant recommended spending the day just coming up with a definition, we forged ahead to answer the original question posed to us. Here are some of my reflections on the discussion that followed:

Assumptions matter. All research includes assumptions, including expected potential for change resulting from new knowledge generated by a study. Sometimes assumptions map closely to reality, other times they don’t. Sometimes we don’t know, and to choose prematurely can predispose us to certain findings or strategies. For example, what about our assumption that innovation is a good thing? It comes at a cost—it requires change and some level of risk-taking. There is certainly a danger of jumping for new approaches and solutions when the old ones were just fine, or needed some minor improvements.

Think about translation. And I don’t just mean from English to Bangla or Swahili—I mean from research-speak to practitioner-speak. Practitioners are action oriented; simplicity and ease of adoption are important to them. Researchers often produce “thorough” or “exhaustive” descriptions that capture the complexities of systems and phenomenon but that that few read. What are better ways to get information to leaders of development organizations—information that’s biased towards action?

Stop focusing solely on methods. Researchers worry a lot about methods. At business schools, methods often take second priority to common sense and practice. Take something like the value chain, a tool commonly used to map out all of the primary and secondary activities involved in a production process. Companies use it to determine what configuration of all these activities can produce the best product at the lowest cost, sustainably. No one has rigorously tested how the tool operates, but people keep using it because they find it helpful. I find it helpful! There is a balance to strike between seeing things work empirically and disseminating them, and robustly researching new interventions. Research has limitations and can take time; these are serious issues to consider when we have knowledge of practices that could be scaling up and saving lives.

Ongoing dialog can improve research and practice. I learned a lot from collectively learning and discussing innovation with this group. It’s clear that academics have great interest in understanding what practitioners are doing and in helping them improve their work. This type of collaboration can reveal perspectives and solutions that each group may not see without the other.

As a practitioner focusing on innovation, I’m thrilled at the academic support for this line of inquiry. I’m hopeful that the focus on innovation will extend from the research questions to the methodology, opportunities for dialog and communication, and beyond.

Looked at from a 30,000-foot view, Stanford is the institution being disrupted here, it’s not the institution doing the disrupting.

I doubt that the Stanfords and Harvards of the world are worried about their own business models. As a friend told me, it's a really exciting time to be a first rate university or a first rate teacher, but a terrible time to be a third rate university or third rate teacher. But even if Stanford can be secure in its future, it seems to me lamentable that Stanford isn't leading the way in online learning instead of simply getting out of the way (as is implied in the Salmon piece). On for-profit vs. non-profit: And in response to the question why he organized Udacity as a for-profit venture rather than following his own inspiration, Khan Academy as a non-profit, Thrun said:

"for profit is not forced to make profit. I needed to get people together really fast, and it’s much easier to do that under the ways of a Silicon Valley company."

I wonder what his Silicon Valley VC investors think of his view that for profit is not forced to make profit. Are VCs investing in social returns over financial returns these days?

We took one user need as our focus: how can a woman in Mathare travel from point A to point B while feeling secure and while still retaining some amount of flexibility? If she cannot find others she trusts who can walk with her to her destination, how can she get to the places she needs to go safely?

Our prototype design intended to scale up existing community walking groups by using mobile technology to coordinate safe travel among people who may not personally know each other. If walking in numbers increased the safety of individual residents of the slum as we expected, then maybe we could leverage mobile technology to coordinate group commuting.

The Makmende System

Makmende was conceived as a safe commute system for Mathare residents—a system of citizen-led escort teams that travel commonly used routes within Mathare. Each walking group traverses the route according to a rough schedule, making short stops at frequented areas such as Matatu bus stands, markets, and communal latrines. The escort teams use smartphone technology to keep track of their location and to coordinate with local residents who want to join the walking group.

We developed the system in coordination with the District Officer of Mathare (the equivalent to the mayor for the area) and Mathare Youth Sports Association (MYSA), a well-respected local community organization with a network of more than 25,000 alumni. These partners provided crucial feedback and have pledged their help in implementing the prototype in Mathare.

