The future of social networks

Before I read Christakis`s and Fowler`s recently published book “Connected – the amazing power of social networks and how they shape our lives” my first thought was “Oh no, no more book on social networks” as I associated social networks with Facebook, Twitter and all the well-meant advices on how to become more visible on the internet. Luckily, the authors chose a different approach.

The book is based on several studies conducted in recent years on how social networks influence the spread of news, norms, politics, diseases and behavior – in other words, it is based on facts and not on speculations. That makes it both more scientific and reliable. The authors show several kinds of network structures ranging from the bucket brigade with only two mutual ties to more woven networks containing more than a hundred ties. They also explain the difference between integrated and concentrated networks when managing change.

According to Christakis and Fowler social networks are always based on connections and contagion and this is the reason why the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. In Christakis`s and Fowler`s approach the structure of networks and how each person is embedded in it (at the center or at random) is crucial for how much influence a network can make. Even the transitivity of persons is important for how problems should be addressed and how possible solutions could be performed. Christakis and Fowler argue: Transitivity can affect everything from whether you find a sexual partner to whether you commit suicide.

The book contains several studies that support this thesis and Christakis and Fowler are two acknowledged thinkers. The book has given me many new insights and perspectives on how to look at social networks in a different way, especially when I think about social entrepreneurship in developing countries. As I am volunteering for the Hunger Project in Sweden I like process-oriented work where we identify influential individuals who encourage their social networks to manage the switch from poverty to self-reliance by themselves. Networking is a crucial factor for success. Once a critical mass of people makes a decision, the rest of the group goes along. Each member wants to become an achiever. As Christakis and Fowler put it: A more effective approach in the future will be to focus on the architecture of a person`s social network, namely the structural position rather than the socioeconomic position. Campaigns would be most effective if messages were directed at high-activity members (the cores or the hubs of the network) rather than targeted equally to all members of a community.

By the way, regarding Facebook Christakis and Fowler also find out that we averagely have 150 friends in online social networks and just four close friends in our private core network. Yet, social network-sites do offer new opportunities.

Study on car fleet renewal gave astonishing results

The International Transport Forum, an intergovernmental think tank, recently published a study on car fleet renewal scheme in three countries. The study was conducted to measure the impact of governmental incentives in the US, Germany and France (all car friendly nations with a production of cars) which aimed to trade old cars for newer ones hoping that this will stimulate both sustainability and the car industry.
Now, 2 years later, a first study is published that evaluates the cost-effectiveness of the car renewal from a sustainable and social point of view. Factors like CO2 and NOx (nitrogen oxides) emissions as well as road safety are measured.

The study, however, didn`t give the results the politicians had hoped for. One could have expected that newer cars caused less pollution and reduced the risk of traffic accidents, in other words achieving a positive cost-effectiveness. That is true in the short term but in the long run the positive aspects diminish.

The study shows that a lot of consumers have traded their old small car in favor to a new medium-sized one. Bigger cars need more fuel and cause higher air pollution. As the new car is more comfortable consumers spend more time travelling and road safety per car decreases. Logically, both CO2 and NOx-emissions increase. Taking a look on the cost-effectiveness shows, of course, negative values, too.

What did the government miss? They forgot to take into account a changed consumer pattern and the rebound effect on emissions in the long term. Given incentives on new cars no matter car-size makes buying small cars less attractive. The car is at first a status symbol, not an environment symbol.
Giving incentives on car renewal needs chance management, as it is a process with many parts involved. Consumers need a pathway on how they can contribute. To put it that way like the Heath-brothers did in their book: direct the rider – motivate the elephant – shape the path. It reminds me on an initiative at my job recently. We reduced the number of cars and bought some bicycles instead. A very good initiative besides the fact that the bicycles haven`t been used often. People are lazy and find many reasons to take the car. Maybe a competition of who used the bikes most combined with a spa-weekend for the winner could have made the switch. Point out the direction and make it attractive.

Predicting the future – who takes responsibility?

The headline refers to an article in The Economist`s June 11th edition regarding the Three Gorges dam project in China. The dam has always been controversial as it has a destructive impact on the environment with draughts and resettlement of 1.4 million people. But who is responsible in the long run? According to Mr. Mao, an economist, nobody is taking real responsibility if there are any problems in the future.

