The Phoenix Economy50 Pioneers in the Business of Social Innovation

V O L A N SThe Business of Social Innovation

Contents

Forewords

Executive Summary

1.0 Introduction1.1 Entering the Discontinuity1.2 The Surveys

2.0 Paradigm Shift2.1 The ‘Pathways to Scale’ Model2.2 The Phoenix Paradigm2.3 Surprises

3.0 2009 Survey Results3.1 Weathering the Storm

The downturn has hit funding—butentrepreneurs are confident that, as the shake-out continues, necessitywill mother invention.

3.2 Upgrading the Business CaseAlthough entrepreneurs see growth inthe need for their services, the marketresearch informing their businesscases needs to be strengthened.

3.3 Evolving the ‘Ecosystem’Entrepreneurs recognize the need tobe part of ‘ecosystems of change’—and to map and pursue ‘pathways to scale’.

3.4 Bridging the Macro-Micro DivideThere is an urgent and growing needto converge bottom-up with top-downapproaches—to span the micro andmacro levels of change.

3.5 Delivering ‘Government-as-Unusual’Entrepreneurs expect government toplay a central role in shapingmarkets—but want to help provide‘government-as-unusual’.

4.0 The Phoenix Agenda4.1 The Phoenix Manifesto for

Political Leaders and Governments 4.2 The Phoenix Prospectus for

Business Leaders 4.3 The Phoenix Syllabus for

Business Educators

5.0 PioneersThe Phoenix 50 ListNotes

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50 x 7.2º = 360º

Volans Foreword

Darwin lives, in the sense that natural selectionpressures are working across global markets in powerful new ways. In 2009, we seem to beat one of those infrequent economic tippingpoints, also experienced in years like 1919,1929, 1939 and 1989. Among other things,the current economic discontinuity is forcing a profound reassessment of public and private sector investment in areas such ascorporate responsibility and sustainabledevelopment—all at a time when climatechange and global inequalities are reachingcritical limits and demanding urgent attention.The uncomfortable reality is that we still have a great deal to do if the new century’schallenges are to be addressed effectively, in time and at the necessary scale.

It may be understandable, but disproportionateeffort continues to be lavished on shoring upthe dinosaurs of the old order, rather thaninvesting in the new pioneers, who are workinghard—and often against the odds—toincubate and scale market solutions essentialfor a sustainable future.

In this report, we aim to show that a newPhoenix Economy is, nonetheless, self-assembling—focused on providing social andenvironmental solutions, where markets andgovernments have failed. If the pioneers of thePhoenix Economy are to succeed, they will stillneed substantial assistance from governments,foundations, investors and businesses, and we identify urgent opportunities for facilitation,collaboration and support. We also celebrate a roll call of the Phoenix 50 pioneers in thebusiness of social innovation, nominated byentrepreneurs and other stakeholders.

Please note that this is a report to—not by—the Skoll Foundation. We are profoundlygrateful to the Skoll team for their support, but underscore the fact that they only saw the text of the report at a very late stage. In future years, we plan to broaden out ourcoverage to a Phoenix 500, with change-makers themselves driving the selection andassessment processes. Please help ustowards that goal by commenting on ourversion 1.0. E-mail us at phoenix@volans.com

John ElkingtonCo-founder of SustainAbility (1987) and Co-founder of Volans (2008)

Alejandro LitovskyHead, Pathways to Scale Program, Volans

Charmian LoveChief Operating Officer, Volans

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John Elkington Alejandro Litovsky Charmian Love

Skoll Foundation Foreword

Seismic change is clearly underway, with thecollapse of global financial markets threateningto make already critical challenges—climatechange, water scarcity, geopolitical instability—much worse. But times of upheaval are alsotimes of opportunity, as this latest report fromour partners at Volans and SustainAbilitymakes clear.

A new generation of entrepreneurs, togetherwith old warriors fighting the good fight, is coming up with big, bold ideas andexceptional innovations that light the wayforward. Growing Opportunity (2007), the firstreport in this series for Skoll, charted the rise of an emerging breed of social and environ-mental entrepreneurs. The second report, The Social Intrapraneur (2008), revealed theinside story of transformative practicesunderway in mainstream corporations. Against the backdrop of a global economy in crisis, The Phoenix Economy breaksimportant ground once again, identifying theentrepreneurial organizations whose workspeaks to a new order emerging from theashes.

The report you hold in your hands also makesclear how tackling the Bull and Bear markets—that have dominated our ideas of valuecreation in recent decades—demands that we slay the dragon of fear and convention.Once again, John Elkington and his team giveus good reason to hope. The Skoll Foundationis proud to support this pioneering researchand trusts you will find the achievements andambitions of ‘The Phoenix 50’ bothprovocative and inspiring.

Sally OsbergPresident, Skoll Foundation

SustainAbility Foreword

In our 20 years experience of analysing and advising companies on sustainabledevelopment, SustainAbility has found that a‘burning platform’ is often a prerequisite forradical action. Be it Shell’s Brent Spar or BP’sColombia experience, it took an unwelcome—and unexpected—shock to the corporatesystem to lead to an overhaul of business asusual. In this seminal year we see burningplatforms everywhere.

Throughout the economy—from high financeto manufacturing—companies are fighting forsurvival. What their leaders decide now willdetermine not only their organisation’s fate, but that of the market system as a whole. The stakes are high and leaders acrossgovernment and business face an opportunityto re-frame the terms of the debate. Winner-takes-all business models—concentratingwealth in the hands of a few or depleting our natural resources in the pursuit of profits—no longer hold credibility.

But, what will take their place? The PhoenixEconomy introduces us to an inspiring groupof changemakers whose bravery and visionmay just be sufficient to blaze sustainablepathways out of the economic maelstrom. This compelling report highlights opportunitiesthat—if sufficiently supported and scaled—could contribute to economic re-birth. We look forward to continued work with Volans and the Skoll Foundation to supportpromising innovators and entrepreneurswherever they may be found.

Maggie BrennekeMark LeeSophia TickellSustainAbility

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Sally Osberg Mark Lee Sophia TickellMaggie Brenneke

Net Impact Foreword

Many Net Impact members may beexperiencing market conditions that are unique in their (often short) working lifetimes,but The Phoenix Economy underscores thefact that times of crisis are also times ofopportunity. Net Impact is pleased to havebeen involved in selecting the first round of the Phoenix 50—and we look forward tocontinuing the conversation on how we canextend the discussion and the joint working, to build a new order from the ashes of the old.

Liz MawExecutive Director, Net Impact

UNEP Foreword

Recent work by UNEP on sustainable venturesand entrepreneurial partnerships in developingcountries has highlighted the need to have agood understanding of market conditions. This is all the more critical today, as marketconditions are changing rapidly. It is both atime of crisis and opportunity, as we work with governments, business and others on the greening of economic bailouts and ‘NewDeal’ packages.

The Phoenix Economy is a useful reminder that this is a multi-dimensional challenge. It helpfully spotlights some of the marketpioneers now developing the entrepreneurialmindsets, technologies and business modelsneeded to drive the necessary scale ofchange.

UNEP looks forward to working with Volansand others in engaging leading innovators and‘superpreneurs’ across the spectrum of issuesand potential solutions identified in this report.We welcome the prospect to convene thesechampions and help build a ‘voice’ for theiragenda in the worlds of government policy-making and investment.

Sylvie LemmetDirector, United Nations EnvironmentProgramme (UNEP) Division of Technology,Industry and Economics

Disclaimer Designations employed and thepresentation of material in this publication donot imply the expression of any opinionwhatsoever on the part of UNEP or otherVolans partners concerning the legal status ofany country, territory, city or area or of itsfrontiers or boundaries. Moreover, the viewsexpressed do not necessarily represent thedecision or the stated policy of UNEP or otherVolans partners, nor does citing of tradenames or commercial processes constituteendorsement.

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Liz Maw Sylvie Lemmet

Executive Summary 4

A new economic order is risingfrom the ashes—and a newgeneration of innovators,entrepreneurs and investors is accelerating the changesessential for delivering scalablesustainable solutions to the world.

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The Phoenix Economy

The Phoenix Economy, subtitled 50 Pioneers in the Business of Social Innovation, is the firstVolans market intelligence report. It revealshow leading entrepreneurs, investors andbusinesses are thinking as they develop andscale market solutions to a broad array ofeconomic, social, environmental andgovernance challenges.

The report draws on new surveys of expertsand entrepreneurs to identify trends andexamples of how respondents are dealing with the current economic discontinuity, and—uniquely—spotlights 50 pioneers driving thedevelopment of a new, more equitable andmore sustainable Phoenix Economy. Key findings include:

—The economic crisis has shaken confidencein old priorities, mindsets, incentives andinvestments, which are seen as increasinglybankrupt. This has helped to create growingpublic and political appetite for an alternativeparadigm, driven by a very different set ofsustainable values, priorities and targets. To date, however, most initiatives have beendriven by short-term panic rather than byany clear-sighted, long-term vision of howour economic priorities must evolve.

—Any market transformation must be basedon scalable solutions that bridge the micro-macro divide. This will require entrepreneurialsuccesses at five key stages of business andmarket development: (1) breakthroughinsight; (2) experimentation; (3) enterprisedevelopment; (4) creation of alliances andreplication of success, and ultimately (5),mass market infiltration, involving economicand institutional transformations.

—Entrepreneurs, like all businesses, faceincreasingly tough financial challenges, butthere is evidence that this is helping drivenecessary adaption. Many of our surveyrespondents anticipate new funding flowinginto key sustainability ventures from a varietyof sources, including ‘green new deal’investment programs launched bygovernments. But these same entrepreneursmust now also develop the political ‘voice’and presence to ensure their views andproposed solutions carry weight and buildthe necessary momentum to achieve scale and impact.

—Strikingly, in spite of the anticipated growth in markets for social and environmentalsolutions, timely, reliable and affordablemarket research is still generally lacking,particularly in emerging economies, leavingmany entrepreneurs ill-served when it comes to building their business case.

The report concludes with a ‘Phoenix Agenda’for enabling a paradigm shift, which sets out how governments, investors, businessesand business schools can best support new market pioneers in achieving the scaleessential for more sustainable markets—andmore equitable societies.

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“We must be more creative andinnovative in a time of crisis, and alsobe more efficient and effective.”Albina Ruiz Ríos Ciudad Saludable

The Phoenix Cast

ABBAccenture Development Partners

(ADP)Acumen FundAflatounAIDGAMEEAmerican Council on Renewable

Energy (ACORE)Apopo InternationalAravind Eye Care SystemArupAshokaBainBanco RealBELLBenetechBetter PlaceBridgespanBuild ChangeBusiness and Human

Rights Resource CentreBYD AutoC40Carbon Disclosure ProjectCelador ProductionsCellBazaarCERESCiudad SaludableCleantech GroupClimate Change CapitalClimate GroupClinton Climate InitiativeCoca-ColaCorporate Leaders Group on Climate

Change, University of CambridgeDanoneDialogue in the DarkE+CoEarth Policy Institute (EPI)EconcernEcoVadis

Eden Project EMBARQEvergreenExtractive Industry

Transparency Initiative (EITI)First BookFirst Peoples WorldwideFlambard HoldingsForest Stewardship Council (FSC)Foster & PartnersFreeplay FoundationFuqua School of Management,

Duke UniversityGeneration Investment

ManagementGE’s Ecomagination InitiativeGlaxoSmithKline (GSK)Global Footprint Network (GFN)Global Impact Investing

Network (GIIN)Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)Goldman SachsGood EnergyGoogle.orgGrameen GroupGreen for AllHaas School of Business,

UC BerkeleyHagarHarvard Business SchoolHealth Care Without HarmHimanshu Parikh

Consulting EngineersHomeless World CupHoney Care AfricaIDEAASIndependence Care Systems (ICS)InnocentiveINSEADInstitute for One World HealthInterpeaceJ Craig Venter Institute

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The Phoenix Economy references andcelebrates a variety of organisations that arehelping to develop and scale market solutionsto some of the world’s most pressing socialand environmental challenges. A more detailedlisting of the Phoenix 50 pioneers can befound on pages 42–47.