We determined that the routes may run for only a few hours a day, and planned to conduct surveys and interviews to identify the most used routes. We also wanted to determine the routes with an eye toward avoiding danger zones. In our preliminary research, Mathare residents felt most unsafe during dusk and dawn hours, so we expected that these might be appropriate operating hours.

The Technology Component

Once the routes are in place, GPS tracks the location of each walking group; each escort leader carries a GPS-enabled smartphone. With data transfer rates of only 2-3 Kenyan Shillings (2-3 US cents) per megabyte, we envisioned this as a cheap and nonintrusive method for walking groups to communicate their location information to potential users.

An SMS-based system coordinates escorts with local residents. We create a central system (the “dispatch center”) to keep track of the constantly updating location information. The user simply sends a text message to the dispatch center, then receives a text in return that tells her two things: the schedule of stops along the walking route and the time when the walking group reached its most recent stop.

For example, Jane, our user, sends a text message indicating the route she wants to travel, say “Route A.” She receives a text back, telling her that the walking group last left the church at 12:29pm. The walking group is scheduled to reach the latrine at 12:38 (based on the average walking time between the two stops), the Matatu stand at 12:47, and so on.

Jane knows roughly when the walking group will pass by her “stop,” and if she texts again around 12:50pm, she can get more up-to-date information. She can stay safely inside her home until she knows it is time to walk to the stop and join the walking group. Once Jane joins the walking group, the escorts and other residents using the service act as a deterrent to criminal activity and allow Jane to reach her destination safely. She can depart from the group whenever she likes, and if her final destination is off-route, she may meet someone else in the group going in the same direction and travel with them.

On the backend, each escort’s smartphone runs a custom application built to cover the various escort team tasks. When the group begins a shift, the leader “checks in” to the phone, and the phone begins tracking their location. At the dispatch center, a computer receives the GPS location updates and stores them in a database. These updates are then used to calculate estimated times of arrival at future stops in response to users’ requests.

The computer also tracks which leaders are working which routes at any given time. Once the leaders check in, the app automatically transmits the groups GPS coordinates to the dispatch center as the group is walking. Under normal circumstances, this is all that the escort leader would have to do with the phone. He or she can put it in their pocket while walking the routes, and then check out at the end of the shift.

Our preliminary research showed that most Mathare residents had access to a phone, but that smartphones were typically kept secure at home and not used during commutes. So we created the system for use with the most basic phones. Concerned about users’ different levels of technology literacy, we planned to include questions about phone ownership, usage, and comfort in our pre-pilot survey.

Another technology concern was the cost of SMS. Our preference was to avoid putting any cost on the user, so we proposed a system that covered SMS costs, expecting that we might be able to  negotiate a bulk messaging rate with Safari.com, a major local telecom company.

The Human Factors

Our other concerns centered around human factors. For one, we were dealing in matters of security—sensitive territory. Our class originally planned to partner exclusively with MYSA, but we ultimately reached out to the District Officer of Mathare, who oversees the local police, for safety guidance and support.

The District Officer in Mathare ran a community policing effort already, but it was primarily concerned with local residents secretly giving information on criminals to the police. Makmende—essentially a cross between “neighborhood watch” and a carpool—would not be operating in secret, and we were concerned that criminals may target escorts and users, especially since they were carrying smartphones, walking on predictable schedules, and potentially interfering with criminal activity.

Another concern was vetting potential escorts. The system hinges on reliable and trustworthy escorts leading the walking groups. If escorts did not show up on time or if they deviated from the routes, then the necessary reliability of the routes would be lost. There was also the issue of escorts potentially abusing their role and acting inappropriately to users, or partnering with local criminals.

One solution was to have an initial vetting process run by local women’s groups and community leaders, who could veto any potential escort. From there, all approved applicants would undergo a background check by the police. This two-step examination would ensure that the escorts would be trusted community members.

Another solution was to monitor selected escorts. We planned to offer a middle-class salary (about 7,000 Kenyan Shillings, or 82 US dollars per month), with escorts agreeing in writing to abide by a good behavior code and fulfill expected duties. We also planned to establish a hotline where community members could make anonymous complaints about escorts.

A final idea was to ensure that each escort team had a gender and age balance. We wanted the leaders to reflect the user population. We hoped that with more women and people of different ages as escorts, more community members would use the service.

