Growing Ideas

Growthology.org was launched on May 12, just 10 weeks ago. To date, the site has received 20,000 pageviews and almost 1000 RSS subscribers. Maybe it's time to tell everyone why.

One question you get all the time in professional situations is, "What do you do (for your employer)?" And working for a philanthropy makes that a difficult question to answer. Entrepreneurs call it the elevator pitch, but I always need a longer elevator ride as an economist/writer/entrepreneur working at place with no customers.

The job compares in some ways to my experience at a DC think tank. The difference is that think tanks have to make money, whereas the challenge for a philanthropy is to give money away. Tough work, huh? There is a danger that a philanthropy can easily drift away from the founder's vision over time, whereas a think tank has its feet kept to the fire by donors with an ideological passion.

Ewing Kauffman realized the danger, and thankfully left us more detailed documentation of his vision than any other major U.S. philanthropist before or since. This is about capitalism -- growing prosperity with free markets, but in ways that empower individuals through entrepreneurship and education. The operational vision & mission statements are documented here in roughly 200 words.

For growth economists, the emerging consensus in the last 10 years is that the key factors that power national productivity are technological innovation and human capital development. It is no small feat that Mr. Kauffman saw these things, and acted on them, decades before the Ivory Tower did. And it is no exaggeration to say that the opportunity for the Foundation to execute on Mr. K's vision in alignment with scholars and policymakers is right here, right now.

Our President, Carl Schramm, never met Ewing Kauffman, but he honors his memory by making sure the Kauffman Foundation goes one step further and practices what it preaches. Associates here are encouraged to be entrepreneurial and innovative. Crazy stuff, I know. So there are no strict job titles or definitions or timetables. Instead, we have short contracts, high expectations, and unbelievable freedom. To be honest, I was shocked when my idea of blogging was not blocked or delayed by bureaucratic hurdles and office politics, but instead given a quick green light, an eager co-author in Bob Litan, and full support from Wendy Guillies and the marketing/IT team.

So there you have it. That's why growthology.org exists. As for what I do for a living ... tune in next month and maybe we'll have invented it!

Comments

[steve]

From the looks of your 2008 grants, your organization prefers to invest more effort reaching the denizens of the Ivory Towers of academia, not actual entrepreneurs. We've developed a set of web applications for our own business that has made us successful within our niche-- and we dream of making it available to others, so they can do what we've done... but we're too busy running our core business to do this. Had hoped that an organization like Kaufmann might be a resource, but it's clear from your funding guidelines, that you prefer funding research over "nuts and bolts".