In June 2011, I came up with three predictions for Socent and Impact Investment, scroll down below for an update. In the meantime, here is my mid-year prediction for 2012.
It was in conversation with a very interesting facilitator that I named three things that if we could do them better would make a huge positive impact on the world.
- Better facilitation
- Integrated decision-making
- More confluence
Better facilitation
There is a growing consciousness and awareness around how we communicate with each other, how we interact to solve problems together, and how we behave in situations of conflict. I keep meeting caring, sensitive, aware people who have the art and skill of facilitating group discussions and interactions. This is going to be a great shift from the solely self-interested mentality to one that moves gracefully between self-interest and interest in others.
Integrated decision-making
Since 2007, I have been guiding my own decisions in work and life (inter-woven, not separate) with an integrated approach that uses my emotion, intuition, body, and analysis. Science evidences that we use our emotions to make decisions alongside analysis. Many people will name intuition and their bodies as signals and guides for decision-making. To help us navigate through the complexity in the world, we need to be using our whole selves and all of the tools and receptors available to us to make decisions.
More confluence
We have all experienced confluence – the coming together of two or more people, each with their own ideas, experiences, skills, and gifts, working together, collaborating, co-operating, taking action along a common path. It may be enduring or it may be fleeting. Sometimes we sense there could be confluence, but others don’t see it, the moment passes and no action is taken. If we can increase confluence, imagine the amplification of our collective skills and gifts, imagine what we could accomplish. Confluence, as my friend David Pinto once described, requires the communication of intent, matching complementary skill sets, and having the right conditions needed to act together. People on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean have been playing with different models or platforms to create more confluence.
So my predictions this year are:
- Better facilitation
- Integrated decision-making
- More confluence
What happened with the 2011 predictions?
Prediction: More socents breaking $1m in sales. Status: I can’t say I’ve seen tons of headlines announcing this breakthrough, but there does seem to be more attention towards supporting established and growing social purpose businesses and not just startups. Take for instance the Vancity Community Foundation’s initiative to finance women-led businesses for growth. However, there is still a lot of attention to startups or are startups getting boring?
Prediction: Finding a way to do more small deals faster. Status: The popularity of Crowdfunding echos this sentiment rather than solves it. There are still some changes to be made around legislation and more importantly how investors can discern amongst crowdfunded opportunities and make appropriate investment decisions.
Prediction: Digital/ IT/ tech in the socent space. Status: We still talk a lot about tech in Vancouver and tech-based ventures can potentially have a global reach. Here are some examples of tech-based ventures that have a social mission flavour:
- http://publicforums.com/about-us/evolition
- http://weeve.it/
- http://www.givingly.net/
- http://www.foodtree.com/
- http://www.place2give.com/
- http://www.thesojo.net/
However, there are still a lot of non-tech ventures that deliver products and services that are needed or desired. We need to be thinking about how to invest in these businesses and support them to thrive.