The Phoenix Economy

JumpStartKennedy School of Government,

Harvard UniversityKhmer LegaciesKhosla VenturesKivaKleiner Perkins

Caufield & ByersLondon AccordMarine Stewardship Council

(MSC)MaRSMobility Aid and Appliances Research and

Development Centre( MAARDEC)Monitor GroupMorgan-StanleyMothers2MothersMovimento Nacional dos Catadores

de Materiais RecicláveisMyC4National Endowment for Science,

Technology & the Arts (NESTA)Net ImpactNew Profit IncNOVICANovo Nordisk and

Oxford Health AllianceNuestras RaicesObama Presidency Office of the Third SectorParticipant MediaPATHPDAPricewaterhouseCoopersRecycla ChileRenault-NissanRespondeRiders for HealthRocking the BoatRoot CapitalRoundtable on

Sustainable Biofuels

Roundtable on Sustainable Palm OilRugMark FoundationSäid Oxford Business SchoolSelf-Employed

Women’s Association (SEWA)ShorebankSingapore’s Economic

Development Board (EDB)Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship,

Oxford UniversitySkoll FoundationSolar AidSolarcenturyState of CaliforniaSummer AdvantageSustainAbilitySustainable Asset

Management (SAM)Tällberg FoundationTeam StupidTechnoserveTNTToyotaTriodosUS Climate Action Partnership (USCAP)US National Intelligence Council (NIC)United NationsUnited Nations Development

ProgrammeUnited Nations Environment

Programme (UNEP)Urban LogicVirganceWikipediaWorld Business Council for Sustainable

Development (WBSCD)World Resources Institute (WRI)World Toilet Organization (WTO)Youth Entrepreneurship

and Sustainability (YES Inc.)

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“I am convinced we are about to goover the awareness tipping zone to an ‘everyone a changemaker’ world.” Bill DraytonAshoka

1.0 Introduction 8

Times are tough and gettingtougher, but leading social andenvironmental entrepreneurs areconfident that—with the rightassistance—the time is ripe fora true paradigm shift to a moresustainable economy.

Inner Feathers3.6º

The Phoenix Economy

Commentators have struggled with what to call the current downturn—a recession, a slump or a depression? We call it a‘discontinuity’. Early on, politicians andbusiness leaders predicted that the recoverywould come within months or, at most, a fewquarters. Soon, however, the sense grew thatsomething different was afoot—and parallelswere drawn with the onset of the GreatDepression of the 1930s.

As a result, 2009 started with a flurry ofbailouts and talk of Keynesian ‘New Deals’.1

Much of this effort, however, was reactive andpoorly coordinated. Huge amounts of moneywent to prop up iconic giants of the oldeconomy, money that might have been betterinvested in the new market solutions andinfrastructures necessary to meet twenty-firstcentury needs: the proposed PhoenixEconomy of this report.

Still, the economic discontinuity is engenderinga radical economic clear-out that is likely toopen out new opportunity spaces for scalableentrepreneurial solutions to many of the world’scritical economic, social, environmental andgovernance challenges. Indeed, as ThePhoenix Economy report raced towards thefinish line, Van Jones of Green for All—one ofour Phoenix 50 pioneers—wrote to say that$500 million had gone into the US economicrecovery bill for green jobs training.

Good news, as far as it goes, but likely only thebeginning of a transformative process that willtake decades to work through—a point longmade by Lester Brown of the Earth PolicyInstitute in his inspirational work on Plan B,2

addressing the challenges of ‘rescuing a planetunder stress and a civilisation in trouble’.

Meanwhile, although blame is being heaped on the governance and management of thefinancial sector for the failure of the banks to count, manage and hedge their risks, wemust look deeper for the true culprits. The root cause ultimately tracks back to a flawedmindset—part of our prevailing paradigm—that both permitted and drove high-riskappetites and behaviours with consequencesfar beyond the world’s financial system.

As James Lovelock recently observed at thelaunch of his book—The Vanishing Face ofGaia: A Final Warning—our ecological debt faroutweighs our financial debt and the ensuingecological crunch will be severe. Thissentiment was echoed by our surveyrespondents and interviewees who stressedthat the world now faces multiple crunches inareas such as energy security, food,biodiversity, pandemic risks and climateinstability, amongst others.

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“The 21st century economy is going to be a green economy. Health Care WithoutHarm is right in that slipstream.” Gary CohenHealth Care Without Harm

1.1 Entering the Discontinuity

In discussing the potential of the currenteconomic discontinuity to drive change indesirable directions, we acknowledge thatsuch turbulent periods also tend to triggerreactive measures and behaviours, such as protectionism, xenophobic sentiment,extremist politics and intergenerational tensionand conflict, particularly where inequities are severe and mechanisms of governanceand justice are weak. In short, a positiveoutcome to our current crisis is by no meansguaranteed, which places a premium on bold, far-sighted and effective leadership in the public, private and citizen sectors.Success will depend crucially on the initiativeand achievement of many of the innovatorsand entrepreneurs covered in our 2009survey—the third in a series carried out with the help of the Skoll Foundation andother partners.

Our respondents believe that the prospect of a true paradigm shift has never beengreater—in the original sense of the term‘paradigm’: a prevailing worldview and what is taken for normality. The implications for their organizations and agendas areprofound—indeed a number of respondentsrequested anonymity on the basis that their projections could raise real questionmarks over their prospects. Most, however,remain upbeat.

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“People are looking around for solutions—we have them. We are exactly in the right space just now.”Mel YoungHomeless World Cup

1.2 The Surveys

Since the late 1990s, members of the Volansteam have been spurred by the conviction that the early decades of the twenty-firstcentury would indeed see a true paradigmshift, accelerated by the end of one long-waveeconomic cycle and the beginning of another.4

The market leaders highlighted during our Skoll Foundation-funded work, we believe,provide important early clues as to wheremainstream enterprise, business, financialinstitutions and governments will need to head in the coming years.

While our initial 2007 Skoll Survey (conductedby SustainAbility) investigated the businessimplications of the work pursued by social and environmental entrepreneurs 5 and thesecond—carried out by SustainAbility in2008—focused on the work of social andenvironmental intrapreneurs working inmainstream corporations like Accenture,Banco Real, Coca-Cola and Morgan-Stanley,6 our aim in The Phoenix Economyis to begin an exploration of how we canharness today’s economic turmoil to spur the long-term transformation of capitalism and markets.

To gauge the impact of ongoing market trends on leading social and environmentalentrepreneurs, Volans conducted severallinked surveys in 2008 and 2009:

—The first, in June 2008, explored the interest,and experience, of over 50 entrepreneurs in working with mainstream business.

—The second, in December 2008 and January 2009, tested practitioner views on the implications of the current economicdiscontinuity via a survey of social andenvironmental entrepreneurs, with 114responses.

—The third, in February 2009, explored widerprofessional views via a survey of expertsand opinion-formers, receiving responsesfrom 391 members of the Volans and NetImpact networks and 36 members of theSustainAbility Faculty.

Net Impact is a leading global network ofstudents and alumni committed to having a positive impact on society. They representthe sort of thinkers and leaders who will help drive the development of the PhoenixEconomy over the next decade. The thinkingand priorities of their members are threadedthrough what follows, including theirsuggestions on the organizations that shouldbe listed in our first Phoenix 50 (Chapter 5).

In this report, we look at the growing need for transformational change (Chapter 2),introducing the need for a greater focus onentrepreneurial ‘pathways to scale’. Then we explore five trends that emerged from our analysis of the surveys (Chapter 3). Finally, we lay out an agenda for: politicalleaders and governments; business leadersand financial institutions; and businesseducators (Chapter 4).

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2.0 Paradigm Shift 12

A paradigm shift is under way—with profound implicationsfor society, and for politics,economics and entrepreneur-ship in particular.

Outer Feathers7.2º

The Phoenix Economy

The thing about paradigms is that they persistfor what seems like an eternity—and then turninside-out in what seems disconcertingly likean instant. As the older economic order beginsto implode, the potential for a shift towards amore equitable and sustainable PhoenixEconomy is emerging from conversations withleading innovators and entrepreneurs aroundthe world. While our survey respondents andinterviewees accept that the near-term futuremay seem dark, they also recognize that theresulting shake-out of the older order promisesto create the conditions for the emergence ofnew thinking, new models, and a newlandscape of opportunity—much of whichunderlies our framing of the Phoenix Economy.

Turn to Wikipedia and you find that the phoenixis a mythical bird with many-hued plumage. Itsymbolizes longevity—sustainability—with a lifeexpectancy of at least 500 years. At the end ofits life cycle it is consumed by flames, and anew bird rises from its ashes. Even today, thephoenix is understood in many countries as asymbol of regeneration.

By extension, the ‘Phoenix Economy’symbolizes the various strands of social and environmental innovation and enterprisethat will help create a more equitable and sustainable future. At a time whengovernments are attempting to ‘green’ thegrowing number of bailouts and ‘New Deals’,the Phoenix Agenda is a reminder that there is a wider spectrum of challenges that willneed to be tackled in the coming decades.

Some leaders in the field are bullish. “I amconvinced we are about to go over theawareness tipping zone,” says Bill Drayton of Ashoka, “to an ‘everyone a changemaker’world. Over the last summer, we studied thepatterns of transformation (as in the civil rightsand women’s movements) and found they all followed the same pattern. We are nowmoving into a time when the public at largeengages—and the small pioneer islandsswallow the whole.”

Paradoxically, however, at precisely themoment when awareness of, and need for, the services these entrepreneurs provide isskyrocketing, their funding—particularly thefinancing needed to replicate and scale theirimpact—is coming under growing pressure.And, with few exceptions, they believe thingswill get worse.

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The Phoenix Economy symbolizes the variousstrands of social and environmental innovationand enterprise that could help create a moreequitable and sustainable future.

2.1 The ‘Pathways to Scale’ model

So what exactly are these pioneers trying toachieve? Drawing on survey responses andinterviews, we evolved a simple, 5-stage‘Pathways to Scale’ model of change (Figure2.1). Each new business model will typicallybegin at Stage 1, with the early recognition ofan opportunity for a new solution: the ‘Eureka!’moment. In Stage 2, that initial idea is put tothe test, with prototypes and experimentation.Over time, successful experiments evolve intosolutions around which new, Stage 3 businessmodels and enterprises are created. Stage 4sees the focus shift to the evolution of broaderecosystems of change agents—involving agrowing number of public, private and citizensector partnerships, followed by secondarywaves of imitation.

Ultimately, if anything like a truly sustainableand equitable future is to be achieved,entrepreneurial initiatives will need to scale up further to Stage 5 system change—typifiedby broad-based market and societal adoptionof new mindsets, models and technologies.Success in moving from Stages 4 to 5 willinvolve the transformation of political priorities,governance process, market rules andcultures. The Phoenix 50 pioneers, spotlightedin this report, are helping to catalyze suchchanges, though their ability to replicate andscale their successes—to reach critical mass.Their longevity and impact will depend on their ability to respond in good order to thechallenges identified in Chapter 3, includingcoping with the evolving funding crisis.

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5-stage ‘Pathways to Scale’ model of change

Figure 2.1

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3

Eureka!Opportunity is revealed via the growing dysfunctions ofthe existing order

ExperimentInnovators and entrepreneursbegin to experiment—a period of trial-and-error

EnterpriseInvestors and managers build new business models—creating new forms of value

Pathways to Scale

A key element of our work on the PhoenixEconomy has been our Pathways to ScaleProgram, headed by Alejandro Litovsky. Thisaction-research program builds on earlier workreported in The Power of UnreasonablePeople7 and is building the methodologies,tools and activities based on the Pathways toScale 5-stage model, to help leaders scale upthe impact of their initiatives. This work isfeatured on the Volans website—and includes‘market intelligence’ briefs on Phoenix marketsand ‘ecosystem’ briefs on how trailblazers areworking together to shape tomorrow’s marketsin areas such as solar power and sustainablemobility. Our series of ‘Conversations on Scale’profile the thinking and strategies of leaders forgrowing their impact. Early postings include:

—Jonathan Kua, Director of InternationalOrganisations Programme Office (IOPO) atthe Singapore Economic DevelopmentBoard (EDB), explains how the city stateplans to grow the social enterprise sector by being home to international socialenterprise enablers as well as regional social enterprises.

—Mathis Wackernagel, Executive Director of the Global Footprint Network (GFN)explains how Footprint metrics work forcompanies and countries, and how GFN intends to go to scale.

—Nick Sireau, Executive Director of Solar Aid,and Jeremy Leggett, founder and Chairmanof Solarcentury and Solar Aid, explain howto scale up markets for solar businesses inEast Africa and South America.

—Charlotte Opal, Coordinator of theRoundtable of Sustainable Biofuels,reflects on how to scale up market rules for the sustainable production and trade of biofuels, as they launch the first version of the voluntary standard.

—Nancy Kete, Director of EMBARQ, theCenter for Sustainable Transport of theWorld Resources Institute (WRI), reflectson the success of transport partnerships in Istanbul and Mexico City, and thestrategies for reaching the world’s mostpopulated cities.

The Pathways to Scale team is taking thiswork forward in a number of ways, including: a session on scaling up sustainable mobilitysolutions at the 2009 Skoll World Forum at the Säid Oxford Business School in the UK;an action-research project conducted withHarvard Kennedy School of Governmentgraduate students; and a project with theRework! initiative, a global partnership betweenthe Tällberg Foundation in Sweden andYouth Entrepreneurship and Sustainability(YES Inc.).

