Seven Lessons for Radical Innovators

In his Edge Economy column at Harvard Business Blogs, Umair Haque asks the question: how did the "unlikeliest of candidates" shatter Washington's toxic, bitter 20th century status quo to win the 2008 US election? Umair's analysis is as follows:

"The most critical part of the story is the organization Obama built: a new kind of political organization for the 21st century. It differs from yesterday's political organizations as much as Google and Threadless differ from yesterday's corporations: all are a tiny handful of truly new, 21st century institutions in the world today."

According to Umair, Director of the Havas Media Lab, Obama succeeded through the power of new DNA: new rules for new kinds of institutions. Among these new rules are:

• Self-organized design: A tightly controlled core surrounded by self-organizing cells of volunteers, donors, contributors, and other participants at the fuzzy edges. In contrast, McCain's organization was trapped by a stifling 20th century, command-and-control paradigm.
• Elasticity of resilience: Resilience is not about maximizing outputs or minimizing inputs, but the capacity to endure external turbulence and threats by growing, augmenting, or strengthening resources.
• Minimal strategy: Because it was almost entirely with strategy in its most naïve sense - such as gamesmanship, positioning, triangulation - the campaign never lost its deeply-lived sense of purpose or diluted its credibility.
• Maximal Purpose: The 21st century is about changing the world. What does "yes we can" really mean? Obama's goal wasn't simply to win an election, garner votes, or run a great campaign. It was larger and more urgent: to change the world.
  
  Bigness of purpose is what separates 20th century and 21st century organizations: yesterday, we built huge corporations to do tiny, incremental things - tomorrow, we must build small organizations that can do tremendously massive things.
  
  And to do that, you must strive to change the world radically for the better - and always believe that yes, you can. You must maximize, stretch, and utterly explode your sense of purpose.
• True Power: The power many corporations wield is thin power: the power to instill fear and inculcate greed. True power is what Obama has learned wield: the power to inspire, lead, and engender belief. You can beat people into subjugation - but you can never command their loyalty, creativity, or passion. Thick power is true power: it's radically more durable, less costly, and more intense.
• Nothing is more asymmetrical than an idea: orget about a short-lived, often meaningless "competitive advantage". It's a concept built for the 20th century. In the 21st century, there is nothing more asymmetrical - more disruptive, more revolutionary, or more innovative -- than the world-changing power of an ideal.

Bigness of purpose is what separates 20th century and 21st century organizations: yesterday, we built huge corporations to do tiny, incremental things - tomorrow, we must build small organizations that can do tremendously massive things.

This last lesson is the starting point for tomorrow's radical innovators, believes Umair, because it's the thread that knits the others together. And it's where you should start if you want to use these rules to start building 21st century institutions - whether businesses, non-profits, social enterprises, or political campaigns.

Read the article in full.

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Google Project 10 to 100: Our Entry

"How soon will we get the $10 million from Google, Dad?", asked one of our WeDo Marriage heiresses a few days ago. No until after Christmas, sadly. Last week we submitted our entry to Google's Project 10 to 100, "a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible."

Check out the details of our entry and get ready to vote come 27 January 2008.

Here are the main questions asked by Google Project 10 to 100 and our responses to them.

Google: Describe your idea on one sentence.

A marriage to love, a love to last: a better and brighter future for today’s couples and for the children and communities of tomorrow worldwide.

Google: Describe your idea in more detail:

WeDo Marriage empowers couples to design, exchange and sustain personalised, mutual commitments and goals based on contract law rather than family law. Without imposing their vision of marriage on society as a whole, and working with professionally accredited service providers they can build Marriage Contracts that reflect their Love, Values and Aspirations. As happy, fulfilled and productive partners and parents they are equipped to make positive and measureable contributions to their community, locally and globally, now and in the future.

Google: What problem or issue does your idea address?

Experts agree that across the western world over the past thirty years marriage rates have halved and are now at a record low. By the 2030s new marriages will be extinct and most couples will have no legal relationship with each other, and most children will have a legal relationship with only one of their two biological parents. We see the terminal decline of marriage not as a demand problem but a supply problem. Most people want to get married; they just don’t want the only version of marriage currently available from the only people who currently supply it: the state family law system.

Google: If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?