That rises the question on how short term perspectives can reach long-term goals. Decisions on carrying out big projects like the Three Gorges in China or, for example, the nuclear phase-out in Germany are made by the present government, hopefully with the help of experts in the field. In industrial countries these decisions are often based on a strong domestic opinion before elections, like the debate on the nuclear phase-out that came up shortly after the tsunami in Japan. Usually a government period lasts for four years whereas its decisions sometimes affect an entire generation or even the regional climate.

The question is how decision-making can involve greater responsibility than just fulfilling short-term goals (winning the election). Today more long-term words like sustainability and green technology have already become buzzwords so in the future it will be more important, I think, to concentrate on the process in becoming sustainable or green or renewable. This allows a more sophistic, process-oriented approach and gives tangible results.

Let me give an example. Wind energy is supposed to be clean. The process of building new wind energy stations includes the change and recycling of wings. But one might have forgotten that still today it is unknown how to recycle these huge steel wings. So wind energy is clean but maybe not sustainable in the long run.
By the way, energy from the damming up of floods and rivers is clean, too. Can Three Gorges be considered as a sustainable project anyway? No, because the process included resettlement and climate change – only two of many consequences that, according to Mr. Mao, no one will be responsible for in the long term. Future technologies and decisions do require responsibility and risk management during the entire process.

Sustainable business outlook

The last two weeks I have spent many hours on conferences listening to some great speeches on how to implement sustainability in business. First out was a conference called Sustainable Business Outlook where Nordic companies presented their best practices.
Most of them focused on green business like recycling and the energy savings of green buildings or new products but some speeches even covered the social aspect of sustainability. SCA, a global hygiene and paper company, for example invested money in educating 5000 nurses in China on how to handle incontinence and break taboos on this disease. The company also sells small packages of hygiene products in developing countries to enable people with low income to buy them – an approach in sharp contrast to the European and American concept with its big packages lasting for several weeks in favor of reduced transportation costs for consumers.

Sustainability can be accomplished in many ways and it is extremely important to embed it throughout organizations to drive efficiencies, cost savings and differentiation in markets through innovation. So after showing some best practices from the industry it was Accenture`s turn to present a global study on how to transform sustainability into value creation for stakeholders.
The most challenging part of the equation is how to accomplish a high Human Development Index and a low Ecological footprint or to put it this way: how can the product of number of people, GDP per person and the use of resources be minimized? Accenture conducted a survey among 50 CEOs and over 50 C-level executives called Vision 2050 and asked three questions: 1. What does a sustainable world look like? 2. How can we realize it? 3. What roles can business play to ensure more rapid progress towards this world? The complete report can be found on Accenture`s homepage. I just want to name a few results: implement sustainability in all areas of your business from strategy, branding, marketing and business development to operations and governance. Accomplish resource efficiency and take control over true costs like carbon and water. Put incentives on sustainable innovations and understand the role of mobile telecommunication in the growing markets like Africa, Latin America and Asia. Current value can be created by innovation and productivity gains whereas future value can be created by building tangible assets like marketing/branding and by good risk management. According to 44% of the CEOs it will take 5-10 years to embed sustainability into core business. This is pretty soon.

One group who already has incorporated sustainability is the wide range of social entrepreneurs. This is what my second conference was about called “The social entrepreneur as a transformer of the society”. Community Interest companies are, according to Wikipedia, companies who are designed for social enterprises that want to use their profits for the public good. Today many small businesses are started to change behaviors in society by hacking existing structures (for example Grameen bank) compared to former times where different social initiatives were started, for example Greenpeace or WWF. The conference provided a first glance on how social enterprises could be started and how social work could be conducted. One of the challenges that these social entrepreneurs faced was how to combine sustainability and profitability. One entrepreneur pointed out that a high form of transparency helped to overcome this gap.
By the way, in the mid of June Stockholm will be the host of the ICSB-conference titled “Back to the Future – changes in perspective of global entrepreneurship and innovation” with a long list of distinguished speakers and interesting sessions like Creative Environments, Globalization and its impact on Entrepreneurship, Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Innovation (www.icsb2011.org).

On the dynamic of crowd movement and its application in the future

When I read the title above I immediately think of being part of a huge crowd of people and I associate it with danger. How comes? Maybe I don`t like the feeling of dependence or maybe I just need some private space around me.

