As part of the Global Innovation Summit in Silicon Valley, we convened a 2-day gathering of a select group people who see the potential for a better future and are ready to re-imagine the future as one that offers the right and privilege to more and more people to live and thrive. A global innovation ecosystem is in formation: Each of us have the choice to let it be driven by others and hope for the best, or we can choose to engage so that more people have the opportunities that those of us thriving today, have been afforded.

 

 

This gathering brought together people from around the world to meet with like-minded people from Silicon Valley and across the United States to develop a franchise for humanity, that will serve as a launching pad for communities around the world to tap into the potential that has emerged here in Silicon Valley. The concepts we identified at this gathering will lay the groundwork for a global innovation eco-system that offers new life opportunities and is welcoming to people of all persuasions, race and religion, caste and class.

 

In our community of friends and colleagues in Silicon Valley and beyond, we tapped speakers of extraordinary talent and dedication –a select group at the Franchise for Humanity is coming together, to share what we are learning, at the dawn of a new age where today’s people and policies are shaping the future.

WE know we need to learn from YOU too.

So, join us, if you are someone who senses the importance of connecting deeper with others engaged in creating opportunities for many more people in the world!

From experience, we’ve seen that even extraordinarily talented people of goodwill can be stymied by many factors. Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Prize, yet as microfinance expanded, and the world financial crisis took hold, unethical practices have lead to 1000’s of suicides. For any social enterprise to achieve the intended outcome set at the beginning, ethics and integrity must be paramount, and a network of trust and relationship needs to be built to buttress our human frailty.

An enlightened and evolved form of trust includes both a willingness to be measured and a willingness to have others review our efforts. The Open Source movement is a great example of people coming together at the grass roots to develop better software and get better at getting better.

Learning from Open Source, the Franchise for Humanity seeks to learn together and from each other, practices that combine passion and participation, capacities to augment competence with caring, and skills to support intuition tested through sharp-eyed follow through.

The journey will be very difficult, and can be daunting and discouraging without trusted allies. To find trusted allies requires an investment in relationships that take time to develop and are tested over and over again. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step; we invite you to take that step with us toward the Franchise for Humanity. The journey begins for us, the journey begins with YOU.