WeDo Marriages make happy families; happy families make happy societies; happy societies make a happy world. WeDo families have the purpose, commitment and motivation to invest in a sustainable world, the world they pass on to what is most precious to them: their children. They have the conviction and drive to protect cultural heritage; protect the environment; to prioritise renewable energy solutions and to build fairer, safer and more caring and stable interdependent societies. They have the passion to enrich their children's future on this wonderful planet.

Google: Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

More Love in the world. More individuals entering into relationships in search of enduring love, and more couples advancing into commitment-based, longer-term relationships. More parents having children, reducing demographic imbalance; more children nurtured by two parents, enhancing child outcomes in terms of personal development and educational performance. And a society with more net contributors to the common good.

Over 100,000 ideas were submitted. So our odds at WeDo Marriage of making the top 100 ideas from which the ten winners will be picked are 1,000-to-1. Better odds than we've ever had before ;-)

Go here to learn more about the project, watch a video, and sign up for a notification to select your favourite idea when voting beings in January next. The prize fund will come in handy in the New Year ... when cash is a bit short after Christmas.

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Seth Godin on selling new ideas

How to Sell a Book (or Any New Idea) (step 1 is the hard part) is the title of an excellent eight-slide presentation from Seth Godin on ChangeThis.

Here's a sample quote ...

My friend Fred has a new book coming out and he was trolling around for new marketing ideas. I think he’d be surprised at this:

Sell one.

Find one person who trusts you and sell him a copy. Does he love it? Is he excited about it? Excited enough to tell ten friends because it helps them, not because it helps you?

More from Seth:

Tribes grow when people recruit other people. That’s how ideas spread as well. They don’t do it for you, of course. They do it for each other. Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work. If Fred’s book spreads, then he’s off to a great start. If it doesn’t, he needs a new book.

This bit is important:

You don’t get to take step 2 if you can’t do step 1.

And finally - you'll need to view the slides to get this:

What’s hard now is breaking the rules. Successful people are the ones who are good at this.

Go download How to Sell a Book (or Any New Idea) (step 1 is the hard part).

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Lessons for life and business

From Rajesh Setty, serial entrepreneur, investor, author and blogger: Mini Sagas - Bite Sized Lessons for Life and Business. It features 15 mini photo-essays (photographs with stories each of exactly 50 words). Here is the link.

If I had to pick a favourite ...

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What advertising can't fix

A Reuters report Church of England law relaxes wedding rules reveals that a new British law came into force in October making it easier for couples to get married in Anglican churches.

Previously, couples could only get married in a church if they worshipped there regularly, lived in the parish or applied for a special license. Under the new rules, couples can choose to get married in a place with a special connection for themselves or their families.

According to Stephen Cottrell, the Bishop of Reading: "Getting married in church just got easier. People who are serious about getting married naturally want a marriage ceremony and a setting which is equally serious." This report story reminded me of a recent blog post from marketing guru Seth Godin called What advertising can't fix and the following cartoon from Tom Fisburne.

With due respect to the good Bishop, marriage rates in Britain are at the lowest level since records began. According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of people choosing to sign up for a state marriage fell in 2005 by 10 per cent, producing the lowest marriage rates since they were first calculated in 1862. In the words of British think-tank Civitas:

It is not too extreme to talk about the death of marriage.

The Church of Enlgand deserves credit for relaxing rules that some of its flock may have found cumersome, but it does not change the fact that state marriage is a contaminated brand managed by a self-serving, state-backed monopoly known as the 'family law system'. Marriage rates have halved since the family system took over state marriage in the mid 1970s; according to the UK Independent, the last state marriage will be performed sometime in 2033

The terminal decline of state marriage is not a demand problem but a supply problem; it's not that people don't want to get married (every opinion poll and survey says most do); it's that there is currently only one type of marriage currently available (and it's a rubbish product). The wonder is not that fewer people are signing their names to the state marriage contract; it's that so many are still doing so. But, as the statistics show, it won't be for a whole lot longer.

Few would disagree with Bishop Stephen Cottrell when he says that people who are serious about getting married "want a marriage ceremony and a setting which is equally serious". But should they also not want a marriage contract that is serious: a contract they have choosen for themselves, not a non-negotiable deal imposed by the state? A contract for two, commited people - and without a state-backed monopoly as a dominant and abusive third partner.

