The Super Happiness Challenge!

Investors Panel

A friend forwarded me a link to a pitch session yesterday morning, and as I’m in networking mode, trying to find an amazing job, I signed up and attended. I didn’t know much about the event before I arrived and the first thing that struck me was that all of the folks pitching had startups that did good things, that aimed to make the world a better place by increasing what Project Heha calls “Super Happiness.”

I’ve been to quite a few pitch sessions, and this was by far the most inspirational pitch session I’ve ever been to. I was brought to the point of tears many times over the course of the afternoon. To see so many people trying to do good in the world in one place was humbling and quite inspirational. 

The Super Happiness Challenge was an international competition that started accepting applications in May 2017.  There were two tracks, an Idea Track, and a Startup track.  Five finalists came from as far away as Iceland and Africa to pitch. The event was hosted by GSV Labs, great people with an amazing space.

From my perspective, the winners in both categories were obvious choices, and the judges had difficulty deciding, especially between the grand prize and runner-up prizes.

All one needed to enter the idea track: “The idea track is open to individuals who have an innovative, creative solution that promotes happiness.” Most of the idea track entries were pretty far along. Many had apps or significant achievements. The winner, Smart Garbage Medical Insurance, created a micro-insurance system where slum residents in Tanzania collect plastic refuse, which widely pollutes the slum, it’s collected monthly, and turned into plastic timber, which is sold to make things like decks and fences. The proceeds go to buying insurance. So far, they have insured 75 families!  It’s a triple win, people most at risk get insurance, the environment is improved, and a new building material that is much more resilient than wood is created. What an innovation! 

To enter the startup track, one needed to, have a startup along the same lines. All of the startup entries were impressive, not just from their ability to do good but also from their viability. The winner, WeFarm.org, blew the top of my head off!  They have created the world’s largest farmer to farmer digital network.  They have over 420,000 farmers connected in Kenya, all via SMS.  Farmers are rated, and AI is used to connect folks who have questions to those who can answer them. We are talking about folks who have, until now, no access to the internet and no way to communicate outside their personal networks. WeFarm is also using this service to sell supplies like seeds and insurance and plans on a peer to peer market soon.

For those of you who don't understand how big a deal this is, 80% of the folks in Africa have cell phones, and only 30% of the population has internet. Similar numbers exist for other developing regions. This demographic represents the biggest opportunity for service providers, eCommerce, and social media worldwide. It’s a nearly untapped market, and luckily the brilliant folks at WeFarm are using their foresight for good.

I’d take a job at any of the companies that presented at whatever they could pay me. They were that good and got me that fired up.

This is the brainchild of Project Heha, started by Sammy Lee.  Sammy took the idea of propagating sustainable happiness to new levels and, in the course of doing so, has created a multinational, multibillion-dollar company.  The phrase, “a rising tide lifts all boats,” was never truer. 

We need more of this in the world! 

A Lean, Mean, Innovation Machine!

Want to increase innovation? Employee engagement? Lower turnover and create a workforce that is focused on solving problems. In his new book, The Bright Idea Box: A Proven System to Drive Employee Engagement, Jag Randhawa tells us how.

If you only have time to read one book and your business needs a booster shot for innovation and engagement, this is the book you need. 

This photo was shared under the Creative Commons Attribution License and has been taken from Tsahi Levent-Levi’s Flickr photo stream.

It’s a lean book that is easy to read. It has just enough information for anyone to understand why building a bottom-up innovation program is important, how to get buy-in, how to implement the program, and ensure its success! Better yet, it can be done with the smallest of budgets. 

I’ve read many books on innovation and employee engagement, but this is the first one that ties it all together and gives us the plan to make it happen in our businesses. 

This is a “how to” book with just enough theory to launch the innovation program. 

I work for an internet marketing startup, and after reading the first chapter, I was going to use the information in this book to inject innovation into our team’s DNA. I’m going to create innovation training in conjunction with our Bright Idea Box Program, based on this book and my other research, books like: Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson, and The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work by Theresa Amabile and Steven Kramer. 

The book is written in 3 parts:

Part One - The Innovation

Part Two - The Program

Part Three - The Engagement

Jag breaks down business innovation into four categories: 

Revenue Generation 

Cost Reduction 

Business Process

Business Model.

