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Food, wine and family were in abundance this Thanksgiving--I had a lot to be thankful for, both personally and professionally. Sitting at Thanksgiving dinner, however, made me think a lot about how much we (I mean me, and my immediate group of friends and family) take events like Thanksgiving for granted--we just assume that things like food and water will be readily available. For many people around the world, though, the mere presence--not even abundance--of food and water just isn't a reality due to poverty, environmental pollution, or both.

Just before Thanksgiving, I was invited to participate in the Summit Series, held in Mexico. We were invited as part of an "entrepreneurial retreat" of sorts--basically, an elaborate networking event. However, the meet-up became more than just that for me when I heard the founder of Charity: Water, Scott Harrison, was scheduled to speak at the event. Scott's story transformed the event from mundane to meaningful, and gave me a lot of hope for the future of social entrepreneurship. Scott's organization helps people get clean water. It's as simple as that. But the issue behind it is vastly more complex.

Charity: Water is an organization that delivers water to people in parts of the world who have very little if any access to the natural resource, primarily by constructing wells. Charity: Water accepts donations for either the building of wells or administrative costs (i.e., running the office that coordinates everything for the construction of the wells). So when you donate money to the construction of wells, the money goes directly towards that. Through a slew of public awareness campaigns, a website that uses clear graphics and design to illustrate points, as well as founder Scott's tireless efforts to tell the Charity: Water story around the globe, the organization has managed to complete 890 water projects around the world as of November 5, 2008. Places like Bangladesh, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti and Honduras--just to name a few--have benefited from Charity: Water's efforts to bring clean drinking water to people in need.

Scott wasn't always interested in this type of humanitarian work. He comes from a background in club promoting and nightlife in New York City. Scott's story is proof that you can make a difference--no matter where you come from--if you have passion and know how to take a calibrated risk. For this reason, I asked Scott to be interviewed via email for this blog post, and he graciously agreed.

David Hauser/MindDRIFT: When did you start charity: water?

Scott Harrison/Charity: Water: I started charity: water in 2006 out of a friend's apartment in SoHo, New York City.

DH: Why did you start charity: water? Was there an inspirational event or defining moment for you?

SH: I'd spent a decade of my life from 18 - 28 in the nightclub business. I was one of New York City's more successful promoters, and lived decadently, arrogantly and selfishly. On a trip to South America in 2004, I realized just how miserable I really was, and what a mess I'd made of my "perfect looking" life. I started to come back to my Christian faith that I'd completely abandoned for those 10 years, and decided to live it out. I left everything behind in New York City a few months later, and flew to West Africa to volunteer as a photojournalist for a floating hospital ship in Benin and Liberia.

DH: What's the mission of charity: water?

SH: More than 1 billion people on the planet (one in six) don't have access to clean water. We bring clean water and basic sanitation to people in developing nations, and use 100% of the money we raise to do just that. We scrap for our administrative funding separately, and actually prove every project in the field with GPS coordinates, photos and village information.

DH: How do you stay true to your founding principles?

SH: You know, the 100% has been tough. As you might imagine, it's much easier raising money to build wells than to support my small staff who work their tails off for some of the world's poorest people. We've had very little money in the bank before, and some people think my vision is crazy, but as long as I'm lucky enough to run the organization, we'll hold true to that. It takes a lot of faith sometimes, but the payoff is well worth it. [Editor's note: Charity: Water separates the cost of running the organization from the charitable donations people give towards building wells and getting people water. As a result, running the Charity: Water office that makes the construction of wells possible is completely reliant on separate donations for operational costs such as staffing and strategy.]

DH: How do you spread the word about what you do? How do people respond?

SH: We use just about every kind of media we can to get people engaged. We produce outdoor exhibitions, indoor exhibitions, public service announcements, waterwalks, interactive displays... Innovative campaigns on the internet... we go into middle schools, high schools and colleges. We have ads running now on donated space on 175 buses in New York City.

People generally respond extremely well. Water is something we take for granted every day, and no kid should have to drink water from a fetid, muddy swamp. No mother should have to haul that water on her back for 6 hours a day... Water is so basic... Water is life...

DH: Can you provide a snapshot of how your work has impacted the lives of the people you help?