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Branding with Schley and Nichols

Why Johnny Can’t Brand: Rediscovering the Lost Art of the Big Idea is a book from Bill Schley and Carl Nichols Jr that offers insights into how to create what they call a Dominant Selling Idea (DSI) and build a #1 brand.

According to the two authors a product or service needs to satisfy the 'Five Selling Ingredients' to become a DSI.

• Superlative - is best in class - better than the competition. Promise me something nobody else does.
• Important - offers something that really matters. Something I really want or would be in the market for if I knew about it.
• Believable - offers a logical reason, has credibility.
• Memorable - has an emotional hook that sticks until purchase time. Do you have something not only that I need - but what I want.
• Tangible - offers something real. Customers trust it because they’ve experienced it and it performed as promised. Must perform in a way that’s totally aligned and consistent with all of your claims.

You can download a PDF copy of the Introduction and Chapter One from the DavidID website.

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Remarkability: not taken but earned

From Paul Williams's Idea Sandbox, a blog about remarkability, creative problem solving and brand building:

In his blog post The Challenge Of Doing Something New, And Remarkable Paul quotes George Lucas, director of the Star Wars movies:

Well it’s always hard to get somebody to see something that’s never been done before.

It’s a big problem because there’s no precedent for you to base a judgment on.

People have to have a leap of faith. And trying to convince people to have a leap of faith, especially people that may be accountants or people about to invest - it’s extremely difficult because their imaginations don’t soar the same way creative people do.

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Judge blasts Stone's child Botox plan

According to Yahoo News actress Sharon Stone wanted her son to have his feet Botox-ed to stop them from smelling, a court judge has revealed.

According to court papers in the actress's custody case in which she requested to have her son Roan move from his father's San Francisco home to live with her in LA, the actress thought it would be a good idea for the 8-year-old to have a Botox injection - which in addition to being a wrinkle treatment also stops sweating - to cure his foot odour.

Stone's intended action was, unsurprisingly, considered an "over-reaction" and cited by the judge as an example of why the boy should stay with Phil Bronstein. "As the father appropriately noted, the simple and common sense approach of making sure Roan wore socks with his shoes and used foot deodorant corrected [the problem]," said the judge.

Stone's delegation of "parenting responsibilities" was also mentioned in the papers and her refusal to take part in counselling. The Basic Instinct star's conduct was described as "unacceptable" and not serving "the child's best interest".

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sam says

Several social scientists, in examining “healthy marriages,” have identified a number of traits, qualities and skills of people who had been able to maintain successful, satisfying relationships.

Several social scientists, in examining “healthy marriages,” have identified a number of traits, qualities and skills of people who had been able to maintain successful, satisfying relationships.

Several social scientists, in examining “healthy marriages,” have identified a number of traits, qualities and skills of people who had been able to maintain successful, satisfying relationships.

Several social scientists, in examining “healthy marriages,” have identified a number of traits, qualities and skills of people who had been able to maintain successful, satisfying relationships.

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Marriage builds wealth

According to Marriage Brings Wealth, Divorce Steals It by LiveScience Staff a 2006 study confirms what any divorced person probably suspected: Scrapping a marriage robs you of wealth. But the misfortune is more severe than merely divvying up the goods. The study of about 9,000 people found divorce reduces a person's wealth by 77 percent compared to that of a single person.

"Divorce causes a decrease in wealth that is larger than just splitting a couple's assets in half," said Jay Zagorsky of Ohio State University.

Likewise, getting married makes people richer by more than just adding their assets together.

• Each married person, on average, sees his or her wealth nearly double.
• Married people increased their wealth about 4 percent per year just as a result of being married, with other factors removed from the equation.

"If you really want to increase your wealth, get married and stay married," Zagorsky said. "On the other hand, divorce can devastate your wealth." The study relied on surveys of a group of people between 1985 and 2000. They were all between 21 and 28 years old in 1985. The findings are detailed in the current issue of the Journal of Sociology. After divorce, men had 2.5 times the wealth of women, but this seemingly large disparity worked out to only about $5,100, on average. For those who got divorced, wealth began to decline about four years before divorce and bottomed out the year prior to divorce.