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Stage 4 Stage 5

EconomyThe economic system flips to a more sustainable state—driving market and institutionaltransformation

EcosystemCritical mass is achievedthrough alliances and imitationwww.volans.com/pathways

The Phoenix Economy 16

The Phoenix Decade (2010–2020)

Figure 2.2

Decade 12000–2010

Fear Hope

Dragon Phoenix

BullBear

Decade 22010–2020

2.2 The Phoenix Paradigm

Twentieth century capitalism was driven byalternating ‘Bull’ and ‘Bear’ markets, and thetwenty-first century’s first decade (2000-2009)has seen the collapse of the greatest Bullmarket in history. By contrast, a very differentoscillation is now emerging as a driver ofpolitical, economic and business priorities. We expect the coming decades to seegrowing competition between ‘Dragon’ and ‘Phoenix’ models of wealth creation,superimposed upon—not replacing—traditional Bull and Bear dynamics (Figure 2.2).

The Bull and Bear fight it out in a single bottomline world. Both tend to be short term in focus.By contrast, Dragon and Phoenix mindsetstend to be longer term in orientation. Dragonmarkets, particularly China’s (until-recently-booming) economy, are often based on longishterm planning, but are powered by businessmodels and value chains that largely follow thepath of Western industrialization, and—as aresult—are likely to be increasingly taxed byenvironmental and natural resourceconstraints.

To date, Dragon economies have focused, at best, on a double bottom line of economicgrowth and the maintenance of sufficient social cohesion to keep the nationallocomotive on the rails. In hard times, Dragon mindsets are likely to default toeconomic nationalism.

The Phoenix Economy, by contrast, blursacross national borders and works to integratethe triple bottom line of economic, social andenvironmental value added into its DNA—as atriple helix of change and new growth.

This involves what Thomas Kuhn—author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions—called a paradigm shift in the way we thinkabout the future and about value. As thePhoenix paradigm evolves, inevitably,extraordinary new market opportunities will be created. One way to grasp and map the new opportunity spaces is to think in terms of a spectrum of value (Figure 2.3).Biotechnologists label application areas by color, with ‘red’ standing for healthapplications, for example, and ‘green’ for environmental applications.8

Innovators like the Phoenix 50 operate freelyacross that spectrum of value creation,delivering new or improved ‘value blends’.Growing effort is being devoted tounderstanding their dynamics and pathways to scale, as in the work of the United NationsDevelopment Programme 9 and theCleantech Group. But given that the problemis often market failure, no amount of marketresearch can bridge the gaps. That’s why the market-shaping policies of the ObamaPresidency—which recently recruited anotherof our Phoenix 50 pioneers, Van Jones ofGreen for All—are so extraordinary. Theyspeak of a new paradigm, of a fledglingPhoenix Economy.

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The Phoenix Economy, by contrast, blurs across national borders and works to integrate the triple bottom line ofeconomic, social and environmental valueadded into its DNA—as a triple helix ofchange and new growth.

The Phoenix Economy 18

Organisation

General Electric (GE)‘Ecomagination’Initiative

GlaxoSmithKline(GSK)

Global ImpactInvesting Network(GIIN)

Participant Media

Singapore EconomicDevelopment Board(EDB)

Stern Review on the Economics ofClimate Change

United Nations

US Green Deal

Principle

Market demand forsolutions is growingfast

The ‘access’ agenda,in such areas as drugs,energy and water, is a real pain for main-stream companies, but also signpostsfuture markets

Even the biggestanimals and marketsstart with small seeds

Culture change mustinvolve the mediaindustry

Don’t just focus ongreen jobs, focus onclusters

A new paradigmmeans new ways oflooking at our worldand at markets

United action is crucial for globalchange

Government policy and spending is central

Valuation

Revenues from GE’s range of energy efficientand environmentally targeted products andservices surged to $17 billion in 2008, with a projection of $25 billion by 2010.10

GSK cut its prices for all drugs in the 50 leastdeveloped countries to no more than 25% of the levels in the UK and US—and less ifpossible—and pledged to make drugs moreaffordable in middle-income countries such as Brazil and India.11

Over the next 5–10 years, social impactinvesting could grow to represent about 1% ofestimated current assets under management—about $500 billion.12

The producers of films like An InconvenientTruth have developed active workingrelationships with over 80 non-profits inmainstream media projects, focused onsustainability issues and reaching over 20 million people.

EDB has announced a S$350 million fund tosupport the development of the cleantechindustry in Singapore, estimating the sector will generate S$1.7 billion in value-addedbusiness, creating 7,000 jobs by 2015.13

In 2006, the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change, produced for the UKgovernment, argued that the benefits of takingaction to stabilise greenhouse gases by 2050(minus the costs) would amount to a ‘profit’ of$2.5 trillion (£1.32 trillion).14 Lord Stern nowwarns governments need to prepare fortemperature rises of 4–6 ºC.

The UN already argues that ‘one third of thearound $2.5 trillion-worth of planned stimuluspackages should be invested on 'greening' theworld economy. The estimated $750 billion ofgreen investment, equal to about 1% of currentglobal GDP, could trigger significant, multipleand potentially transformational returns.’ 15

$43 billion out of a $787 billion spending billearmarked for renewable energy.

Across the Value Spectrum

Figure 2.3

2.3 Surprises

There were a number of surprises in the surveyresults. We were forcefully struck, for example,by the number of mainstream companies thatmade it into the final list—when we had startedout thinking mainly in terms of social andenvironmental enterprises.

They included General Electric (GE), with its ‘Ecomagination’ Initiative,16 Google.orgfor its focus on renewable energy and othersustainability issues, GSK for its industry-consensus-shattering announcement that itwould radically cut the cost of its drugs to theworld’s poorest countries, Novo Nordisk forits work with the Oxford Health Alliance(which is about preventing and reducing theglobal impact of chronic disease, around threerisk factors—tobacco use, physical inactivityand poor diet) and TNT for its work onproviding the logistics for disaster relief andother large-scale initiatives, including treeplanting in East Africa.

We were also struck by the way that theUnited States—and the Obama Presidencyin particular—dominated the nominations. But if any one organization summed up thePhoenix mindset and approach for us, it wasShai Agassi’s Better Place. Based in the USA, it is increasingly global in its operations.

Agassi, formerly a top executive at Germansoftware company SAP, has developed abusiness model that treats cars as if they were mobile phones, with drivers able to pay a monthly fee to charge their vehicles at easy-to-use battery stations. The aim is toconvert cities and ultimately countries toelectric vehicles. Already countries likeAustralia, Denmark and Israel have signed up, together with states like California andHawaii, and cities like Toronto. Theirapproach—which involves mobilizing all levels of government, major companies (like Renault-Nissan) and investors—is aprototypical example of what expect to see asthe Phoenix paradigm takes hold and therelevant forms of innovation andentrepreneurship takes flight.

19

Question: do you see anything good about the economic downturn?

“Yes. Publishers and book distributors are much more interested in dealing with us,and the terms are more flexible.” Kyle ZimmerFirst Book

3.0 2009 Survey Results 20

Entrepreneurs say that fivetrends are driving change—though the impact andimplications of the evolvingeconomic discontinuity arecurrently top of mind.

000º

270º

The Phoenix Economy

It is an uncomfortable fact that economic andsocial systems—like ecosystems—go throughperiods of convulsive change. Social andenvironmental entrepreneurs and intrapreneursmay be in the spotlight as never before, but we are seeing a shakeout that will hit bothweak and strong organizations. “Down cyclesweed out weak players,” Jim Fruchterman of Benetech comments, and, sadly, “somegreat groups get weeded out because of bad timing.”

Many survey respondents were increasinglysomber, seeing a profoundly challenging periodahead. This should be of concern to leaders in the public, private and citizen sectors alike,given that the work of many entrepreneursspotlights and seeks to address critical issueslike climate change, water scarcity, poverty,disease, corruption and an expanding array of human rights concerns. Entrepreneurs are worth watching because they areexperimenting with new technologies and business models, underscoring thepotential for transformational solutions and change.17

Happily, the contributions of suchentrepreneurs are increasingly recognized andcelebrated by some governments, from the UK with its Office of the Third Sector to theUnited States with the Obama Presidency’sbroad-spectrum change agenda. In ending hisInaugural Address with the words “futuregenerations”, President Obama underscoredthe challenges the world faces as the humanpopulation adds another 1.5 billion people by 2025 and systemic stresses linked toclimate, water, poverty and disease intensify.18

The challenge of developing economic andbusiness models that will work in today’s world is increasingly urgent, but we also needmodels that will create real value and impactefficiently, effectively, equitably and above all sustainably in a world projected to reach9–10 billion by mid-century.

So how do leading entrepreneurs see thechallenges and opportunities today? Our survey results spotlight five trends that will shape the agenda:

1 Weathering the Storm2 Rebooting the Business Case3 Evolving the ‘Ecosystem’4 Bridging the Micro-Macro Divide5 Delivering Government-as-Unusual

21

1Weathering the Storm

2Rebooting theBusiness Case

3Evolving the‘Ecosystem’

4Bridging theMicro-MacroDivide

5DeliveringGovernment-as-Unusual

Weathering to DeliveringFive trends that will shape the agenda

Figure 3.0

3.1 Weathering the Storm

Most entrepreneurs say the downturn has already hit funding—but even as theshakeout builds and cost efficiencymeasures are put into effect, necessitywill be the mother of profound reinvention.

As the downturn began to bite in earnest,entrepreneurs found themselves—and theirbeneficiaries—caught in a tightening vise. 50% of respondents had already been affected (Figure 3.1).

From India, Self-Employed Women’sAssociation (SEWA) founder Ela Bhatreported that, “SEWA’s members in theinformal sector specifically constructionworkers, rag pickers and garment stitchers,have been adversely affected because of theeconomic crises. They have lost their work and employment. As a result children are being withdrawn from the school and joiningtheir mothers in work, particularly girls—and there is widespread starvation.”

In fact, SEWA’s members have beenexperiencing financial crises for the last threeyears. Bhat continues: “SEWA was in asituation where it could have succumbed tothis crisis. However, our members turned thisaround as an opportunity to revise our strategyand achieve financial self-reliance. As a result,members’ economic organizations have beenable to achieve 70% financial self-reliance. This has reinforced our confidence of reaching our impact.”

Less positively, the global situation is likely to worsen as capital flows to emergingmarkets are choked off by the financial crisis in the advanced economies.19 The credit crisis is also squeezing funding to leadingsocial and environmental entrepreneurs,impacting the value of foundationendowments—and thus the disposable funds.Although some entrepreneurs report increasingsupport and growing confidence, a clearmajority notes a deteriorating prospect forfuture funding. One consequence will begrowing interest in the diversification ofrevenue streams.

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ImpactedTo what extent have you been affectedby the global economic crisis?%

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Necessity Mothers Reinvention

Rather than a profound process of adaptation,what we see to date from our survey is mainlya process of cost reduction—hardly surprising,given that less than a fifth of our respondentssaid the pressure to adapt was already ‘high’or ‘very high’ (Figure 3.1). Significantly,however, 40% said the pressure was‘medium’—although the comments made itclear that many respondents expect thepressures to grow. Asked how long theyexpect the downturn to last, 45% of ourrespondents thought 1.5 to 3 years (Figure3.3), though there were outliers expecting amore protracted crisis. Our own assumptionsskew strongly to the right hand side of thetime-line.

Respondents were eloquent on the scale ofthe impact to date: “Our microfinance programis suffering because local banks are notlending us money,” said one prominent LatinAmerican entrepreneur, who asked to remainanonymous. “When they do, they have short-ened the term to 3 months and doubled theinterest rate, from 10% to 20%.” From Peru,Albina Ruiz Ríos reported that the price of thePET plastic that Ciudad Saludable recycleshad dropped from $500 to $150 a ton.

Further south, Fernando Nilo of Recycla Chile noted that the smelters they sell metalsto held payment for 60 days—and were onlypersuaded to pay with the support of lawyers.

Adaptation is well under way in manyorganizations. “We have shifted staffsubstantially towards our revenue engine, The First Book Marketplace,” explained Kyle Zimmer of First Book. Kiva co-founderand CEO Matt Flannery replied that the micro-lending organization planned to “return to a scrappy attitude,” emphasizing the opportunistic, irrepressible and determinedmindset and behaviors of a start-up. Once again, however, there is a sense that whilst the funding crisis is profoundlyunwelcome, coming at a time when manyentrepreneurs are under pressure to replicateand scale their operations, there could be significant upsides. “New ideas andapproaches will spring forth,” noted KristinePearson of the Freeplay Foundation“necessity, once again, will be the mother of invention.”

The key challenge for many, as Benetech’sJim Fruchterman put it, is to get through “the valley of death”. For that to happen,respondents see an urgent need for key actors to adopt elements of the agendaoutlined on pages 35–40.