“The results of innovation can emerge as a new or improved product, a new management strategy, lowered cost, added convenience for customers, or selling existing products in new ways or to new markets,” says Jag. When my team talks about innovation, it normally pertains to new products, niches, or marketing ideas. We overlook some places that have huge potential, like improving business processes. 

Things like business processes and adding value for customers often get overlooked because they’re not sexy. 

How much better would things work if everyone was thinking about improving the way we work instead of just the people whose job it is? Reframing innovation like this is hugely helpful. 

Taking advantage of research in neuroscience, Jag uses chunking to help us to remember the steps necessary to implement our innovation program using the acronym MASTER:

Mobilize- Get people involved

Amass- Collect Ideas

Support- Assuring commitment

Triage- Screen Ideas

Execute- Implement Ideas

Recognize- Recognize team members  

Jag says, “Innovation = Invention + Execution + Adoption” in other words, ideas without implementations are like seeds that get planted but never watered and tended to. It’s not enough to have good or even great ideas. They have to be captured, evaluated and, if they are worthy, implemented.

The author shows us how to get buy-in from executives, managers, and team members. He suggests we should hire partners, not employees. This is crucial for maximizing team engagement. 

Question: In a bacon-and-egg breakfast, what’s the difference between the Chicken and the Pig?

Answer: The Chicken is involved, but the Pig is committed!

One of the best ways to engage team members is to raise their level of commitment. Be the pig! Be committed. When people are empowered and supported to make potentially staggering contributions to the company's success, they are much more likely to be committed.  

The author also gives us a great way to filter out ideas that don’t add value to the business. When an idea is submitted four questions must be answered: 

1. What is the name of the idea:

2. Description:

3. Benefits:

4. Cost-Benefit Rationale:

The first two are no-brainers, the third is necessary, and the last is gold! Requiring your team to answer these questions makes them think their idea through and sends half-baked ideas back for more development. Anyone who participates in the program will learn how to do a cost/benefit analysis. In other words, they will learn to think like business owners!

This is easily the best business book I’ve read in the last year. If your team lacks engagement, like 74% of employees in the United States, and innovation is something they hear mentioned in the news, you might want to give this book a read and put its ideas to good use. 

Can ROWE and 20% Time Help your Company Through the Recession?

This is not the time to freak out. It’s a time of reflection and introspection for companies and individuals. It’s a great time to ask, “why are we here?” Are we in the right market? Are our customers delighted with our products and services? It’s a great time to do research and design, and it’s a great time to start something new.

If your company spends most of its efforts reducing costs, it might not survive. Granted, reducing costs and keeping them in line with income is a sound business practice. As long as you’re not creating a stressful workplace for what’s left of your employees. Cutting costs is a short-term fix. It will help that quarter’s earnings, but it will not make or break the company in the long run.

So what things can a company do now to get through the recession? How about hiring some fantastic folks? With so many people unemployed, talented folks are looking for work. Hire them and find something interesting for them to do. It seems counterintuitive to hire in a down market, and it certainly won’t lower expenses in the short term, though it’s a hirer’s market, now is a great time to find new talent. Getting the right folks on the bus is just as crucial as getting the wrong ones off the bus. One great way to do this is to institute a Results Only Work Environment (ROWE). Doing this will increase productivity and employee engagement while dramatically reducing turnover. Yes, this works for sales organizations as well. One of the hallmarks of a ROWE is that it becomes readily apparent who the performers/nonperformers are. Results measure everyone.

Invest in R&D. Right now. You should be positioning yourself for what happens when the market goes back up. INNOVATE! What better way to motivate those new hires than to roll out 20% time? Let your employees work on whatever they want 20% of the time as long as it’s unrelated to their normal jobs. At least consider 5% or 10% time. This is where the Post-It Note and Gmail came from. 