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All about HeroCamp

HeroCamp ("Good apples come from good barrels.") is a gathering of heroes wanting to make ... more heroes. Over a period of 4 days in Houston, from October 23-26, 2008, a group of people who dedicate their lives to making the world a little better everyday will gather to launch a project that answers the question: "How do we inspire others to be heroes?"

In order to narrow down the question, the organiser have chosen to focus on ways of creating this program for school kids.

An outline schedule is as follows:

• Day 1: Intros and brainstorming: Introductions, presentation of everyone's ideas, whiteboarding, setting goals, boiling things down to a really great basic planning. Evening: BBQ and Beer.
• Day 2: Fleshing out the ideas: More whiteboarding, brainstorming and figuring out exactly what we are doing. Nailing down 'the plan'. Evening: Tacos and Tequila.
• Day 3: Getting down to brass tacks: Execution, building a website, designing a brochure, making the message and the program clear enough for anyone to pick it up and run with it. Evening: Fancier dinner somewhere that we can dress up for.
• Day 4: Spit and Polish: Finishing up on Day 3's execution, making certain we've covered most angles, setting out a promotional plan, etc. Evening: Collapse in elation.

Organiser Tara Hunt explains it better than I can.

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Rise of the mindful consumer

Rajesh Setty's excellent Life Beyond Code blog brought to my attention this new book from Tim Sanders entitled Saving the World at Work: What Companies and Individuals Can Do to Go Beyond Making a Profit to Making a Difference.

Sanders, a former Chief Software Officer at Yahoo argues that what he calls a 'Responsibility Revolution' is underway. Both consumers and employers have turned away from price consciousness to demand that companies make a difference to society through their products, manufacturing methods, environmental efforts and community outreach.

According to the author, casual consumers now represent the minority; mindful consumers have brought in a new value system, paying as much attention to a company's environmental and social policies as to its pricing structures. Companies that do not clean up their acts will be left in the dust, losing customers who want their money to go toward good causes and employees who place more importance on green factors and job satisfaction than pay scale.

Through success stories like Horst Rechelbacher, the brains behind the ecologically sound cosmetics company Aveda, and Lee Scott's greening of Wal-Mart in 2004, Sanders makes a compelling argument for the necessity for businesses to appeal to their customers' hearts as well as their wallets.

A customer review on Amazon's US website is worth reading in full. Here's a flavour:

"Sanders' use of the words "revolution" and "revolutionary" are not hyperbolic. He wants to help achieve what Clayton Christensen characterizes as "movements punctuated with disruptive innovations that either create new markets or reshape existing markets." These movements will change, radically, how companies do business.

"These disruptive movements occur in five phases and Sanders devotes a separate chapter to each: First, a major change of circumstances that dramatically impacts how we think about the business landscape, creating in Phase Two a new set of values prior to the arrival of the innovators in Phase Three; then, "as the new values reach a tipping point of mass popularity, the fourth, and most extreme, phase of a business revolution occurs: disruption.

"In Leading the Revolution, Gary Hamel describes it this way: "First, the revolutionaries will take your markets and your customers. Next they'll take your best employees. Finally, they'll take your assets. The barbarians are no longer banging on the gates, they are eating off your best china."

"During the final phase, what Sanders calls The New Order, companies develop proficiency in service to new markets, innovators become more sophisticated, and customers become more demanding. 'Eventually, surviving companies will satisfy the new market needs and the competition will then turn to who does it best.' The process of natural selection continues as new 'infectious revolutionaries' appear, disrupting the terms of engagement in what continues to be a Responsibility Revolution."

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Start-ups: momentum and more

Insighful presentation by Jason Fried of 37Signals to the recent Web 2.0 Expo conference. Here's a sample:

Momentum - It has as its hands in just about everything and is incredibly important. Especially for morale. Most typical projects are really exciting at the beginning and then people tend to lose interest and fade out. Long projects eat at you and you’re not even looking to do good stuff you just want to finish things and they don’t turn out well. Create a situation where projects are short and there’s excitement and it’s a short 2 week project and it leaves people in excited mode. Break big projects into as many small projects. 2 week rule.

Here's another quote:

Planning is Vastly Overrated - 37signals doesn’t do road maps, specs, projections. They have rough ideas internally but these aren’t shared externally. Even internally they’re not set in stone or written down. Think about what’s being done now and maybe what’s next. You set expectations too soon and things changed. Don’t want to be boxed into decisions you made 18 years ago. They don’t do design docs and functional specs ‘artifacts’ that don’t push back enough. A spec doc contains 1000 yes’es. Leads to an illusion of agreement. Everyone can read the same paragraph and think you agree. Don’t do projections like financial projections.

