Sandbox

Weekly Inspiration #26: Making Ideas Happen

March 10th, 2010 by Paul Gleger

Last week, Sandbox gave a keynote address and hosted a ‘Social Entrepreneurship’ workshop at the Ivy Leadership Summit at Yale University.  Preparing for the conference, we wanted to do things a little different.  We were asked to share our thoughts on ‘Fearless leadership.’  Instead, we argued the term is misleading.  Observing the Sandbox community,  we made the case that leaders aspiring to change the status quo must fear something.  Sandbox members would point out three fears in particular:

1. The fear of not having an impact.
2. The fear of doing something they are not genuinely passionate about.
3. The fear of being ‘normal’.

To help participants truly engage with our message, we invited everyone to a Sandbox workshop on Social Entrepreneurship.  Our goal was to demonstrate that it’s not only possible to create and act on atypical ideas that have meaningful impact, but it’s actually a lot of fun.  We prepared four general topics in areas such as  promoting good, improving education, raising awareness of homelessness, and improving remittance payments for migrant workers.

With these topics, we formed four groups and encouraged participants to choose a cause they felt most passionate about.  We limited brainstorming time to 30 minutes, asking for a plan with concrete actionable steps that would bring the idea to life.  Here is what happened in less than 30 minutes:

1. Bikes for Cambodia: Moderated by Nettra Pan, the group came up with an effective way to address education and transportation improvement in Cambodia.  The Idea: In rural areas of Cambodia, transportation is rudimentary while schools are distributed widely, making it difficult for thousands of kids to attend school.  The group wants to provide bicycles for children in Cambodia, in this way boosting school attendance.  The group plans to create bicycle rental centers at schools in a given village, through which children will borrow bicycles for a small fee.  Bike companies and individual donors will ‘adopt’ school zones by donating money and equipment (bicycles).  To learn more please join the Facebook Fan page here.

2. Karma Points: Moderated by Fabian Pfortmuller.  The group came up with a way to promote good deeds through an online platform, involving both individual and corporate ‘good doers’.  The idea: Create a network of people who enjoy giving back to the community.  On this platform people will be recognized and rewarded for their day-to-day acts of kindness and compassion.  Companies will donate goods and services that will be awarded based on Karma points.  To learn more please join the the Facebook Fan page here.

3. Sleep in their Shoes: Moderated by Danielle Tomson, the group came up with a way to raise awareness of homelessness while raising money that helps local shelters.  The Idea: Students across the US camp out in their university quads or nearby public parks.  Each student seeks sponsorship from friends/family/companies.  The act will raise awareness and sponsorships will help local shelters.  Students from several universities are putting the plan into action.  To learn more please join the the Facebook Fan page here.

4. Air Cash: Moderated by Paul Gleger, the group brainstormed ways to improve expensive and sometimes unreliable cross border remittance payments sent by millions of migrant workers.  The Idea: create (or expand existing) text message based mobile money transfers.  The idea can first be tested in small towns and university campuses.  The group plans to then scale the user-friendly model into larger markets.  The bigger idea is to create a standard ‘air cash’ mobile currency that is trusted, easily transferred, and recognized as legitimate payment.  The team is currently researching the topic, will develop it further for a university business plan competition, and will connect with a telecom operator in Zimbabwe (thanks to one of team members) to learn more about mobile networks and payments.  To learn more please join the the Facebook Fan page here.

It was exciting to see our keynote message put into action.  From feedback we realized hands on workshops are preferred over traditional panels – after all, learning comes from doing, not just talking.  We also noticed that constrained brainstorming time leads to impressive levels creativity (as we’ve probably all experienced writing term papers last minute We were thrilled to receive positive feedback from participants and we hope to conduct similar workshops in the near future.  What topics should we tackle next? How can we make the workshops even better? Let us know!