Crowd researching is both focused on physical and psychological effects. In this blog-entry, however, I want to emphasize the modeling of crowd movement that is extremely important to prevent catastrophes in urban areas and at concerts or sport events where people gather and want to have fun. This is only possible if you can predict how a human mass is going to behave in a critical situation.

Mass movement is often simulated as a liquid containing molecules that move in different directions. However, if we treat moving masses of people as thought they were fluids we forget the fact that the density increases and the movement gets chaotic. And that is not true, not every human crowd movement ends in chaos.
But what happens if you treat a human mass exactly for what it is? You have to give it some kind of volition. We are actually not passive in a huge mass but seeking actively to get where we want.

Dr Moussaid, a professor at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France has tried to find an answer. His recent research is based on three rules: first, each human being wants to get through the mass as straight as possible and avoids obstacles. Second, each human being adjusts its speed depending on the distance from obstacles. You can watch this behavior every morning on your way to your working-place: people sort themselves in lanes to avoid a crock and adjust their speed by choosing different lanes. In other words, just follow the line of least resistance. And finally, the third rule: a lack of volition for people at random – when the jam gets tight you have to stop your movement.

So what happens when crowds of people move? At first the crowd moves smoothly. When the mass is getting tighter you can observe a stop-and-go-pattern but sometimes even extreme crushing. Finally you can observe turbulence that lead to disaster.
Once you have simulated the process you can develop a solution. Which behavior of a crowd is critical? How should a future tram, a future stadium or other public spaces be constructed to avoid people being trapped there? Hopefully Dr Moussaids research (http://mehdimoussaid.com/projects.html) will find the answer.

Venture Challenge or an example of an innovating business plan

Venture Challenge is an international MBA business plan competition held annually in March in San Diego. For more than 20 years it has showcased next generation companies. This competition gives graduate students from around the world the opportunity to seek investment in their business ideas. The event draws student teams from top global universities and provides them with a forum to present to potential investors from Silicon Valley and to earn more than 15,000 dollars in awards.
This year a student team from the two Swedish universities Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm International Business School won the stiff competition. Their venture is called Student Competitions, a homepage where the world`s most important student competitions, student conferences and other interesting opportunities were gathered. So what`s the business plan?
As talented students with bright ideas are warmly welcome in almost all kinds of organizations and in big companies the Student Competitions homepage provides a marketing platform towards students worldwide. In former times your local university arranged so called Career Days where students met representatives from different companies to establish a first personal contact. You could be introduced to your next workplace but you couldn`t show your real potential in such a limited time. To start a competition, on the contrary, gives companies the opportunity to seek talented students in an easy way because a competition is a natural screening process where top talents are challenged to do their best and solve problems. And the winner with the most promising solution gets the top job. Not surprisingly several big companies like Ericsson, Audi and Oracle – to name but a few- are amongst Student Competitions`s clients. I`m convinced that more companies will follow. This is a promising business plan and I wish the guys all the best in their upcoming competition, the Moot Corp, and with their plans to introduce Students Competition to the US-market.

Report from an investor leadership trip to India

One of the most powerful opportunities for The Hunger Project (a non-profit organization committed to the sustainable end of world hunger) investors is to travel to one of The Hunger Project`s Program Countries as a member of a delegation to experience the local work first hand, be a part of strategies on the ground, and return more empowered as an activist.
Last month my friend Filippa Odevall from The Hunger Project Sweden participated in an international delegation who visited India.

Filippa, this was your second trip to a Program Country. What was your impression?
The feeling I bring back is if these women leaders, without any resources but themselves, can bring water to their villages, get all children to school, make healthcare available for all villagers, implement governmental schemes etc. then societies in “the western world” truly can achieve much more than we can ever imagine, since we do not meet even half the resistance.

Tell us a little bit about the trip and the program!
The five-day visit began with a day-long session in Delhi where The Hunger Project (THP)-India team shared the strategic focus of our work to empower elected women’s leadership in the country. The following day, the team of 18 investors, staff and activists traveled to Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, and took a three-day bus ride across the districts of Katni and Umaria, where we met 50 elected women representatives. These women are effective change agents for the end of hunger in their villages. Most of the villages we visited battle daily with age-old issues of the caste system, high rates of poverty and gender inequality.