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How Entrepreneurs are Responding to Downturn

In terms of the types of adaptation required,respondents made the following points:

—Focus on efficiencyMany respondents are aiming to do morewith less. “We made plans to reach thesame targets with less income,” reportedYuval Wagner of Access Israel. “Whilemaintaining quality,” said former BELL andcurrent Summer Advantage USA CEO Earl Martin Phalen, “we are making decisionsabout what we can do without.”

—Adopt a defensive postureThis approach was reported with somefrustration by entrepreneurs with a passionto grow. “We have a great core business,”said Roberto Milk of NOVICA, “it’s just thatall plans are delayed through the crisis.”Many respondents were already slowingrecruitment or actively cutting staff. “We have become very cautious aboutadding new positions that may not besustainable if the economy gets worse.At the same time, we must continue to add those positions necessary to manage continued growth,” said Chris Elias of PATH.

—Closer internal oversightGovernance and management areincreasingly important. “We’ve set up acommittee of board and staff to ensurewe’re constantly monitoring the situation and considering how to adapt our strategiesaccordingly. We’re not in emergency mode,but rather looking for ways to find newopportunities in a changing landscape.” said Nina Smith of the RugMarkFoundation.

—Develop scenariosOrganizational strategies will have to beadaptive to the context of considerableuncertainty. “We are developing multiple2009 budgets that react to varying degreesof income reduction,” reported Adam Green of Rocking the Boat.

—Adapt business modelsThere is a growing need for flexibility and diversification. Some not-for-profitentrepreneurs are setting up for-profit arms, and vice versa.

—Think about mergers“I am considering allowing the organizationto merge with other organizations,” admittedSocheata Poeuv of Khmer Legacies.

—Don’t forget growthSuch times open out “opportunities to make long-term moves,” as Rory Stear ofFlambard Holdings put it. As a result,some entrepreneurs are distinctly upbeat.“We plan to grow significantly,” said MelYoung of the Homeless World Cup.

24

“We have made plans to reach thesame targets with less income.”Yuval WagnerAccess Israel

Future Funding

When it came to future funding, the sourcesseen as most attractive are shown in Figure3.4. The interest in relatively ‘soft’ money isnotable. Foundations (72%) lead by a widemargin, followed by government grants andloans (56%). Moving to the harder end, wecome to making sales/charging fees (49%),attracting help in kind (42%) and public fund-raising (40%), with joint venturing (33%) andventure capital (28%) perceived as relativelyless forth-coming sources of finance.

It is clear, however, that even in tough timesthe optimism of entrepreneurs is unabated. A significant majority (60%) remain confidentthat they will continue to achieve real impact.

How the Phoenix 50 are Weathering the Storm

All sectors and pretty muchall geographies will beimpacted by the economicdiscontinuity. Some Phoenix50 organizations will gounder, others will be sorely

squeezed—and a proportion will emergetransformed. As the pressures build, somePhoenix 50 pioneers are moving deftly intothe political game—among them GreenFor All. Others are redoubling their effortsto create new funding sources forentrepreneurs, including MyC4. As thesocial fall-out grows, there will be growingneed for the services offered by suchPhoenix 50 organizations as the Business& Human Rights Resource Centre,Mothers2Mothers, PDA and the WorldToilet Organization (WTO). They willincreasingly need the support oforganizations like Ashoka. The parallelenergy crisis will create new opportunitiesfor such trailblazers as E+Co, Econcernand Solarcentury. And, in the background,some of our wild card listings continue to explore less obvious aspects of thePhoenix Economy, in the case of the J Craig Venter Institute focusing onsynthetic biology and potential new routes to sustainable energy.

25

Future funding sources Which sources of funding will be the bestavenues to pursue under today’s conditions?%

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Figure 3.4

3.2 Upgrading the Business Case

Although entrepreneurs see an inexorablerise in the need for their services, theavailable market research is weak. Asthey move to scale, that is likely to be agrowing gap—and opportunity space.

Huge growth in demand is expected for whatsocial and environmental entrepreneurs do and provide. The US National IntelligenceCouncil (NIC) reported, late in 2008, that by 2025 a whole spectrum of new challengeswould test global leaders in the public, private and citizen sectors.20 Alongside “the unprecedented transfer of wealth roughlyfrom West to East now under way” and seenas likely to “continue for the foreseeablefuture,” the NIC foresaw a range of factorsdriving “unprecedented economic growth”,which, coupled with the addition of 1.5 billionmore people, “will put pressure on resources—particularly energy, food, and water—raisingthe specter of scarcities emerging as demandoutstrips supply.”

The economic downturn will slow—but notstall—this momentum. Some of our surveyrespondents see the current downturn asnecessary, if painful. “This is an over-duecorrection,” as Victoria Hale of The Institutefor One World Health put it. “This is amoment for change—if we can do itdeliberately,” said Rebecca Adamson of First Peoples Worldwide. “People might be a little less certain that greed is a driver for a sound economy,” as Barry Coleman ofRiders for Health noted. His partner Andreaalso saw potentially positive impacts in that“charities will be forced to think in a sociallyentrepreneurial way.” As a result, othersargued, there needs to be even greater focuson the business case for change.

The downturn, said Gary Cohen of Health Care Without Harm, “has forced us to strengthen the business case forenvironmentally responsible healthcare—anddemonstrate how our programs save hospitalsmoney that could be better used for patientcare.” “There is no better time for innovation orinvention than when facing broken systems,”said Jacqueline Novogratz of Acumen Fund.

Given how important market research is tomainstream entrepreneurs preparing theirbusiness case, we asked what sources ofmarket research entrepreneurs are using.“Alas, this is not one of our strengths,” saidone of our respondents, who asked to remainanonymous. “Market research for northernHaiti?” quipped Peter Haas of AIDG. “Sorrymates, there is none.” To date, very fewentrepreneurs work with marketing or marketresearch agencies, though Jumpstart wasone. Another was Dialogue in the Dark,where Andreas Heinecke noted that, “we went through an intensive Bain study to beready for take-off.”

Other pointers on market research optionsincluded the following: “We all must struggle to harvest useful knowledge from the flood ofinformation today—from magazines, internet-based newsletters, research studies andgovernment reports,” said Mike Eckhart ofACORE. Other useful sources identifiedinclude “the Monitor Group, New Profit Inc.,Bridgespan and other key advisors” (BELL),“industry reports” (Health Care WithoutHarm), “in-house research capability and work with think-tanks” (Independence CareSystems), “foundation social impact data, to help develop our high-transparency bank”(Urban Logic), “World Bank reports” (Root Capital), “government surveys” and“national statistics” (Responde), “customers”(First Book), “listserves” (Nuestras Raices),“mainly the Internet” (Freeplay Foundation),“research carried out by NGOs” (Honey CareAfrica), and “word of mouth” (Evergreen).

26

The Phoenix Economy

The closer the entrepreneurs are to viablebusiness models, the greater their appetite for market research. In particular there is anappetite for targeted, reliable, affordableresearch—though in many cases the likelihoodfor many respondents is that free sources willwin out over paid-for services for some time tocome. When we asked entrepreneurs whatquestions they would want asked if marketresearch capacity were to be available, thereplies were predictably broad ranging,spotlighting the potential of well-targetedmarket intelligence to help them frame theirthinking, priorities and business cases:

—A focused analysis of fair trade and organicproduct market trends and opportunities.21

—How will climate change investments beimpacted by the financial crisis?22

—How do Chinese companies andmultinationals operating in China apply CSR programs in China?23

—What do companies most want inpartnerships with social entrepreneurs?24

—Where are there untapped sources of funding?25

How the Phoenix 50 areUpgrading their Business Case

The new economic realitywill force many actors toupgrade—and in many casesreboot—the business casearguments they use to sellwhat they do. Anyone

wanting persuasive input to their businesscase would be well advised to take a look at the work of Sustainable AssetManagement (SAM), particularly its 2009Sustainability Yearbook.26 Among thetrailblazers rebooting health sectorbusiness cases generally are the AravindEye Care System, Health Care WithoutHarm, the Institute for One World Healthand, perhaps most strikingly, GSK. In the area of sustainability policy, theWorld Resources Institute (WRI) and theWorld Business Council for SustainableDevelopment (WBCSD) stand out. In the energy sector, the Phoenix 50includes AMEE, Climate Change Capitaland, most powerfully, GE’s EcomaginationInitiative. In the automotive sector, wespotlight BYD Auto, which is morphingfrom a battery-maker to a producer ofelectric cars. In the wider field ofinnovation, we see Innocentive as apioneer, with its focus on “sustainablebreakthrough innovation”.

27

“We have to make sure that we have thegreatest impact at the lowest cost and do an increasingly good job at showing how livesare being changed in a sustained way.” Andrea ColemanRiders for Health

3.3 Evolving the ‘Ecosystem’

Entrepreneurs are increasingly aware of the need to build ‘ecosystems ofchange’—and to mobilize strategicalliances in pursuit of ‘pathways to scale’.

It takes an ecosystem approach to drive true system change. Once basic survival isensured, the focus of most respondents andinterviewees turns to questions of scaling their impact. Building critical mass throughpartnerships and alliances with other sectors is seen as a critical condition for moving up to Stages 4 (Ecosystem) and, ultimately, Stage 5 (Economy) (Figure 2.1, page 14–15).This is the focus of our ‘Pathways to Scale’work, which has found that the key aspirationsof entrepreneurs currently moving towardsStage 4 include:

—Consolidating their business models andfinancing mechanisms (Solar Aid).

—Evolving alliances to increase their accesschannels and market share (GlobalFootprint Network).

—Improving market regulation throughstandards and better governance(Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels).

—Assembling the infrastructures required tobring their solutions to scale (MovimentoNacional dos Catadores de MateriaisRecicláveis).

—Lobbying governments for new market-shaping rules that get the incentives right(CERES Investor Network on Climate Risk).

Most of the entrepreneurs interviewed see their initiatives and solutions as locatedsomewhere between Stage 2 (Experiment) and Stage 3 (Enterprise). The growingconcerns about survival shown byrespondents underscore the difficulties ofsustaining enterprises in Stages 2 and 3, let alone moving on to Stage 4. Those wepolled reported that their highest priority is to find ways to influence the private sector. But also seen as ‘very important’ is their abilityto influence regulation and public support byengaging with national governments and bymobilizing grassroots and broader culturalchange through engagement with the media in its many forms.

As the Stage 4 opportunity space opens out in the form of new markets, there has beengrowing interest in its development fromfinancial institutions, with GenerationInvestment Management and venture capital pioneers Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers among the Phoenix 50—and Khosla Ventures among those nominated.The still-emerging Global Impact InvestingNetwork (GIIN) is a gamble in the Phoenix 50 listing, but significant because it iscatalyzing new ways of blending private and philanthropic capital to help social andenvironmental entrepreneurs. Other 2009Phoenix 50 organizations that demonstrate the importance of building ecosystems include Aflatoun, the C40 initiative and theMarine Stewardship Council.

It is striking that social entrepreneurs evaluatethe ‘financial community’ as way below othersectors in terms of current importance in theirwork. Generally this is because entrepreneursaddress areas of market failure, whereinvestors tend to venture timidly, if at all.Cleantech entrepreneurs are an exceptionhere, because they address markets that arecloser to market take-off. For example, ShaiAgassi’s Better Place aims to create thesystem conditions for the roll-out of electricvehicles on a large scale—and is unusualamong the entrepreneurs covered here in that they are venture-funded. The interfacebetween entrepreneurs and financial marketsclearly merits further work.

Although international government agenciesscored lowest in terms of their significance for our entrepreneurs, they too can play a keyrole. Consider India’s Solar Loan Programme,led by the United Nations EnvironmentProgramme (UNEP) from 2003 to 2007,which created the necessary conditions forIndian banks to support the scaling up oflending for solar home systems.27 That said,the low score achieved by this sector suggeststhat the relevant institutions and agencies need to rethink their role if they are to spur the rise of a truly global Phoenix Economy.

28

How The Phoenix 50 areEvolving Ecosystems

Getting to Stage 3 in our 5-stage model of ‘Pathways to Scale’ (page 15) is nevereasy, but is a good dealsimpler than the convening,building and managing of

strategic alliances and partnershipsnecessary to operate effectively at Stage 4. The Phoenix 50 organizations—and many others covered in thesepages—are trying to build ecosystems for change.

Among those spotlighted in the Phoenix50 are Aflatoun, the Cleantech Group,Interpeace, the Marine StewardshipCouncil, Movimento Nacional dosCatadores de Materiais Recicláveisand Novo Nordisk with its support for the Oxford Health Alliance. Many areworking on technologies and businessmodels that open out the landscape of opportunity for others, includingCellBazaar, MaRS and Virgance. The relevant skills will need honing, but the role of market-shapers likegovernments, stock exchanges, financialinstitutions and business can only become increasingly important.

29

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3.4 Bridging the Macro-Micro Divide

Entrepreneurs see an urgent need toconverge bottom-up with top-downapproaches—and to link micro-levelsolutions with macro-strategies.