This is the second in an ongoing series of posts on the Makmende Community Security Initiative. In the next post, the Makmende team will share their findings from their return trip to Nairobi in July, when they connected with partner organizations and administered a baseline survey.

I am a true believer in the power of place as a tool for social impact. I also believe that land advocates and managers are critical leaders in the movement to harness land’s power for impact. We live in an increasingly urbanized and interconnected world. Time, place, and culture impact how we move in the world, where we go, and what we do. Increasingly, our communities are physically and culturally disconnected from land and nature, and from the benefits that come from connecting with both. 

In America today, nearly 80 percent of people live in cities. More than 2 million acres of land are consumed by sprawling development (that’s equivalent to 3,789 football fields every day). Concurrent with this trend, we are experiencing significant increases in obesity and chronic disease, and decreases in air and water quality, which extract draconian human and economic costs.

It is at this crossroads that a visionary and vital “spaces and places” movement can tip the scales, deliver impact, and move from nice to necessary. By understanding and meeting human and community needs, and by effectively communicating relevance and benefits, we can build an effective power of place movement.

Understanding and Meeting Community Needs

Parents, community leaders, public health officials, and environmentalists are concerned about access to healthy food. For 10,000 years our food system was 100 percent organic and nearly 100 percent local. In the last 50 years, it has become an international commodity, often processed beyond recognition and sold far from where it is produced. But the power of place movement is starting to make a difference. In cities across the US—Houston to Brooklyn, Portland to Detroit—communities are turning vacant lots, surplus public land, and school grounds into community gardens. They are creating access to affordable and healthy food while building a connection between people, their food, and the land. But where is the leadership to take this from a set of examples to the way we do things? Is this a role that experts running public gardens, parks, land trusts, and other organizations should take on?

In many cities, access to clean water and air is an increasing concern. Green space, urban foliage, biofiltration, and natural treatment of runoff are all underutilized and cost-effective approaches to treating air and water, and help foster an understanding of how we must change our patterns of use. Can the design, operation, and programming of spaces incorporate more carbon-hungry trees and ways to capture water for reuse? And will that inspire shifts in our expectations, choices, and behaviors related to air and water, which directly impact their quality and conservation?

In just a few generations, we have moved from active to more sedentary lifestyles. Whether it’s our one-stop shopping at superstores rather than walking between shops, or the difference between kids “going out to play” and “having screen time,” the transformation has been dramatic. This must change, and parks, trails, gardens, and open spaces are the key. We need safe and inviting transit corridors to make our daily trips more convenient and fun—corridors we can navigate by foot and bike rather than by internal combustion engine. We need open, green spaces where kids can play and people of all ages can move. Who will provide leadership to ensure that place and space are at the table as part of our public health discourse?

Of course the list of needs that these spaces would serve could go on and on. They would build a stronger sense of community, increase biodiversity—you get the point. Place and connection to land are fundamental to meeting core human and community needs.

Communicating Relevance and Benefits

The greatest barriers to advancing this power of place movement often come down to our own language and frames. Advocates and organizations are often too focused on telling their own story rather than listening to and understanding communities, engaging them, and creating a platform to express their stories. To succeed, we need to focus on several important communication watchwords:

Stakeholders, not audiences: if we treat people as our “audience,” we present to them, offer transactional opportunities, and establish relationships that are often one-way streets. If we see and approach people as stakeholders who have a vested interest in our mission and ownership of the outcomes, we garner investment and commitment, as well as feedback that helps identify solutions.

Engagement, not awareness: Too often our desire in the place-based movement is to build awareness along the lines of, “If only people better understood conservation, the need for parks, etc., they would change their behavior and better support our work.” But what we need is engagement—stakeholders need the agency to express their perspective and vision, to impact decision-making, and to help design the choices and priority setting that managing natural resources and places require.

Listen and lead with alignment to values: By really listening to what people and communities need, and by understanding the values they hold related to open and natural places, we are able to authentically articulate the relevance of place. To capture attention, demonstrate import, and drive action by others, we must meet them where they are and in ways that connect to their priorities and motivators.

