On the first day of my summer internship, Jacqueline Novogratz organized a team meeting to discuss her recent trip across Bihar and Bengal. Jacqueline is something of a storyteller, and while I listened to her describe the characters, places and colors she’d encountered, I easily imagined how people lived in rural India, in places I’d never been. She then spoke about the role that Acumen Fund should play in the emerging field of social enterprise. For her, impacting a hundred million lives wouldn’t be enough—we needed to share the idea of patient capital, so that it would be adopted and shared again by others.
I didn’t think about this again until Seth Godin came to speak at the Indian School of Business, two weeks ago, in a fundraising benefit for Acumen Fund.
Prior to the lecture, I’d never heard of Seth Godin before. It was only after I googled his name that I discovered how much I’d really fallen behind on the latest in marketing and sales literature. Seth Godin was a best-selling author, successful entrepreneur and, according to Forbes, some kind of demigod on the Web. He’d been featured not once, but twice, on TED. I was curious to hear what he had to say.
The atmosphere surrounding the Indian School of Business was buzzing in anticipation of the event. The man was well known in this country. We were sitting in the first row of the auditorium when Seth Godin began his talk on leadership, advertising and how ideas spread: Society had moved beyond the age of mass marketing, when companies could effectively barrage our senses with advertisements. In this age of Facebook, iPhones and twitter, the Internet allows us to instantaneously traverse physical boundaries to create our own silos of interest, where we connect with others that share our own values and passions. This is the age of tribes, and in this age, real change happens when we lead and connect people and ideas. It happens when we create networks of interest that, in time, reinforce themselves.
As Seth Godin paced back and forth on stage, encouraging us to tell stories, connect tribes, lead movements and make change, I remembered what Jacqueline said about the role of Acumen Fund in social enterprise. This whole tribe thing was directly related to Acumen Fund and the way it had grown. Here was a company whose investments had yielded great impact on the lives of many people and, in the process, had learned to tell a story like no other. Acumen Fund’s mission connected people across the world who felt the same way about global poverty. It banded together people who desired a refreshing solution. The evidence could be seen in the growing membership of the Acumen community, the budding Blue Sweater book clubs, this very blog. I could understand the link between Acumen Fund and Seth Godin.
The audience at the Indian School of Business seemed to enjoy the lecture. When it ended, there was no shortage in thought-provoking questions—one student asked about the relevance of a Western-centric marketing message in the context of a developing nation such as India. For me, I thought back to that first day. Maybe this is what Jacqueline meant: In order for the idea of patient capital to truly scale, we need to build and reinforce the global community of social enterprise by telling stories of both its successes and failures. If it’s done right, the whole thing becomes a movement.
Ken Lee is a student at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs pursuing his Master’s in International Affairs. This summer, he is working on the energy portfolio in Acumen Fund’s India office.
The Summer Spotlight series features posts by Acumen Fund Summer Associates from around the world.