If any one characteristic stands out in the workand achievements of the most celebratedsocial entrepreneurs in the developing world, itis their focus on micro-models: micro-finance,micro-insurance, micro-energy generation andso on. When asked for their prescriptions forfuture progress in their fields of interest, mostsocial entrepreneurs working in these areascontinue to emphasize the micro, oftenassuming—or stating—that the best way tothe desired macro outcome of system changeis by the aggregation of a growing number ofbottom-up initiatives.

Others see things differently. “Macro solutionsare key,” said one of our Net Impactrespondents. “How else,” she asked, “are we going to replace the 200-plus million cars in the USA with non-carbon-basedtransportation?” Many of the social andenvironmental entrepreneurs we interviewedare increasingly aware of the need for macro-level support for their work. Indeed, many of our survey respondents were extremelyenthusiastic about the promise of the Obama Presidency, precisely because of its aim to support social and environmentalentrepreneurship by building the necessarymacro-level policy and incentive structures.

Despite its enormous ecological footprint and its profound economic problems, the US was seen by many as well placed to helpbuild the Phoenix Economy, “once (and if) theright incentive structures are put in place.” See pages 36–37 for our Phoenix Manifestofor governments.

Several of the pioneering Phoenix 50organizations aim to bridge micro and macrolevels of change. They include the CleantechGroup, which since 2002 has been a leadingsource of market intelligence in the cleantechsector and Arup, the global firm of designers,engineers, planners and business consultantsthat has been involved in the design andplanning of eco-cities like Dongtan, Shanghai,China. More significantly, Arup Director, PeterHead, told us that the 1,000 people workingon sustainable development issues in the firm are now helping direct new businessdevelopment across the 9,000-personorganization.

Another similar organization nominated wasarchitect Norman Foster’s Foster & Partners,which is doing the master planning for the new eco-city of Masdar in the United ArabEmirates, designed to be both carbon neutraland zero waste. Increasingly, cities around theworld are trying to work out how to bring theircollective weight to bear on issues like climatechange. This is the focus of the C40 initiative,among others.

30

The Phoenix Economy

Exciting though such eco-cities are, manymore people will live in the world’s sprawling,noisome slums than are ever likely to live innew cities of any type. Over a billion people arethought to live in slums worldwide, a numberthat could double within a couple of decades,placing a massive premium on approachesand initiatives that offer hope of raising livingand environmental standards in such areas.

Of the Phoenix 50 organizations, the mostrelevant here is Himanshu Parikh ConsultingEngineers, in India. Using what they dub‘Slum Networking’, they study the naturaltopography and drainage of slum areas toimprove the environment and provide quality,gravity-based water supply, sanitation, stormdrainage, roads and landscaping at costslower than conventional solutions like publicstand posts and community latrines. The various components of infrastructure are bundled, to cut the cost, integrated frommicro to macro levels. “The Slum Networkingconcept has been tried in several cities of India such as Indore, Baroda, Ahmedabad,Bhopal and Mumbai,” reports HimanshuParikh, “directly transforming lives of about a million people.”

How the Phoenix 50 are Bridging the Macro-Micro Divide

No amount of micro-levelinnovation will flip thesystem to a new (macro)state. Significantly, theGrameen Group, founded by Muhammad Yunus,

is most closely associated with micro-scale solutions, but has constantlyexperimented with ways of scaling micro-level activities—and with partnershipsdesigned to address the macro-levelchallenge. Yunus even considered runningfor the highest political office. Venture-funded Better Place straddles the macro-micro divide, as do venture capitalistsKleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB)represented by ‘greentech’ championJohn Doerr. Among Phoenix 50corporations selected on the basis of their macro-micro strategies arearchitects and planners Arup, searchengine pioneers Google and logisticsgiant TNT. But even solutions developedby tiny enterprises can vault to the point of addressing macro issues, likeApopo with its ‘sniffer rats’ hunting outlandmines, helping to underscore thesignificance of the multi-dimensionalsecurity agenda. Our market pioneersincreasingly recognize the need to sniffout opportunities for change at micro,meso and macro scales.

31

Question: do you see anything good about the economic downturn?

“[We could see a] shift in societal values.”Bart WeetjensApopo International

3.5 Delivering Government-as-Unusual

Entrepreneurs see the roles ofgovernment as critical, but foresee anaccelerating need for ‘government-as-unusual’.

One of the entrepreneurs we came acrossduring the project was Patri Friedman, whowants to create floating island nations free fromgovernment interference. “Government is aninefficient industry because it has an insanebarrier to entry,” he explained. To replace anincumbent government you either have to winan election (expensive) or foment a revolution(complicated).29 By contrast, the majority of ourrespondents see government as a necessarygrowth industry.

Most spoke of the role of government in termsof creating the right incentives for systemicchange. Many identified the unique situation in the US, where President Obama and hisadministration have an opportunity to advanceentrepreneurship from grassroots levels, byproviding the required infrastructure andbuilding partnerships with internationalorganizations committed to similar goals.

But there was real concern that governmentswere responding to the economic discontinuityby designing ‘half-baked’ programs thatthreaten to make things worse in the longterm. “Because financial managers and policy-makers are largely resource-illiterate, thecurrent financial crisis is leading to ratherdisastrous recovery plans,” argued MathisWackernagel of the Global FootprintNetwork. “Anything non-green is buildingtraps and will need to be de-constructed within a couple of decades.”

Many entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs aresceptical about the efforts of governments to achieve really significant change andsuspicious of the slow pace of national andinternational bureaucracies in responding.Respondents —who are often addressingareas of market and government failure—perceived the influence of internationalorganisations as typically lower than otheractors. Several interviewees noted how littlehas been achieved so far in the internationalclimate negotiations, with growing concernsabout the likelihood of a ‘real climate deal’ atthe Copenhagen climate summit later this year.Also mentioned was the failure to create asuitable, functional global governancearchitecture.

More positively, respondents see the design of ‘green new deals’ as offering the potential tore-direct government attention. Among otherthings, President Obama picked people on the basis of talent rather than ideology, and the US Administration’s American Recoveryand Reinvestment Act and ‘New Energy forAmerica’ program aim to jumpstart theeconomy in greener ways through:

—The creation of five million new jobs bystrategically investing $150 billion over thenext ten years to catalyze private efforts tobuild a clean energy future;

—Initiatives that within 10 years aim to savemore oil than the US currently import fromthe Middle East and Venezuela combined;

—Plans to get 1 million plug-in hybrid cars on the road by 2015;

—Investment to ensure that 10% of USelectricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025; and

—The implementation of a US economy-widecap-and-trade program to reducegreenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.30

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The Phoenix Economy

California was also popular in our nominationprocess, despite its financial problems,because of the growing number of initiatives ithas been taking to address issues like climatechange—and the investment now beingdirected by California-based venture capitalfunds (like Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers)and technology companies (like Google) intoareas like cleantech, renewable energy and thedevelopment of ‘smart grid’ technologies.

Several Phoenix 50 organizations arededicated to shifting government thinking and policy on key issues, including ACORE,founded in 2001 to bring together leadingproponents and innovators in all facets of therenewable energy sector to move renewableenergy into the mainstream of America’seconomy. ACORE started out small, but withan ambitious goal: to create a membership-based organization for the renewable energycommunity—and to give members a commonplatform for communicating and lobbying.

In interviews with entrepreneurs, strikingly, itwas clear that what they want today is not old-style government. They insist on what we call‘government-as-unusual’. They want politicalleaders, public sector agencies and policy-makers to create the frameworks, incentivestructures and funding that will help innovatorsand entrepreneurs create and put in place thebuilding blocks of a more sustainable, moreequitable economic order. One line of thinkingthat could be helpful here is ‘choicearchitecture’, whereby governments—andbusinesses can make it easier for us all tomake the right decisions, nudging us in theright direction.31

How the Phoenix 50 areTesting Government-as-Unusual

The nature, scale andeffectiveness of governmentinvolvement will be criticallyimportant in determining thesuccess of the PhoenixEconomy. New alliances like

ACORE will be needed to steer policy inthe direction of the Phoenix Economy.New networks of public sector actors areforming, like the C40 alliance of cities. The lead taken by the Obama Presidencyis likely to be crucial, as will be the role of‘test bed’ cities and regions, among themthe State of California. Although currentlyfinancially troubled, California is likely to resume its role as a leading edgeexperimenter with Phoenix-type policies.And into all of this, catalytic trailblazerslike the Global Footprint Network will play,among other things through their evolvingrelationship with another Phoenix 50organization, the World Business Councilfor Sustainable Development (WBCSD).

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“National governments should helpcreate enabling ecosystems.”R D ThulasirajAravind Eye Care System

4.0 The Phoenix Agenda 34

Here are some initiatives thatour surveyed entrepreneurswant to see from leaders ingovernment, business, financeand business education.

The Phoenix Manifesto for Political Leaders and Governments

The Phoenix Prospectus for Business Leaders

The Phoenix Syllabus for Business Educators

The Phoenix Economy

One recurrent problem in changeprocesses is that emergent enterpriseshave a weaker voice in the relevantpolitics than vested interests—includingincumbent industries and organizations.In what follows, we do not aim to speakfor the entrepreneurs who responded toour surveys, but instead to spotlight someof the issues they raised for decision-makers and policy-makers.32

Chris Elias of PATH summarized a widely held view among respondents: “It will be easierto scale the social enterprises you mention inthe Agenda than to change the failedinstitutions that are the subject of the bailouts.” The central theme in this Phoenix Economyreport, however, has been that entrepreneurialscale and institutional change go hand in hand;one can’t happen without the other. In thisspirit we outline below a Phoenix ‘Manifesto’for political leaders, a ‘Prospectus’ forbusiness leaders and investors, and a‘Syllabus’ for business educators.

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“It will be easier to scale the social enterprisesyou mention in the Agenda than to change the failed institutions that are the subject of the bailouts.” Chris Elias PATH

4.1 The Phoenix Manifesto for Political Leaders and Governments

As government leaders are required to saveailing parts of the economy at ever-increasingcost, entrepreneurs who are helping thePhoenix Economy take flight want to see muchexpanded support for enterprises that createnew forms of value, new forms of employmentand, ultimately, new landscapes of marketopportunity. Among other things, they want tosee governments:

CollaborateMore governments—and different levels ofgovernment—need to establish units anddepartments to provide effective interfacesbetween entrepreneurs and the governmentsystem, a process that has begun in the UKwith the National Endowment for Science,Technology & the Arts (NESTA) and theOffice of the Third Sector. As an example of what can be done, NESTA’s first PublicServices Innovation Summit in 2009 exploredhow social enterprise can help governmentmeet a growing range of public sectorchallenges. Similarly, MaRS in Canada is aprivate-public partnership designed to incubateand foster cross-sector collaboration for thedevelopment of new technologies in areassuch as healthcare.

Redesign bailout packages There is an opportunity—indeed an urgentneed—to build social and environmentalentrepreneurship into the growing number of bailout plans and New Deal packages. Here we welcome the work that the UnitedNations Environment Programme (UNEP)has been doing towards a ‘Global Green NewDeal’ and the efforts of organizations like theCleantech Group and Green for All toinfluence the often panicked politics around the bailouts.

Get the targets rightTo ensure effectiveness and accountability,governments must set, publish, monitor andreport on progress towards ambitious targetson key priority areas, such as climate change.They also need to establish the right policyframeworks—a key reason why the ObamaPresidency made the 2009 Phoenix 50 so resoundingly.

Partnerships, once again, will be crucial to helpgovernments to understand which targets toset. The Global Footprint Network is nowworking with governments around the world tobuild dashboards of metrics and managementsystems; and the governments of Ireland andthe UK are working with AMEE, whichcalculates carbon footprints, enablingaggregated statistics to be reported.

Simplify regulatory requirementsEntrepreneurs protested the complexity of registering new organizations in severalcountries. In the US for example, there werecalls for government to “federalize regulatoryrequirements relating to the social sector, asthey have, in large part, for the private sector.For non-profits in the US there are separatefiling requirements in each state and we haveexperienced similar complexities in Canadaand beyond. All of the states are focused onthe same information and issues—but eachstate has a slightly different set ofrequirements, including, separate filing feesand schedules of submissions. No-one objects to providing the information, but asimplified, unified set of requirements at thefederal level would dramatically reduce thecosts and strain of these duplicative systems.It would also increase transparency becausethe public could access information aboutsocial sector organizations in one location,rather than state by state.”

Redirect procurementAll levels of government can help to drive thetransition by adapting their policies in areas like public purchasing, an approach that hasbeen trialled by initiatives like C40. Buyinggreen—or more broadly in ways that are‘future-friendly’—on a larger scale byaggregating purchasing inexorably drivesmarket transformations. A growing number of examples exist, from police departmentsrequesting the purchase of electric vehicles, to building standards being upgraded, andnew green directives being integrated intopublic purchasing guidelines. Amongorganizations we are working with on this front is Paris-based EcoVadis, which isbuilding a range of safety, health, environ-mental and human rights standards intosupplier management software packages.