Emotion trumps data: In the conservation and place-based arena, we are true believers in the power of science and the ethos of getting the full story before we can arrive at rational decisions. Unfortunately, that is not how most people make decisions. Most of us decide what we are going to do based upon emotion, and then rationalize the choice with data. Luckily, we can connect emotionally about the power of place and provide easy access to the data that backs up our case. Advocates for place have an incredible asset: people already have an emotional connection to land and nature.

Ultimately, we need to consider shifting our focus from building institutions to building a movement that shatters silos. Is our sphere the garden? The park? The nature preserve? Are we really conservationists, preservationists, foresters, land managers, and horticulturalists? Perhaps, but we are also public health champions, community visionaries, and advocates for healthy, sustainable, and meaningful lives and communities. By focusing on meeting broader needs with the power of place, we accomplish our conservation missions, establish our work as an absolute necessity, and build an effective movement.

A remarkable convergence is emerging: as our economies falter, policymakers are embracing entrepreneurship as a potential solution, and the future of our workforce—the young—are eager to get on board. But how will they get there?

Universities are the missing link in entrepreneurship. We are uniquely suited to inspiring the next generation of entrepreneurs and filling the sorely needed entrepreneurial pipeline with talented young visionaries eager to impact the world. Universities have access to Millennials at a very crucial time in their lives, a time in which the knowledge and experiences imparted to them can have far-reaching and, in some cases, life-altering effects.

The demand is there. A Kauffman study conducted during November’s entrepreneurship week found that more than half of Millennials are eager to start their own venture. Fifty-four percent of the nation's Millennials either want to start a business or already have started one. “Millennials recognize,” says Carl Shramm, former president and CEO of Kauffman Foundation, “that entrepreneurship is the key to reviving the economy." The study also revealed that while lack of mentorship and access to capital are mentioned as impediments to starting a business, so is the lack of entrepreneurship education.

Entrepreneur Ricardo Levy attests that the key attributes of successful entrepreneurs include being visionary, being passionate, and being open to risk. Many college students posses all three and are chomping at the bit to apply them in the “real world.”

Imagination flourishes in creative environments and those that foster communication across thematic boundaries. Like lights attracting congregating mosquitoes on hot summer nights, universities are hotbeds for creative interdisciplinary exchanges. A motley of Princeton undergraduate and graduate students from the sciences, finance, sociology, and engineering, for example, joined forces to create an enterprise focused on converting waste to methane in a Karachi landfill. Failure during the project implementation proved to be a valuable learning experience. Some of the students in the initial team are now working on their next entrepreneurial venture, equipped with the important insights that come from stumbling and beginning again.

What better place than a university to develop and foster entrepreneurial dreams at limited risk? Unlike many corporate cultures in which individuals remain exclusively focused on specific tasks, interdisciplinary thinking and team collaborations are not at all anomalies at universities. Interdisciplinary teams form readily as subject lines become hazy and as cross-disciplinary dialogue is encouraged. University settings abound with unique knowledge, resources, vibrant peers, entrepreneurial courses, competitions, co-working spaces, and experiential learning opportunities.

Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, developed her plan to recruit outstanding recent college graduates to teach for two years in America’s neediest urban and rural schools through her senior thesis work at Princeton. Today, Teach for America is widely recognized as one of the most successful social enterprises ever created. Over the last five years alone, 17,500 teachers were recruited into the program.

You may be thinking, aren’t many of the world’s most idealized entrepreneurs college dropouts? Indeed. This past spring, PayPal founder Peter Thiel announced his “Twenty Under Twenty” fellowship, which awarded $100,000 to 24 exceptionally talented young entrepreneurs under the age of 20 who committed to suspend their college education for two years to develop their ventures. It created a media frenzy, but ultimately, Thiel’s fellowship applies to a select group of exceptionally talented entrepreneurs. For the Mozarts of entrepreneurship, Thiel’s program is immensely valuable and certainly adds to the larger entrepreneurial eco-system. However, for the majority of budding entrepreneurs, a university education offers the best way to foster entrepreneurial ambition.

Given the economic crisis and the entrepreneurial renaissance, it would be irresponsible for universities not to step up to the plate. We can provide frameworks to foster entrepreneurship that support students when they are most open to new ideas, passionate about their beliefs, and interested in shaping the world.