During your trip in India The Hunger Project had been honored as a winner of the EdelGive Social Innovation Honors 2011. What was the motivation for this prize?
Yes! THP-India was honored as winner of the EdelGive Social Innovation Honours (ESIH) 2011 in the category of Governance for its work strengthening women’s participation in government. The ESIH awards, given in the areas of Health and Well-Being, Education, Livelihoods, Governance and Social and Cultural Rights of Women, raise awareness of issues surrounding women and girl children by supporting organizations with path-breaking approaches to these challenges.

How was the selection process conducted?
Finalists and winners were selected from among 235 non-governmental organizations across 21 Indian states and were evaluated in a stringent, four-round selection process. During the final round, THP-India was invited for an interaction with the Final Jury, comprised of prominent members from civil society, media and the corporate sector. THP-India was represented by Country Director Rita Sarin and Senior Program Officer, Ruchi Yadav.
THP-India completed the rigorous selection process and was declared the winner on February 18, 2011. Three other organizations were honored as runners-up in the category of Governance, all working to strengthen the participation of women in government. In addition to the awareness generated by the announcement, a cash prize was awarded in the amount of US$112,500.

Finally, why are young people like you working for a non-profit organization like The Hunger Project and what is your next task as a fundraiser?
I think that an awareness is slowly but safely rising about how everything is connected and that each one of us is responsible for the development of our planet. Once you are working for something that you feel truly influence our societies in a good way, you meet other people who inspire you and it gives so much energy back to you that you get hooked
My next step as a fundraiser is to mobilize and maximize the potential of The Hunger Project’s volunteers, ambassadors and partners to take the fundraising to the next level, which in the long term will prove that it is possible to end hunger, once and for all

Ever heard about behaviometrics?

The word derives from the terms “behavioral” and “biometrics”. “Behavioral” refers to the way a human person behaves and “biometrics”, in an information security context, refers to technologies and methods that measure and analyze biological characteristics of the human body for authentication purposes – for example fingerprints, eye retina, DNA and voice patterns. In other words behaviometrics, or behavioral biometrics, is a measurable behavior used to recognize or verify the identity of a person.
All of us have unique patterns to interact with computers through the components mouse, keyboard and graphical user interface. On the one hand we can find the biometric components like the way we move the mouse or the way we type the words. On the other hand we find social and psychological components like if we write in our native language or not. Simply spoken it is nearly impossible to copy or imitate another person`s interaction with the computer. In the behaviometric approach no passwords are used.
Therefore behaviometrics opens for new security solutions for example by identifying the correct user of a bank account on the internet. The probability to identify the right user is astonishingly high –almost 97%! Whereas behaviometrics is a relatively new technique biometrics is already widely used today. Biometric passports with fingerprints are accepted in most European countries and in the US, Brazil and Australia. Iris recognition is a method of biometric authentication that uses pattern-recognition techniques based on high-resolution images of the irides of a person`s eyes.
There are usually two stages for using a biometric in authentication: In the first stage, a person is enrolled. i.e., his unique features with respect to the biometric being used are extracted and a feature set is created for that user which is stored in a template file for him. The next phase is verification where the user later tries to log in to whatever system he wanted access to. Here again the user’s parameters are measured with respect to the biometric. Then a unique feature set is determined and a comparison is done with the template file of the user. If they match, the user is verified to be the authentic user.

The Nordic Way- shared values for a new reality?

What`s so special about the Nordic countries? Global Challenge, an independent think tank that provides solutions to global challenges relating to the fields of economy, environment and democracy, tried to find an answer in a new report that was published this week during the ongoing World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The report was written in cooperation with Investor, the largest industrial holding company in Northern Europe, The Nordic Council of Ministers, an intergovernmental collaboration between the Nordic countries, and The Norden Association, a non-profit organization aimed to support the cross-border cooperation in the Nordic region.

The Nordic countries are often found at the top in international performance indexes like competitiveness, productivity, growth, quality of life, prosperity and more. Is there a common model for the Nordic countries and if so, can this model be applied to other countries in central Europe or the USA?

The economic situation in the Nordic countries is characterized by low budget deficits, a large public sector with mostly high taxes and inclusive welfare. Norway bases its wealth on oil and gas revenues, Denmark on transport and agriculture and Finland and Sweden on manufacturing, pulp and paper, telecom and design. After suffering from a deep recession in the 1970:s and 1990:s the Nordic countries have transformed their systems into a new macroeconomic framework with independent central banks, strict budget rules, deregulation and lower benefit levels. This framework has given the countries a stable low-inflation environment and long-term political stability. Another reason for the Nordic success is a high transparency and efficiency of public institutions which gives a huge amount of social trust and leads to low levels of corruption. Also, all four countries have open economies where labor unions are positive towards new technology and innovation. Above this, all countries have a high level of education.