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The Phoenix Economy

Refine market governanceMarkets are social constructions. Sometimesthey just happen, sometimes they are createdby design. Public sector efforts are likely to be most effective where they learn frominnovators creating a new generation of market governance rules and processes. Such players include the Extractive IndustryTransparency Initiative; the ForestStewardship Council; Health Care WithoutHarm; the Roundtable on SustainablePalm Oil and the Roundtable onSustainable Biofuels; and the MarineStewardship Council.

Infrastructure designGovernments, at all levels, need to thinkbeyond curative solutions and leverage theintelligence of entrepreneurs in the design ofpolicies and interventions, from public healthspending to city blueprints. This trend isillustrated by such examples as Better Placeand the World Resource Institute’sEMBARQ, both working closely withgovernments around the world on the design of sustainable transport policies andinfrastructures. Elsewhere among the Phoenix50, we spotlight new forms of urban design,particularly work under way on eco-cities atcompanies like Arup. But don’t forget thesprawling slums where many more people live, an agenda informed by the extraordinarywork of pioneers like Himanshu Parik.

Grow clusters Governments have a critical role to play increating the necessary clusters of socialenterprise and support services. This is an areathat several of our Phoenix 50 are pioneering,among them MaRS in Canada. It is alsosomething that the Singapore EconomicDevelopment Board (EDB), a fundingpartner of Volans, is working towards in thecity-state. Interestingly, EDB has wider,regional ambitions—something that othergovernment agencies could well emulate.

Culture change It’s never easy to achieve cultural change, but the world will inevitably undergo a series of cultural transformations in the wake ofmassive, discontinuous economic upheaval.Here the work of Participant Media (mostnotable for Al Gore’s film An InconvenientTruth) has been inspirational in its use ofmainstream media and entertainment to raiseawareness of critical societal concerns andencourage a positive paradigm shift inbehaviours.

The success of Celador Productions’ film,Slumdog Millionaire, with a growing number ofpublic references to ‘slumdog entrepreneurs’,also suggests ways in which difficult social andenvironmental issues can be brought to aglobal audience—on a relative (to Hollywood)shoestring budget. Then there is FrannyArmstrong’s film The Age of Stupid, whichdemonstrates the emerging power of ‘crowd-funding’.33 Go Team Stupid! More governmentsupport needs to be directed towards suchmedia enterprises and the wider media world,guided by the aspirational goal of Ashoka: to help make ‘Everyone a changemaker’.

With a more specific remit, the work of theOxford Health Alliance on building culturesof preventive health to slow the acceleratingglobal wave of chronic disease has not yetattracted enough support from governments,but nonetheless signals a possible wayforward—as do the approaches of suchPhoenix 50 organizations as the GlobalFootprint Network and Virgance—whichexploits the power of social networks to drive change.

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4.2 The Phoenix Prospectus for Business Leaders

When it comes to business, financialinstitutions and business schools, theentrepreneurs we polled want business to:

PartnerThere is a clear and growing appetite amongour trailblazers for new forms of partnershipwith business, with Danone seen as a truepioneer with its Grameen-Danone Foodsin Bangladesh. This will involve fundingrelationships, of course, but leadingentrepreneurs are also interested in gainingaccess to highly skilled, high potentialindividuals in business. AccentureDevelopment Partners (ADP) is seen as a leading model here. Other major serviceproviders are moving in similar directions, as in the case of the PricewaterhouseCoopersreplication- and scaling-focused partnershipwith Cambodia’s Hagar, designed to help the latter expand its operations across Asia. To these players, such ventures are not simplya matter of talent transfers but—in the longerterm—explorations of tomorrow’s social andmarket trends.

Build market intelligence Market intelligence is one thing, intelligentmarkets quite another. Organizations like the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) andthe Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) arecritically important here. Our respondents tendto have disparate needs in terms of marketresearch, but as they grow they know they will need better market intelligence. This is anarea where new forms of partnership could beforged between constellations of entrepreneursand market research providers, something theLondon Accord has been working on.34

Alongside governments, business leaders also have a role to play in designing marketmechanisms that ensure greater systemintelligence—and, ultimately, wisdom.

Help scale solutions As they move from prototypes to provenbusiness models, entrepreneurs need help inthinking through how to consolidate, replicateand scale their solutions. Business can helpthem think from the outset, as Novo Nordiskdid with the Oxford Health Alliance and TNT has been doing with its crisis responselogistics and related partnerships. The fact thatthe Oxford Health Alliance has struggled toattract later rounds of funding even where thebenefits are blindingly clear underscores thetruth in one of our favorite one-liners, “Theimpossible takes a little longer.”

Think around corners Again, easier said than done, but businessfederations need to open up to new thinking,as we see with the World Business Councilfor Sustainable Development’s growinginterest in social entrepreneurs and their work with the Global Footprint Networkto introduce mainstream corporate business to integrated footprint metrics. Among othercompanies listed, Google is leading the way in trying to reframe and rethink majorchallenges around climate change andrenewable energy—with its RE<C (RenewableEnergy cheaper than Coal) formula. As one of our respondents suggested, companiesmight improve their capacity to engage andunderstand the wider world by creating ‘socialentrepreneurs in residence’ programs.

Tim Smit of The Eden Project says “ThePhoenix Economy is fine, as far as it goes. But we need to dig deeper into the question of how the pre-Phoenix world can serve thepost-Phoenix world. For example, the skills ofthe financier and the lawyer have never beenmore needed, as long as the motivation is thepublic good. How do we re-purpose suchprofessions? And no-one, to my knowledge, is doing any serious work on social enterprisebusiness models—which means that theterritory is being dominated by people who see the opportunity as a glorified job creationprogramme, rather than as an amazingopportunity to redefine markets and corporate structures.”

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The Phoenix Economy

Take the lead and lobby for changeBusiness has an increasing awareness of therisks that lie ahead and is quickly developingan interest in supporting change. It has acentral role to play in building understanding of the need for new models and frameworks—and the related market opportunities. The workof the CERES Investor Network on ClimateRisk underscores the potential. In January2009, this group of 44 investors, managingover $1.7 trillion in assets, called on USCongressional leaders to include significantfunding for energy efficiency, clean energy andclean transportation in the economic stimuluspackage being debated in Congress.35 The USClimate Action Partnership is anotherexample, as is the UK’s Corporate LeadersGroup on Climate Change. Other majorplayers experimenting in related areas includeACORE and Goldman Sachs, with its‘Sustain’ initiative.36

Our entrepreneurs also say that they wantfinancial institutions to:

Invest in Phoenix pioneers An obvious one this, but the stinger is thatrespondents also want to see the banks getback to sustainable models of lending andthen to maintain and build credit lines for social enterprises, following the lead of bankslike Shorebank and Triodos.

Another model is the United NationsEnvironment Programme’s ‘Indian SolarLoan Programme’, which generated a 15-fold increase in the purchasing of homesolar systems in south India, by supportingmainstream banks in lowering the costs tocustomers of financing solar home systems. In Tunisia, a similar UNEP program has led to over 20,000 families buying solar waterheaters—and to Tunisian banks providingloans totaling $12 million. This has doubled the number of solar water heater suppliers,while the number of installers quadrupled over four years.

Adopt new metrics There is a need to support and adoptinvestment metrics that align financialinvestment more closely with long-termsocietal goals, following leaders such asGeneration Investment Management’smodel of equity management and the potentialof the Global Impact Investing Network(GIIN), which aims to pull together blends of private, public and philanthropic fundingseeking to mainstream social impactinvestment.

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“The Phoenix Economy is fine, as far as it goes.But we need to dig deeper into the question of how the pre-Phoenix world can serve thepost-Phoenix world.” Tim SmitThe Eden Project

4.3 The Phoenix Syllabus for Business Educators

Entrepreneurs see business schools andeducators as important drivers of change and want them to:

Rethink the curriculum and research agendaThe growing impact of the economicdiscontinuity suggests that it is time toquestion the very principles on which businesseducators base their curricula, where areas like financial modeling, strategy and marketing,show little evidence of the integration ofethical, social and environmentalconsiderations.

Mainstream social innovationMost leading business schools have started to look at social entrepreneurship, but this hastended to be a marginal activity, with teachingand research kept in ‘social’ silos within theschools. Now is the time to bring this teachingand research agenda closer to mainstreambusiness education, looking beyond socialenterprises to what Volans calls the ‘businessof social innovation’.

Reboot case studiesThere is a need to develop and adopt newmetrics in business research and education(think triple bottom line or blended value).Universities and research institutions have animportant role to play here, especially throughthe development of case studies with a focuson emerging Phoenix models.

The coverage of Aravind Eye Care Hospitalsin a recent Harvard Business School casestudy should be emulated.New ‘living’ casestudies need to be developed, which exploredifferent types of solutions across a broaderspectrum of organizational and sectoralmodels. One key area of focus should be onstrategies, alliances and pathways to scale.The Phoenix 50 list may provide a usefulprovocation.

Unleash students Student groups focused on socialentrepreneurship have been remarkablysuccessful and active in places like the HaasBusiness School at Berkeley, the FuquaSchool of Management at Duke University,Harvard University’s Kennedy School ofGovernment, INSEAD and the Skoll Centrefor Social Entrepreneurship at OxfordUniversity. The same is true for a growingnumber of emerging economy and developingcountry business schools.

The responses from our panel of Net Impact members underscore the hugeappetite among young people to get involved in initiatives that help make the world a better place. Interestingly, HarvardBusiness School has launched a SocialEntrepreneurship Fellowship that grants astudent $25,000 to start a social enterpriseupon graduation. In many cases all businesseducators will need to do is unleash this pent-up interest and talent. In the process, they alsoneed to think how they can best enable thenext generation of decision-takers, policy-makers and managers to get the PhoenixEconomy airborne.

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The Phoenix 50

5.0 Pioneers 42

Here are the enterprises,companies, financial institutionsand government agencies that impressed us with theircontributions to scalingsolutions that best align withPhoenix Economy values.

From Nominations to the Phoenix 50

Multiple Expert NominationsOrganisations Fitting CriteriaAdvisory Panel ShortlistThe Phoenix 50

Figure 5.1

6016642750

The Phoenix Economy

“The future is already here,” science fiction’sWilliam Gibson noted, “it’s just unevenlydistributed.” Also unevenly distributed is the early evidence of an emerging PhoenixEconomy. Yes, there is now a Green RichList,37 but what about pioneers who arecreating value in multiple dimensions? Wherein the world should we look for evidence that,as the World Social Forum 38 puts it, another,better world is possible? This first round of thePhoenix 50 is drawn from a first-cut selectionof pioneering organizations that are modellingat least some aspects of the Phoenix agenda. The Phoenix 50 are rare birds in that they meet some or all of the following criteria:

—Pioneer the business of social innovation.

—Create value blends across the triple bottom line agenda.

—Operate globally, regardless of size.

—Evolve their networks as ‘possibility factories.’

—Offer beacons of hope in a darkening landscape.

—Aim, ultimately, to sift paradigms, catalyzing systemic change.

Our aim in what follows is not to pickorganizations guaranteed to survive thediscontinuity and the intense period oftransformation that it heralds. As The PhoenixEconomy headed for the printers, GeneralElectric signaled the severity of the downturnby slashing its dividend for the first time since1938. Many of the organizations we list will runinto major major problems in the comingyears—and some will fail. In periods of intenseexperimentation, the failure rate tends to go off the curve. Recall Thomas Edison’s “Now Iknow 10,000 things that don’t work” commenton his way to success with electric light-bulbs.Rather, the intent is to spotlight innovationsand market leaders that seem to us alignedwith desired directions of change—andparticularly those that are either in—or movinginto—higher stages of the 5-stage ‘Pathwaysto Scale’ model outlined on pages 14–15.

For nominations of potential Phoenix 50organizations, we polled several hundredentrepreneurs, members of the SustainAbilityFaculty and the Volans Ecosystem, and apanel of Net Impact members. A total of 610total nominations and 427 unique nominationswere received, subsequently boiled down to166 nominations—at which point a smalladvisory panel picked the finalists.39 We makeno claims to statistical validity. But as the panel debated the issues and the nominees,the final short-list emerged fairly quickly—and with a remarkable degree of consensus.This consensus will now be tested as thereport is circulated.

Inevitably, both Volans and SustainAbilityteam members have worked with some of the organizations nominated and selected.Potential conflicts of interest were declaredduring the process.

The selection criteria were kept relativelysimple, following consultation across our teamand networks. On the basis of advice received,we came down to just six criteria. The hardcriteria: (1) Does the organization have aninnovative business model, moving beyondStages 1–3 of the Volans 5-stage ‘Pathways to Scale’ model? (2) Is it building a Stage 4‘ecosystem’ in interesting ways? And (3) is itinvolved in developing innovative public policyapproaches that could help drive the shift toStage 5?