And a third one:

Follow the Chefs - Lagasse, Batali, Flay, Child, Oliver. What they do is they out teach, out share, and out contribute their competitors. They’re out there saying “hey look, I’m a chef, I’m going to give you all my secrets, here they are.” Not afraid to put their ideas out there and let people learn from them. Not afraid that people will take their ideas and build a restaurant right beside of them. Think about “what’s your cookbook?” For 37signals it was all about “Getting Real”. In the business world people ask “why would you want to give this away, won’t your competitors use it?” Give the idea away and get the message out. Company is lucky if it has customers, very lucky if it has fans, incredibly lucky if it has an audience that comes back to hear what you have to say every day

Read the full presentation here.

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Nationalised: cars and marriage

"A decade without quality control" is how the 1960s were once described by US journalist PJ O'Rourke. But if you're searching for an era in recent history when some less than entirely sensible ideas took hold in the minds of the powerful, you'd need to skip forward a decade later to the 1970s. In Britain, two particularly daft events stand out: the nationalisation of marriage in 1973 and the nationalisation two years later of the car industry.

Yesterday's Sunday Times features a review of Downing Street Diary: Volume Two: With James Callaghan in No 10. Author Bernard Donoughue was then head of Prime Minister James Callaghan's No 10 Policy Unit, and so had an insider's view of life at the top.

As reviewer Dominic Lawson puts it: "Sometimes an entire era can be summed up in a single anecdote. It is September 1978, and the private office of prime minister James Callaghan decides that his official cars need replacing. Naturally they must be supplied by the state-owned car manufacturer." In Donoughue's own words, here is what happened next:

"Two cars were ordered specially from British Leyland. They took a long time to arrive. When they finally came they were found to have THIRTY-FOUR mechanical faults and had to be sent back to be repaired and made safe. Then they were sent to be converted to the PM's special safety needs - bombproof, bulletproof etc. This all cost a vast sum of money. When they returned, the PM went for a trip in one. He decided to open the window for some fresh air and pressed the button which does this electronically. The result was that the window immediately fell in on his lap. The PM has now said that he does not wish to see the new cars again ... we have the problem of what to do with two large expensive cars with a quarter of million pounds' worth of security extras.”

Reviewer Dominic Lawson continues: "In this one paragraph of Donoughue's diary of his three years as Callaghan's chief policy advisor we learn all we need to know about the state of Britain 30 years ago. The incompetent strike-ridden car company was so confident that it could continue leeching the taxpayer, it was content to deliver a pile of junk to the man who was actually signing off the subsidies."

"Thirty years on, there is no longer any British-owned car mass-manufacturer. An Indian firm now owns Jaguar; but their windows don't fall into the laps of their customers ... So when you read articles comparing the current state of the British economy with the 1970s, be reassured: nothing, absolutely nothing, in the British industrial economy is run as badly as it was 30 years ago."

Well, nothing except the state marriage system, that is. Two years before it became the majority shareholder in British Leyland the UK government, through The Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, became the dominant partner in every marriage contract. As Labour MP Nigel Spearing expressed it in 1996:

There are three partners in marriage … I refer to the two people concerned and to the state .. society or the community as a whole. The House of Commons is the centre of law-making for that community. It is, therefore, a triangular arrangement and not just one between two people.”

Britain's car industry limped along for 30 years after its nationalisation in 1975, the final end coming in 2005 when MG Rover went into administration with huge debts. How long will state marriage survive? Based on current trends this article in the Independent predicts that the last state marriage will be celebrated in 2033. Sometime in that year the 1970s-nationalised, state marriage system will have its final British Leyland moment.

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Wrong kind of lawyers on the track

According to Wikipedia the phrase "the wrong kind of snow" was coined by the British media in 1991 after severe weather caused disruption to many of British Rail's train services.

Everyone's favourite and always-accurate encyclopaedia continues:"People who did not realise that there are different kinds of snow saw the reference as nonsensical; in the United Kingdom, the phrase became a byword for euphemistic and lame excuses."

