Tag: Social Venture Commons

Building on my previous posts about the Social Venture Commons here’s a draft overview of what’s been brewing. This venture is one part of my trio to support the ventures working from the new mode of organizing I see emerging. The two other pieces are the micro-funds (presentation coming soon) which is a modified version of early-stage venture/angel investing and a social capital learning project (in development for a trio of venture networks) based in part on the thinking here.

Ping me directly if you are interested in learning more – and if you have comments on the presentation below please add them to this post.

Expanding on my previous post on micro-funds and the social venture commons, here are few more pieces on what I see being the core elements of the Social Venture Commons.

First, I see the commons containing three interdependent realms:

• conversations
• connections
• accomplishments

Accomplishments are the product and desired outcomes of every venture. They are also a great catalyst of conversation. Conversation, in turn, is a great catalyst of connections – connections to ideas, resources, people etc. And connections, in turn, catalyze accomplishments – new resources to help get things done better, faster, etc. Of course it’s not that linear but I do sense a compelling interrelationship and even flow there.

From the participant perspective I see the main players are:

• ventures (those tackling issues directly, those that invest in those ventures, and those that serve them)
• individuals (those that are directly involved in the ventures, and those that are individually engaged or interested in ventures or their accomplishments)

A the center of this is this idea of portfolios. Ultimately, whether you are a venture or individual in any of the above category, you are building a portfolio of accomplishments. These can be accomplishments that you are interested in and those that are you are contributing to. It’s much more granular than the organizational level and if the connections and conversations link back to the accomplishments it could be a very interesting ‘portfolio’ incredibly rich with meaning and relevance to the ‘owner’.

The pracitcality of how this will unfold will emerge over time – from doing more than anything – but this seems like a good starting point.  There are also a couple of other core components that are operationally important to engage or nurture the connection between key players in the community. These include things like facilitating the creation of ‘forum groups’ – a central component of the Entrepreneur Commons and other networks like Enterpreneur’s Organization, Young President’s Organization, and World President’s Organization. And for investors (of all kinds) there is the ‘transaction commons’ with resources to support efficient and cost-effective investment transactions. While important I think they seem to be subsets of this overarching rationale – a rationale that seems new but comfortable for me.