The soft criteria that also influenced the finalselection reflected an interest in balancing the organizational type (not-for-profit, hybrid or for-profit), the geographic spread andrepresentation, and the type of economic,social or environmental divides addressed.40

For further details on how the PhoenixProgram is evolving please contact us atphoenix@volans.com

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The Phoenix 50 List 44

Aflatoun2005 The Netherlands www.aflatoun.org If Phoenix forms of capitalism aregoing to work, children need to haveaccess to quality education that willallow them to shape their futures.Aflatoun is dedicated to reducingpoverty by helping children developthe skills to be socially and financiallyempowered.

AMEE2007 USA www.amee.comThe old adage that what you can’tmeasure you can’t manage appliesdirectly to the Phoenix Economy.AMEE aims to map, measure andtrack all the energy data on Earth.This includes aggregating everyemission factor and methodologyrelated to CO2 and EnergyAssessments (individuals, businesses,buildings, products, supply chains,countries, etc.), and all theconsumption data (fuel, water, waste,quantitative and qualitative factors).

American Council on RenewableEnergy (ACORE)2001 USA www.acore.org The Phoenix Economy must have voices that will promote itsdevelopment and the adoption ofPhoenix models by the mainstream.ACORE is a multi-stakeholdermembership driven organisation that aims to bring renewable energyinto the mainstream of America’seconomy and lifestyle.

Apopo1998 Belgium www.apopo.org Lateral thinking will be a key factorshaping the evolution of the PhoenixEconomy. Apopo uses ‘sniffer rats’ to detect and uncover landmines, the rats remaining unharmed becausethey are light enough not to detonatethe mines.

Aravind Eye Care System1976 India www.aravind.orgNew models of value creation will be central. Aravind Eye Care is thelargest and most productive eye carefacility in the world. Using a hybridbusiness model, they treat over 1.4 million patients a year, two-thirdsof them for free.

Arup1946 UK www.arup.com Now that we are an urban species,the Phoenix Economy will requiresmart urban design, planning andmanagement. Arup is a designcompany with a range of technical,design, creative and managementskills to achieve solutions to complexdesign challenges.

Ashoka1980 USA www.ashoka.orgHow do we switch on the world to the need for change? Bill Drayton andAshoka are the pioneers of the socialentrepreneurship movement and areevolving a series of programmes thatare working towards the vision of aworld where ‘Everyone is achangemaker’.™

Better Place2007 USA www.betterplace.comElectric forms of transport andmobility will be crucial in the transitionto sustainability. Founded by ShaiAgassi, Better Place is workingtowards building electric car networksin countries like Australia, Canada,Denmark, Israel and the USA. Its goalis sustainable transportation, globalenergy independence and freedomfrom oil.

Business and Human Rights Resource Centre2000 UK www.business-humanrights.orgThere are many organisationsdedicated to promoting human rights,but very few that focus on theinterface with business—and nonethat do it as well as The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre. It is the leading player helping grow awhole generation of organizations andnetworks which promote humanrights issues within global business.Their work covers over 4,000companies in more than 180countries.

BYD1995 China www.byd.com Phoenix Economy organisations arelocated all over the world. BYD is amajor Chinese battery manufacturerthat has now evolved to become aleading business in the nascentelectric mobility market in China,manufacturing and selling electric cars.

C402005 USA www.c40cities.orgIn an increasingly urban world, citieswill need to work together to create a global Phoenix Economy. They havea central role to play in tacklingclimate change, particularly as citiesbear a disproportional responsibilityfor causing it. C40 is a group of theworld's largest cities committed totackling climate change in as part ofthe Clinton Climate Initiative, engagingwith the central responsibility and role of cities for addressing climatechange and low-carbon energysystems.

CellBazaar2006 Bangladesh www.cellbazaar.comCell phones are used for purposesbeyond communication and thetechnology is increasingly beingapplied to create a better, moreequitable world. CellBazaar is aservice from Grameenphone thatallows people to buy or sell productsand services ranging from rice,bananas, used watches, andthousands of other items, directly toothers in their localities using mobilecommunications technology.

CERES1989 USA www.ceres.org New market rules will be essential.Ceres is a national network ofinvestors, environmental organizationsand other public interest groupsworking with companies andinvestors to address sustainabilitychallenges such as global climatechange. Its mission is to integratesustainability into capital markets for the health of the planet and itspeople.

The Phoenix Economy 45

Cleantech Group2002 USA www.cleantech.comPhoenix sectors, such as cleantech,are building critical mass and findingstrength in a shared voice. TheCleantech Group pioneered cleantechnology as an investment categoryand played an influential role infostering its growth informationproducts, world-class research and thehighest calibre industry connections.

Climate Change Capital2003 UK www.climatechangecapital.comFor quite some time, carbon willremain a central element of thePhoenix Economy. Controversial attimes, Climate Change Capital is an investment management firmspecialising and advocating for newopportunities generated by the globaltransition to the low carbon economy.

E+Co1994 USA www.eandco.orgEnergy is the basis of a modern life,but is very hard to access in manyparts of the world. E+Co investsservices and capital in high-impact,small and growing clean energybusinesses in developing countries,addressing energy transitions in the‘missing middle’, businesses that aretoo large to benefit from micro-financebut too small to access mainstreamfinancial services.

Econcern1984 The Netherlands www.econcern.com The sustainable energy space holdstremendous opportunity. Econcerncontinuously introduces efficient,integrated concepts and systems that can drive a sustainable energytransition. The Econcern team believesthat the key to such a transition ismarket-driven innovation.

Generation InvestmentManagement2004 UK and USA www.generationim.com Few people have done more tochampion a sustainable future than Al Gore and David Blood. GenerationInvestment Management LLP, co-founded by Al Gore and David Blood,come into the mainstream equitymanagement space with the idea thata company's returns over the longterm will be largely determined by itsmanagement of sustainability issues.By integrating sustainability issues withtraditional analysis, Generation aims todeliver superior investment returns totheir clients.

General Electric’s Ecomagination 2005 USA http://ge.ecomagination.comIncumbent companies will need totransform themselves if they are goingto find a way of participating in thePhoenix Economy. GE is one of thebiggest mainstream companies playinginto future markets. It is one of thelargest players in the wind powerindustry, and has business unitsdeveloping environment-friendlyproducts such as hybrid locomotives,desalination and water reuse solutions,and photovoltaic cells. Ecomaginationillustrates a large corporation’ssustainable business strategy.

Global Impact Investing Network(GIIN)2008 USA www.qk18ad7x79.web.aplus.netA new initiative focused on leveragingthe role of investment in supportingsocial and environmental businesses,the Global Impact Investing Network(GIIN) brings together investors andintermediaries who put capital to workat scale to generate social andenvironmental value in addition tofinancial return.

Global Footprint Network (GFN)2003 USA www.footprintnetwork.orgThe Phoenix Economy will only work if there are new ways of measuringprogress. Global Footprint Networkbelieves that an essential step increating a one-planet future ismeasuring human impact on the Earth, and aims to accelerate the use of Ecological Footprint metrics—a resource accounting tool thatmeasures how much nature we have, how much we use, and whouses what.

Good Energy1999 UK www.goodenergy.co.uk Empowering energy buyers to makedecisions about where their energycomes from, Good Energy is the only 100% pure renewable electricitysupplier in the UK. It allows consumersto support clean electricity, whiledeveloping systems to ensure theconstant reliability of supplies.

Google.org1998 USA www.google.orgGoogle is best known as the world’smost successful search engine, but is included in the Phoenix 50 becauseof the multiple initiatives running underits philanthropic arm, Google.org. Thisleverages Google’s capacity forinnovation to confront the climatecrisis. Initiatives include developingutility-scale renewable energy that ischeaper than coal (RE<C initiative) andaccelerating the commercialization ofplug-in vehicles through theRechargeIT initiative.

Grameen Group1976 Bangladeshwww.grameen-info.orgOriginally three different parts of theGrameen Group made it onto thePhoenix 50 list—an organisation that is obviously well know and celebratedfor its early Phoenix thinking. GrameenGroup and Muhammad Yunus arepioneers of microfinance and a wholegeneration of initiatives andorganizations that have subsequentlyused the Grameen Bank as a modelplatform to branch out other services.These include Grameen Shakti for theprovision of clean rural energy and theco-venture Grameen Danone Foods.

Green for All2007 USA www.greenforall.org Achieving the Phoenix Economy willrequire new forms of employment andreskilling. Green For All advocates forlocal, state and federal commitment to ‘green’ jobs creation, skills training,and entrepreneurial opportunities in the emerging green economy,especially for people fromdisadvantaged communities. Green For All is demonstrating thateconomic development and povertyalleviation are not trade-offs against a green economy, but can besynergistically tackled together.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)2000 UK www.gsk.comAccess will need to be provided todrugs, energy and water at affordableprices if the Phoenix future is tobecome a reality. In February 2009,GSK announced breakthroughcommitments to developing healthcareand medicine provisions in developingcountries; a future-looking businessstrategy that aims to influence the rest of the industry.

The Phoenix Economy 46

Health Care Without Harm 1996 USA www.noharm.orgOne way of driving positive change is to work with existing sectors andhelp them prepare for the Phoenixtransition. Health Care Without Harm isa global coalition of 473 organizationsin more than 50 countries, bridgingissues of health and environment, byworking to reduce the pollution in thehospitals and the wider healthcaresector.

Himanshu Parikh ConsultingEngineers1987 Indiawww.changemakers.net/en-us/node/6722In most mega-cities around the worldslums are an ‘invisible’ problem, withover a billion people living in themtoday. If the Phoenix Economy is tosucceed, the people who live in theseareas must be given help in findingtheir feet. Himanshu Parikh isdeveloping Slum Networking solutions,providing infrastructure solutions to slums based on the correlationbetween slums and the natural riverine paths of cities.

Innocentive2001 USA www.innocentive.comCollaborative problem solving willdevelop some of the best solutions.Innocentive is a global, onlinemarketplace where organizations in need of breakthrough ideas—such as companies, academicinstitutions, public sector, and non-profit organizations—can utilize aglobal network of over 160,000 of the world’s brightest and committedproblem solvers.

Institute for One World Health2000 USA www.oneworldhealth.orgAccess to medicine will be a crucialchallenge. One World Health was the first non-profit pharmaceuticalcompany in the United States, and isadvancing global health by developingeffective and affordable medicines forinfectious diseases that affect peoplein the developing world.

Interpeace1994 Switzerland www.interpeace.orgWar is a feature of every century, butthe stakes are getting progressivelyhigher. Interpeace is an internationalpeace-building organization that helpsdivided and conflicted societies tobuild sustainable peace processes. It focuses on connecting leaders anddecision-making spaces, addressingcritical links between the globalsecurity agenda and the wellbeing of societies.

J Craig Venter Institute 2006 USA www.jcvi.orgEvery new economy is powerfullyshaped by scientists who experimentand explore the make-up of our naturalworld. The J. Craig Venter Institute is a large multidisciplinary genomic-focused organisation seeking solutionsto the world’s greatest challenges.Recent projects have included thepublication of the first diploid humangenome and a global ocean samplingexpedition, which uncovered morethan six million new genes andthousands of new protein families from organisms found in sea water.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers 1972 USA www.kpcb.comFuture-oriented venture capital firmsare investing in many Phoenixenterprises. Kleiner Perkins Caufield &Byers is one of the biggest venturecapital firms in the world, with a trackrecord of backing some of the mostsuccessful companies like Google,Amazon and Sun Microsystems. Today they have become a leadingexample of how venture capital firmscan play a role in advancing a greenenergy revolution, and contribute toshape a new, greener economy.

Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)1997 UK www.msc.orgFish provides a healthy, renewablefood source, and for some it’s essentialfor survival. As the world’s populationincreases so does pressure on fisheryresources. MSC is the world’s leadingcertification and eco-labelling programseeking to steer the massive globalfishery crisis towards a sustainablepath. Among prominent partnerships itis working with Wal-Mart, which hascommitted to source 100% of its freshseafood products from MSC-certifiedsources by 2012.

MaRS2000 Canada www.marsdd.comCollaboration can help expedite thedevelopment and commercialization of new ideas. MaRS is a non-profitinnovation centre connecting science,technology and social entrepreneurswith business skills, networks andcapital to stimulate innovation andaccelerate the creation and growth ofsuccessful Canadian enterprises.

Mothers2Mothers2001 South Africa www.m2m.orgFuture generations (and mothers) aremost vulnerable at the time of birth.Mothers2Mothers is a grassrootsprogram supporting under-resourcedhealthcare systems, which trains andemploys new mothers with HIV/AIDSto provide education and support totheir peers, empowering them toaccess lifesaving treatment forthemselves and their newborns.