The importance of transparency cannot be overstated. Uncertainty about one’s fate is stressful. Let your employees know what’s happening with the company and encourage them to participate in challenges. Semco, a Brazilian company, let’s the workers they plan to lay off participate in the process. This increases employee loyalty and decreases stress around layoffs. According to Victor Frankl in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, the most harmful thing to concentration camp victims’ hope was not knowing when their captivity would end. It’s more stressful to show up to work every day wondering if this is the day I get the ax than to know I have six weeks until my job ends. I went through the layoff saga 18 months ago, and it was hell.

So stop spinning, take stock and make changes that help your company and customers. Prepare for the next upcycle, and don’t lose sight of your employees' importance. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you have a captive audience, so you don’t have to make an effort. If you do, you might find your retention bottoms out when the economy recovers.   

Monoculture is Death

If life is diverse, then monoculture is death, if not just dead boring. Can you say potato famine? Up to 1.5 million people died because of a monoculture! With crops, companies, or cultures, a lack of diversity is never a good idea. My girlfriend is a foodie, and we were watching a Michael Pollan documentary, The Botany of Desire, a few nights ago. I learned that 99.9 % of apple orchards in the west are monocultures. They don’t grow from seeds but from cloning – watch the movie or read the book if you want to know more. We have similar issues with potatoes; most potatoes in the US are the same strain. Why is this bad? 

If you grow a crop without sexual reproduction, you’ve cut out evolution from the growing process. Which means you get reliable and predictable results, not bad right? The bad part is that the things that are trying to eat your crops, molds, bacteria, insects, and other pests, are evolving. Since all of the crops in a field, a town, or in some cases, the entire country are the same, one effective pest could kill the entire crop nationwide before anyone had time to react.

We use pesticides to keep these pests away from our crops. There are farms and orchards that are diversifying their crops, but not many, and some people are using GMO crops to introduce evolutionary advantages to mono-crops. Most of these folks are beholding to big agra and have to grow what makes the most profit.

I’m using crops as a metaphor. The same is true for cultures and companies. When a company is run in a command-and-control fashion, a mono-leadership is making most of the decisions. Companies that run this way have built-in limitations that restrict their sustainability. Diversity of leadership and vision lead to transparency and innovation. 

After reading Steven Johnson's new book, Where Good Ideas Come From, I started thinking about connecting the monoculture issue we have in the farming industry with issues we are having with businesses. The book contrasts evolution with innovation and draws many parallels between Mother Nature’s and human innovation - striking similarities. 

Innovation is a Virus

Patent holders have told us, primarily large corporations, that intellectual property rights encourage innovation.  Copyright laws have been extended from 14 years to up to life plus 70 years. Competition is said to accelerate creativity. Do these ideas serve innovation or corporate greed? 

As an artist, I know that creativity is iterative. It’s built upon lots of versions, ever-changing, and constantly informed by the creative works of others. Art begets art. If you try to create art in a vacuum, you may get results, but you’ll get better results if you study art history and exchange ideas, techniques, or critiques with others. The more open we are, the more likely we are to be exposed to a wide variety of ideas and to see the big picture. Compartmentalization does not work very well for spreading ideas.   

We have this romanticized idea that innovation is the child of singular genius and that some few of us have an almost magical gift to have aha Moments – it makes for a better story.  Steven Johnson, in his new book, Where Good Idea’s Come From: The Natural History Of Innovation, tells us that Innovation is more likely to come from a network of people working intrinsically than from a single person working for profit. We have singular geniuses among us, but they are the exception, not the rule. 

People working together for the love of the work innovate at a higher rate because they are more focused on innovation than making money. Copyrights, patents, and corporate security act as barriers to creativity to protect wealth. Johnson doesn’t argue against intellectual property rights, he just recognizes that they can get in the way of propagating new ideas. Putting walls around innovation is like quarantining someone with an infectious disease. It keeps ideas from spreading. 

Innovation is like a beneficial virus. The more an idea spreads, the greater chance of its surviving and thriving.  If it survives, propagates, and mutates, more exciting things and failures will result.  The road to innovation is paved with mistakes. The best ideas, according to Johnson, come from the Adjacent Possible, from the edge of what is now possible, not from giant leaps forward.

More innovation has come from informal talks at coffee houses than brainstorming sessions.  As Johnson says, “All of the patterns of innovation we have observed in the previous chapters… do the best in open environments, where ideas flow in unregulated channels.”