Let us now take a look at the individual relations in the Nordic countries. Traditionally outside observers have put a strong emphasis on social solidarity, the ability to subordinate individual interests to collective rationality. But this picture isn`t correct – on the contrary, individual autonomy is highly institutionalized through a plethora of laws and policies. Interdependency within the family has been minimized through individual taxation of spouses, family law reforms have revoked obligations to support elderly parents and universal day care of children enables women to work. This makes the Nordic countries to the most individualized societies in the world where the family has been transformed to a social institution. According to the World Values Survey (WWS) are societies in which people put a strong emphasis on individual self-realization more willing to accept the market economy both as consumers and producers which gains sustainable capitalism. Citizens who feel empowered accept the demands of modernity and are willing to make compromises to achieve economic efficiency and rational decision-making. In the US, for example, individual rights and family-values trump the state which results in lower trust in social institutions which, unfortunately, have been seen as a threat to liberty.

What gets measured can be managed – on achieving high performance in sustainability

Nowadays sustainability has become a buzzword. It is hard to find a corporation that doesn`t have sustainability on its agenda. In order to distinguish high performing companies from those who entirely use it to attract stakeholders it is becoming more important in the future to find ways to measure sustainability. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), launched in 2000 in the UK to accelerate solutions to climate change by putting relevant information at the heart of business, policy and investment decisions, is a first step in the right direction. The organization has around 3,000 members in 60 countries and requests carbon and climate change information from the world`s biggest economies and corporations. To highlight the companies that provide the most comprehensive responses to the CDP information request The Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index has been developed. The main objective of this index is to identify leaders and inspire other companies to participate and commit to full carbon disclosure.

Within The Nordic Region which includes companies based in Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark the overall response rate in 2010 was generally high (75% in Sweden) compared to 59% in the US. This is, in fact, an indication that climate change is an important business concern on the board agenda for most large companies in the Nordic Region, and that it is increasingly considered as an important source of competitive advantage. The top performing company in the Nordic Region in 2010 was Stora Enso with an index of 93 out of 100, followed by Nokia (91) on second place. Globally Siemens is the top performer with a score of 98.

Why are these companies best? Let`s take at look at Stora Enso which is a global paper, packaging and wood products company producing newsprint and book paper, magazine paper, fine paper, consumer board, industrial packaging and wood products. The Group has 27,000 employees and 88 production facilities in more than 35 countries worldwide, and is a publicly traded company listed in Helsinki and Stockholm. Key environmental concerns include the conservation and sustainable use of forests, biodiversity issues, soil protection, and the quality and quantity of water resources. The raw material for the company`s products comes from sustainably managed forests where continuous growth is guaranteed. Growing forests store carbon effectively. Stora Enso traces the origin of all their wood to ensure that it comes from legal and acceptable sources.

Through their R&D work the company has developed recyclable products such as wood-based oven able materials to replace aluminum in food trays, fiber-based DVD covers to replace plastic cases, and prefabricated cross-laminated timber (CLT) elements for walls, ceilings and roofing. In 2009, Stora Enso and Neste Oil jointly inaugurated a test plant making second generation wood-based biodiesel, where opportunities for the commercial production of transport biofuels will be explored.

Siemens, the global top performer in sustainability, generated revenue of around €28 billion in 2010 with products and solutions from its Environmental Portfolio. Their target is to exceed the €40 billion revenue mark with green technologies in 2014. Last year products and solutions from the Environmental Portfolio enabled Siemens customers worldwide to reduce their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by a total of around 270 million tons, an amount equal to the total annual CO2 emissions of the megacities Hong Kong, London, New York, Tokyo, Delhi and Singapore. Virtually every Division in the three Sectors Industry, Energy and Healthcare is contributing to the company’s green portfolio. In 2010, the largest individual reductions in CO2 emissions were achieved by highly efficient combined-cycle power plants, wind farms, the retrofitting of existing power plants, energy-efficient lighting systems and eco-friendly trains. Other future growth drivers include, for example, smart grids and their key components.