Movimento Nacional dosCatadores de Materiais Recicláveis (MNCR) 1992 Brazil www.mncr.org.brSocial justice and equality is a coreprinciple in the Phoenix Economy. The MNCR is a nation-wide socialmovement for street waste-recyclers(catadores), which seeks the socialand economic emancipation ofCatadores through direct action,influencing public policy and partneringwith the private sector in innovativeways.

MyC42004 Denmark www.myc4.comThe Phoenix Economy will be driven by a global increase in entrepreneurialactivity. To support the growth of these new enterprises there are agrowing number of micro-loanwebsites, which provide funding toentrepreneurs. MyC4 is a peer-to-peeronline marketplace that connectspeople around the world with Africanentrepreneurs who are looking forcapital to develop their smallbusinesses.

The Phoenix Economy 47

Novo Nordisk and the Oxford Health Alliance2003 (OHA only) Denmark and UK www.oxha.orgThe Phoenix Economy involvesthinking through your strategy inbroad, global terms. Although it iscounter-intuitive for a pharmaceuticalcompany to invest in research thatwould, if successful, cut demand for itsproducts, Novo Nordisk has played akey role in evolving the Oxford HealthAlliance, which aims to prevent chronicdiseases—including diabetes, forwhich Novo produces a treatment,insulin. The OHA enables experts andactivist from different backgrounds tocollaborate in raising awareness andchange behaviours, policies andperspectives at every level of society.

Obama Presidency2008 USA www.barackobama.comThe Obama Presidency was the mostpopular nomination in our 2009Phoenix Economy survey. The first African-American US President,Barack Obama is a symbol of newleadership for change—and his New Energy for America plan isremarkably ambitious.

Participant Media2004 USA www.participantmedia.comIn 2004, Jeff Skoll assembled a teamof entertainment industry executiveswho shared his interest in creatingquality entertainment that inspires andcompels social change. In 2006,Participant produced the film An Inconvenient Truth, which went on to become a worldwidephenomenon, generating awarenessabout climate change and winning two Academy Awards.

PDA1974 Thailandwww.pda.or.th/engPopulation control is a difficult issue toaddress, yet is one of our most criticalpriorities. PDA is a leading NGO inThailand, addressing taboo-riddenissues of family planning and HIV/AIDSprevention through the use ofcondoms. It works with over 12,000volunteers and uses participatory,community-based approach topropagate large-scale, national-levelchanges in culture. Humour is centralto its work, as a means to deflectingshame and denial.

Solarcentury 1998 UK www.solarcentury.comSolarcentury was founded in 1998 to design and supply solar energysolutions for the built environment, and has gone on to become the UK’sfastest growing solar energy company. It has the aim to revolutionizerenewable energy markets and hasrecently championed an advocacycampaign “We Support Solar”, tolobby the UK government to improvemarket incentives to the industry and consumers.

State of California1850 USA www.ca.gov/about/environresources/greenca.html Long the bellwether state in terms of the environment, under GovernorSchwarzenegger California hasbecome a leader in climate andsustainability-related policies,demonstrating the power of visionarypolitical will to shape new markets andindustries. It is the 31st US State andthe biggest contributor to the US GDP,and an evolving hotspot for America’srenewable energy revolution.

Sustainable Asset Management(SAM)1995 Switzerlandwww.sam-group.com SAM was established in Zurich in 1995as the first asset management groupfocused exclusively on sustainabilityinvesting, and is now a leading edgereference for understanding andtracking sustainable investingpractices. The firm’s offering coversasset management products as well as a series of benchmarks includingthe Dow Jones Sustainability Index(DJSI) —the world’s first index tracking the financial performance of sustainability leaders on a global scale.

TNT1946 The Netherlandswww.tnt.comThe depth, ambition and sheer scale of the citizenship activities undertakenby the logistics company TNT isremarkable, from creating andunderpinning humanitarian emergencylogistics to large-scale tree-plantinginitiatives in Africa. As a package,freight and delivery company, TNT has gone ‘beyond CSR’ by using itsbusiness expertise and its globalnetworks to demonstrate howdistribution channels and logistic cancontribute to shape future markets.

Virgance2008 USA www.virgance.comBuilding critical mass by effectivelyengaging large groups of people will be a critical tool. Virgance is a for-profit company releasing a series ofproducts that focus on using onlinesocial networks to transform marketsand infrastructures. It builds onprinciples of social activism to designlarge-scale, citizen-powered globalcampaigns, including initiatives suchas ‘One Block Off the Grid (1BOG)’,‘Carrotmob’ and ‘Lend Me SomeSugar’.

World Business Council forSustainable Development (WBCSD)1992 Switzerlandwww.wbcsd.orgWBCSD is a CEO-led, globalassociation of 200 of the world’slargest companies, focusing onadvancing business and sustainabilityissues and strategies, with a future-oriented vision across industries and markets.

World Resources Institute (WRI)1982 USA www.wri.orgThe World Resources Institute is aleading environmental think-tank in the USA, which goes beyond researchto find practical ways to protect the earth and improve people’s lives.Its prominent, high-impact spin-offsinclude EMBARQ (the WRI Center for Sustainable Transport), theGreenhouse Gas Protocol, and New Ventures.

World Toilet Organization (WTO)2001 Singaporewww.worldtoilet.orgSanitation must be a fundamentalpriority worldwide. The World ToiletOrganization is a global non-profitorganization committed to improvingtoilet and sanitation conditionsworldwide. Building a powerful globalnetwork of 171 member organizationsfrom 56 countries, WTO drawsmembers from all regions to present a unified force and a global voice toaddress the sanitation crisis.

Notes

1 Our own thinking has been powerfullyshaped by the thinking of other economists,among them Nikolai Kondratiev and Joseph Schumpeter.

2 www.earth-policy.orgSee also visualization by Visible Strategies:http://epi.visiblestrategies.com

3 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of ScientificRevolutions, The University of ChicagoPress, 1962. See also:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/paradigm_shift

4 John Elkington, The Chrysalis Economy,Capstone / John Wiley & Sons, 2001.

5 Growing Opportunity: EntrepreneurialSolutions to Impossible Problems,SustainAbility for the Skoll Foundation, 2007.

6 The Social Intrapreneur: A Field Guide forCorporate Changemakers, SustainAbility for the Skoll Foundation, 2008.

7 John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan, The Power of Unreasonable People, Harvard Business Press, 2009.

8 www.sustainability.com/researchandadvocacy/radar_article.asp?id=322

9 Creating Value for All: Strategies for DoingBusiness with the Poor, United NationsDevelopment Programme, New York, June 2008.

10 GE announced in October 2008 that, amidstglobal economic turbulence, revenues fromits range of energy efficient and environment-ally advantageous products and serviceswould surge 21% to $17 billion in 2008, see:http://ge.ecomagination.com

11 ‘Drug giant GlaxoSmithKline pledges cheapmedicine for world’s poor’, The Guardian,February 13, 2009.www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/feb/13/glaxo-smith-kline-cheap-medicine

12 The Monitor Institute ‘Investing for Socialand Environmental Impact’.www.monitorinstitute.com/impactinvesting

13 CEPO launches Solar Capability Scheme toboost the use of solar technologies in newbuildings, press release, May 8, 2008.www.sedb.com/edb/sg/en_uk/index/news/articles/cepo_launches_solar.html

14 BBC News ‘Report’s Stark Warning onClimate’ October 29, 2006.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6096594.stm

15 UNEP Press Release ‘Realizing a GreenDeal’, February 16, 2009.www.unep.org/documents.multilingual/default.asp?documentid=562&articleid=6079&l=en

16 An interesting comment from a majorfinancial institution on GE was that their greening initiative is confined toEcomagination, whereas a company likeABB increasingly applies its greeningstrategy to all of its projects.

17 Growing Opportunity: EntrepreneurialSolutions to Insoluble Problems,SustainAbility for the Skoll Foundation, 2007.

18 www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html19 Peter Thai Larsen, Developing world faces

massive fall in capital flows, Financial Times,January 28, 2009.

20 Global Trends 2025, see:www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html

21 Steve Londner, TechnoServe, USA.22 Fabio Rosa, IDEAAS, Brazil.23 Elizabeth Hausler, Build Change, USA.24 MAARDEC, Nigeria and others.25 Namrita Kapur, Root Capital, USA

and many others.26 www.sam-group.com/yearbook/download/

yearbook_current.pdf27 www.unep.fr/energy/finance/activities28 www.changemakers.net/node/672229 Chris Baker, Live Free or Drown, Wired,

February 2009.30 http://my.barackobama.com/page/

content/newenergy31 Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein,

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health,Wealth and Happiness, Yale UniversityPress, 2008.

32 A draft of the Agenda was tested with abrains trust of entrepreneurs.

33 www.ageofstupid.net34 www.london-accord.co.uk35 ‘Nation’s Largest Investors Call for “Green

Recovery”: Urge Congress to SupportEnergy Efficiency and Clean Energy inEconomic Stimulus Bill’, January 26, 2009.www.incr.com

36 www2.goldmansachs.com/ideas/environment-and-energy/gs-sustain/index.html

37 www.timesonline.co.uk/richlist38 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

world_social_forum39 The selection panel was made up of John

Elkington, Alejandro Litovsky, Charmian Loveand Smita Sircar from Volans; Alexa Clayand Patrin Watanatada of SustainAbility;Sam Gray of Apposite Capital; and MollyWebb of The Climate Group.

40 Finalists did not need to meet all the criteriato be included in the Phoenix 50

48

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, we are profoundly grateful to the Skoll Foundation—particularlyJeff Skoll, Sally Osberg, Dan Crisafulli and Lance Henderson—for their generousfunding and fearless support.

Second, we also gratefully acknowledge the support of the Singapore EconomicDevelopment Board in building the softwareand other infrastructures for our PhoenixEconomy work.

Third, we say a heart-felt thank you to the Volans team that prepared the report:Alejandro Litovsky, Charmian Love, John Elkington, Kevin Teo, Sam Lakha andSmita Sircar—plus our colleagues Allen Tan,Geoff Lye and Pamela Hartigan.

Fourth, we thank SustainAbility for theirsupport throughout, particularly MaggieBrenneke, Mark Lee and Sophia Tickell—and Alexa Clay and Patrin Watanatada whohelped with the selection process, as did Molly Webb of The Climate Group and Sam Gray of Apposite Capital.

Fifth, we thank James Baderman for hiscontributions to the Phoenix 50 genesis,Yasmin Crowther for her insight and editorialguidance and Rupert Bassett for his design.

Sixth, and most importantly in terms of ourPhoenix 50 selection process, we also thankthe 114 entrepreneurs who completed ourlatest survey and Liz Maw and the members of Net Impact, the SustainAbility Faculty and Volans Ecosystem who helped us in so many ways.

Publication Details

TitleThe Phoenix Economy:50 Pioneers in the Business of Social InnovationFirst Edition 2009

ISBN 978–0–9562166–0–1

Copyright © 2009 Volans Ventures Ltd. All RightsReserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means,electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape,photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without permission in writing from thecopyright holders.

PublisherVolans Ventures Ltd2 Bloomsbury PlaceLondon WC1A 2QAUKT +44 (0) 207 268 0390F +44 (0) 207 268 0391www.volans.com

phoenix@volans.com

DesignRupert Bassett

PrintPensord Press

PaperRobert Horne Revive 100 Offset

Volans

Volans Ventures Ltd2 Bloomsbury PlaceLondon WC1A 2QAUKT +44 (0) 207 268 0390F +44 (0) 207 268 0391www.volans.com

phoenix@volans.com

Our mission is to help the future take flight.Volans means flying in Latin, as in Piscesvolans, the flying fish. Founded in March 2008,we are based in London and Singapore. Part broker, part incubator, part think-tank, part consultancy, Volans works globally withentrepreneurs, businesses, investors andgovernments to develop and scale innovativesolutions to social and environmentalchallenges.

The Volans Advisory Board comprises: Tim Brown, CEO, IDEO, USA; J Gregory Dees,Professor of the Practice of SocialEntrepreneurship and Nonprofit Management,Fuqua School of Management, DukeUniversity, USA; Frans Johansson, Author, The Medici Effect and Managing Director,Medici Capital Management; Jerry Linenger,Astronaut and Cosmonaut, USA; Jane Nelson,Senior Fellow and Director of Corporate SocialResponsibility Initiative, Mossavar-RahmaniCenter for Business and Government,Kennedy School of Government, HarvardUniversity, USA/UK/Zimbabwe; Ndidi OkonkwoNwuneli, Founder/CEO of LEAP Africa, Nigeria;David Puttnam, film producer and member ofthe House of Lords, UK; Bunker Roy, Founder,Barefoot College, India; Tim Smit, Founder,The Eden Project, UK; Antonio Soler, serialentrepreneur, France; and Herta von Stiegel,Ariya Capital Group, UK.