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An incubator program and consulting group for early-stage impact entrepreneurs.

Gift and Social Enterprise: An Interview with Mark Sampson (The Distillery Podcast)

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Shari Oosting, host of Princeton Theological Seminary’s podcast, The Distillery, recently interviewed Mark Sampson from Matryoshka Haus. We think it’s definitely worth sharing with you!

Listen to the Interview

Titled “Gift and Social Enterprise,” the episode description reads:

The lines between business and charity are dissolving, and a new category—social enterprise—is emerging. In this episode, Mark Sampson explains that the Church is not immune to the effects of this shift. Yet, he believes that the language of gift and reciprocity enables Christians to imagine creative new economic possibilities and engage with their communities through enterprise.

We hope you’ll give it a listen!

The Distillery podcast explores the essential ingredients of book and research projects with experts in their field of study. It is a production of Continuing Education at Princeton Theological Seminary and is hosted on The Thread. 

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The Hard Truth about Innovative Cultures (Harvard Business Review)

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We recently read this abstract from an article by Gary Pisano in the Harvard Business Review, and it makes some excellent points about the realities of the behaviors that produce great innovative performance! We think you’ll find it helpful. You can read the full article here.

Innovative cultures are generally depicted as pretty fun. They’re characterized by a tolerance for failure and a willingness to experiment. They’re seen as being psychologically safe, highly collaborative, and nonhierarchical. And research suggests that these behaviors translate into better innovative performance. But despite the fact that innovative cultures are desirable, and that most leaders claim to understand what they entail, they are hard to create and sustain. That’s because the easy-to-like behaviors that get so much attention are only one side of the coin. They must be counterbalanced by some tougher and frankly less fun behaviors: an intolerance for incompetence, rigorous discipline, brutal candor, a high level of individual accountability, and strong leadership. Unless the tensions created by this paradox are carefully managed, attempts to create an innovative culture will fail.

From Harvard Business Review, “The Hard Truth about Innovative Cultures,” Gary Pisano (Dec. 31, 2018), abstract. A version of the linked article appeared in the January–February 2019 issue (pp.62–71) of Harvard Business Review.

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Where Are They Now: Jenifer Meyer and In A Pinch

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A month ago at one of our Hatchathons, Jenifer Meyer hatched the idea to provide emergency kits for families taking in foster children–a gap that often goes unfilled, leaving foster families scrambling to provide for the children’s immediate basic needs. Today, just a month later, her nonprofit is called In A Pinch, and it’s functioning to meet those needs!

In her 3/17/2018 blog post, Jenifer describes her whirlwind journey, from verbalizing her idea to friends over coffee on a Tuesday—one of whom was helping with Hatchathon, encouraged her to go, and signed her up—to attending Hatchathon on Thursday through Saturday that same week.

She also shares a video of her Hatchathon presentation (watch it below—her presentation was “messy” in the first round, she says, but she made it through as one of four groups chosen to present in Hatchathon’s “Festival of Dangerous Ideas.”) In her presentation, she mentions plans to make a whiteboard explainer video to raise awareness of the project and how people can help. That whiteboard video is also now a reality, and you can watch it below too!

This is a thing. It’s a real life tangible thing. They gave me money. This is happening. I’m starting a ministry to help foster kids. It’s called In A Pinch. Guys. Pinch me.

If you’d like to support In A Pinch, please click the DONATE button below.

Hatchathon Presentation

Whiteboard Explainer Video


 

If you’re interested in attending a Hatchathon to help hatch your hare-brained idea for ministry, registration will open soon for the next one, which will be in Knoxville, MD on November 8-10, 2018!

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Three New Resources: Innovation

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We’ve been highlighting useful resources available here on our website, and we’re excited to share this selection of three resources on innovation with you!

The Wagon Wheel Excercise

The Wagon Wheel Excercise, an innovation excercise for both youth and adults, is a great resource by our very own Kenda Creasy Dean and Mark DeVries. There’s a version for youth and one for adults, with both versions containing the same information–only the text box color is different. Both provide instructions for an innovation-stimulating activity in which people group themselves in a wagon wheel formation of two concentric circles, then ask and answer questions about themselves and their ideas as one of the circles rotates.

You’ll find these resources here:
Wagon Wheel Excercise: Youth
Wagon Wheel Excercise: Adult

Types of Innovation

This resource explores four types of innovation: architectural, radical, disruptive (“stealth”), and incremental. It gives examples of each, then challenges you to locate your place (or your organization’s, or your idea’s place) on a graph quadrant of the four types.

You’ll find this resource here:
Types of Innovation

Stay tuned for more resources to be highlighted in the weeks to come!

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New Resource: The Marshmallow Challenge

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Need to kickstart a meeting, get a team into a creative frame of mind, or simply encourage your organization to think about what it takes to dramatically increase innovation? Invest 45 minutes to run a marshmallow challenge! We’ve just added this great resource by Tom Wujec of Autodesk and Peter Skillman of Microsoft to our website for you to view and/or download. Its lesson is that we need to identify the assumptions in our project – the real customer needs, the cost of the product, the duration of the service – and test them early and often. That’s the mechanism that leads to effective innovation.

You can download the resource (photos of teams in the process of doing the challenge and .pdf slides of the presentation) here, and step-by-step instructions are available on Tom Wujec’s site here.

(Please note: a URL link to marshmallowchallenge.com mentioned in the resource was not working at the time this was posted. See Tom Wujec’s site instead for information.)

Stay tuned for more resources to be added in the weeks to come!

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