This webpage from BBC News offers a collection of similar, railway-related excuses, including:

• "Thameslink is sorry to announce the cancellation of the 8.16 to Bedford. This is due to slippery rain."
• "We apologise for the late running of this service. This was due to excessive heat on the tracks between Bedford and Luton."
• "The train now arriving on platform one is on fire. Passengers are advised not to board this train."
• "The conductor apologised by saying that the overcrowding was caused by too many passengers.
• "We apologise for the delay to customers on platform one. This is due to a delay in the actual service."

I found myself reminded of the "wrong kind of" phrase today when I came across a newspaper photograph showing a person described in the caption beneath as "divorce lawyer". Nothing unusual about that, really. There's a lot of them about.

But then I begin to wonder: why have I never heard or seen someone, anyone, referred to as "marriage lawyer". As in: "Meet Joan, she's a marriage lawyer from Bristol. And a first-class bridge-player too!" Or perhaps: "Local hotel succeeds in bid to host national conference of marriage lawyers." Or even: "Irish marriage lawyer scoops Lotto jackpot". Marriage lawyers: there seems to be very few of them about.

A quick search on Google reveals the wide gulf between the two flavours of lawyers, with the divorce kind of lawyers (about 1,290,000 of them) outnumbering the marriage kind of lawyers (about 5,540) by a ratio of 233:1.

Moreover, almost all the "marriage lawyers" appear to be focused on the marriage-termination rather than marriage-formation end of the market.

This makes no sense.

At some stage and in some circumstances, most of us will encounter lawyers as we journey along life's railway tracks. When it comes to marriage, why not involve lawyers at the beginning rather than have them arrive at the end? In fact, having a really good "marriage lawyer" at the start might well mean never meeting the other, wrong kind of lawyer at all.

Enjoy your journey :-)

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Happiness is your business model

Check out this inspiring presentation by Tara Hunt with the title of Happiness is Your Business Model.

What are the conditions for human happiness? Tara cites the American Psychological Association’s list of four:

• Autonomy — in control of life
• Competence — ability to do stuff
• Relatedness — interaction with others
• Self-esteem — confidence in self

And the main barriers to achieving happiness?

• Fear
• Confusion
• Loneliness
• Lack of control
• Struggle for survival

Without further ado here then is Tara’s presentation:

| View | Upload your own

Also check out Tara's post The Axis of Misery.

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New marriage, new thinking

‘Is anyone else thinking what we’re thinking?’

That’s a question we asked ourselves when we first developed the idea, back in mid-2006, of marriage based not on family law but on contract law.

Sure enough we found that a number of innovative thinkers had been seeking a new basis for marriage and parenting outside the family law system.

Among them were writers, legal scholars, academics – even a Nobel-prize winning professor!

In our slideshare slideshow, entitled New Thinking, New Marriage, we've brought together a collection of thoughts from some eminent individuals who are re-thinking marriage for the 21st century.

| View | Upload your own

Our slideshow has been online for about ten months now and in that time it has received 1,600+ hits. Got a comment or feedback you would like to share? We would love to hear from you.

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Innovation in partnering, parenting

Jeremy Gutsche said it right. As CEO of TrendHunter.com, a global network that tracks and anticipates innovation in areas such as pop culture, fashion, technology, art and lifestyle, Jeremy knows where to look when seeking to find innovation.

In every industry innovation starts by observing customers

You can check out Jeremy's insightful Slideshare presentation below.

| View | Upload your own

In the realms of partnering and parenting one social trend is clear: the three-decade long replacement of marriage with cohabitation. In the UK, for example:

• The number of cohabiting couples increased by two-thirds over the decade 1996-2006, and by 2031 the number will double to 3.8 million.
• Cohabiting couples and single-parent households will outnumber married couples by 2014.

But not all ‘customers’ are the same. According to the diffusion of innovations theory developed by Everett M. Rogers, consumers can be grouped according to how quickly they adopt a new product, service or idea.

Thirty years ago, couples living together outside marriage were regarded as ‘visionaries’; ten years ago, as ‘early adopters’; now, in every developed country, cohabiting couples are the ‘early majority’.

In every developed country, it is not couples married to each other but partners living together that form the fastest-growing family type.

Cohabiting couples: from non-marriage to new marriage

Once cohabitation was merely the absence of marriage; now, slowly but surely, it is becoming a search for a new marriage. The first steps across the bridge from non-marriage to new marriage is the so-called 'cohabitation contract': a legal agreement, defined by the couple, that sets out their responsibilities to one another.

In June 2007 I took a screenshot of a Google search for 'cohabitation contract'. The number of results found was 793. Just twelve months later the number has more than trebled to 2,690.

What family law has taken out of marriage – mutual commitment – a still-small but fast-growing number of couples are putting back in. In innovation terms, they are the relationship ‘innovators’. Soon the ‘early adopters’ will join them, to be followed by the ‘early majority’.

The path to WeDo Marriage

But a cohabitation contract is just the first step towards a new marriage; to complete the transition, something more is needed: the wholesale rebuilding, outside the family law system, of a marriage that meets the description so eloquently expressed below by Professor Linda J. Waite.

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Earned income from social goods

You may have heard the term ‘social entrepreneur’, wondered what it meant and sought an answer in Wikipedia. Here is what you will find:

A social entrepreneur is someone who recognises a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organise, create, and manage a venture to make social change.

In addition to operating in a business-like way, social enterprise is also about:

• Social goods: Social enterprises provide ‘products’ that benefit both the individual consumer and others in the wider community too.
• Earned income: Rather than depend on private or government handouts, social enterprises earn income in the marketplace to sustain their organisations into the future.

From helplessness and inaction to social problem-solving

Award-winning journalist and writer David Bornstein has eloquently made the connection between our innate human need to make a contribution, to solve problems – and the lengthy list of unsolved problems that aren’t being addressed by traditional institutions, whether businesses, governments or nonprofits.

I write about people who have solutions to problems, and whose deep yearning in their lives meets the world’s deep needs. There is emotional pain associated with inaction, especially if we care about something.

More from David:

On the other hand, there is the upside of action: doing work that you find challenging and meaningful with colleagues whom you respect and care for. Social entrepreneurship offers this: the pleasure of collaboration, the feeling of satisfaction and thrill of making change happen.

From cosmetics and coffee to ... marriage

Two of the best-known organisations that have applied social enterprise principles successfully are The Body Shop and FairTrade.

By every measure, marriage is not just a private good but a social good. Married couples live longer, healthier and more productive lives. And the children of married couples are much likely to be contributors to society rather than drains on its financial and social capital. Marriage’s wider social dimension has always provided the state’s justification for regulating it.

But, since the 1970s state family law systems has taken over marriage to the extent that it is no longer a state-regulated contract between two citizens. It is instead a three-way contract in which the state is the dominant parter.

And so soon as family law took over marriage, individual citizens stopped buying the ‘marriage product’. Following the path taken by other social enterprises, WeDo Marriage intends to bring marriage back by offering a new marriage that will compete with the family law system in the marriage provision marketplace.

From The David Bornstein - How to Change the World on YouTube.

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Making meaning, building success

Do you believe in your work? If not, why do it? If it’s routine or empty, or doesn’t challenge you to live up to your potential – then what’s the point?

In our view no one has better made the connection between work and motivation than Guy Kawasaki: entrepreneur, investment banker, venture capitalist and author.

The core of entrepreneurship is to make meaning. Those companies that are fundamentally founded to change the world – to make meaning – are the companies that make a difference, the companies that succeed.

So what is this ‘meaning’ all about then, Guy?

Making meaning is the most powerful motivator there is. (But) meaning is not about money, power, or prestige. It’s not even about creating a fun place to work.
       Among the meanings of ‘meaning’ are: to make the world a better place; to increase the quality of life; to right a terrible wrong; and to prevent the end of something good.

Preventing the end of something good

Every survey and opinion poll tells us that today’s couples still seek marriage. As an idea, a sought-after goal, marriage is not dead but is still very much alive.

But the choices today's couples are making in their lives also tell us something else: they want marriage. They just don’t want the only version of marriage that’s available from the only people who currently supply it: the family law system.

If marriage is to have a future then it can only be outside the family law system, for the past tells us that marriage certainly has no future within it. What is called family law has 'protected' marriage to death. Life will come back to marriage when couples are enabled to create marriages that are protected from the family law system.

From The Art of Start by Guy Kawasaki on YouTube.

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