SH: I travel a lot to our projects to vet our partners, check up on work we've funded, and find future capacity. This year, I was in India, Bangladesh, Honduras, Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia four times... In January, I was in a village in Northwestern Ethiopia called "Gasi Springs." I watched in horror as women stooped and collected brown muck for their children. charity: water stepped in and funded a spring protection effort there. I had the incredible pleasure of returning a few months later to a shouting and clapping crowd. Clean water gushed from two taps, and a concrete box had replaced the mud pit.

DH: Why do you think design and presentation are important for charities?

SH: I think many charities under-emphasize how important it is to present the message with quality, clarity and purpose. We don't think that just because we're a charity our website should look second-rate, or our staff should work [only] 9 - 5. Photography, video, design and storytelling are just part of our DNA. We want to spread hope, and show people just how easy it is to get involved. How easy it is to change communities like Gasi Springs.

I always enjoy visiting Chicago. It has its own local culture, great restaurants and other things to do at night, and is pretty easy to get around (but then again, I grew up in Manhattan, so I suppose it's all relative). It also has a history as a city people came to with very little, and with hard work, started businesses and made lives for themselves.

The rich history of Chicago makes it a great location for the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards (GSEA). I had the good fortune of visiting Chicago again November 6-9 to participate in the final judging for the GSEA competition. I was also in the city to attend the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization (CEO) conference, where I received their Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. I was honored to receive the award from CEO, as well as have the chance to speak to college students about entrepreneurship.

Talking to people just a few years younger than myself about entrepreneurship can be weird, but I feel like I've learned a lot in a short amount of time. When I was getting ready to deliver my acceptance speech at the CEO conference, I knew I wanted to say something that would be relevant and meaningful to the 1000+ college students sitting in the audience. I think a lot of people in college are under so much pressure to "stay on the right track" that entrepreneurship and risk is sometimes frowned upon. But my message is that "staying on the right track" is different depending on who you are, and learning how to take a calibrated risk--like launching a business--can be a crucial learning experience for a young person and budding entrepreneur.

Mahatma Gandhi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world." Quotations like this find their way into many different cultures, languages, and institutions and that's because there is a kernel of truth to the statement--it's the truth of human experience, trial and error--whatever you want to call it. Because this is just a blog and not a novel, I'll just share one of the most important lessons I've learned as a young person and as an entrepreneur, which is based on the quotation above: use any freedom you have--whether you're young or old--to be an agent of change. It's the only way to make your mark in the business world, and beyond. Is there a population that would benefit from a service (big or small) you've been thinking about offering? Do it. Does your business model make impossible for you to grow as a company? Change it. I wanted to get across to the young entrepreneurs in the audience in Chicago that life is now. When you graduate from college, there's no one at graduation who shakes your hand and says, "OK, you can start your life now." While it's important to stay on track in school and cultivate those connections that only college can offer, you have to also find the track that's right for you. College isn't one size fits all and it shouldn't be, because everyone's different.

Being an entrepreneur means seizing the enormous opportunities before you, and taking calibrated risks that will help you make your dreams a reality. No one is ever going to give you the "right" circumstances or the "right" amount of money to build your ideal business--work with what you've got, and it will take you somewhere. Even if it's not exactly where you want to end up, you've made progress towards your goal. For me, being a young entrepreneur was about finding the right track for me. I was never going to find it by asking a professor in college or taking classes in business without ever having any experience launching a start-up of my own. It's true, not everyone should (or could) start a business while in school--people have different responsibilities and priorities--but it's all about finding the path that's right for you, not taking the one that everyone else travels down.

The Official Google Blog reports that they'll finally be helping out fools like me who often hear songs on YouTube videos that they'd love to have on their iTunes playlist, but unfortunately, have no idea the identity of the artists that create them. YouTube users who like a song on a video will now be offered "Click-to-Buy" links which the blog claims will be "unobtrusive."

While I think the "Click-to-Buy" idea is great, I also think it might be helpful to the music industry (and, of course, YouTube) to use music recognition software like Shazam or Midomi to automatically link the music/content for purchase. Many people think Shazam does a better job of recognizing songs overall, according to GigaOm, but I suspect that the debate will soon be eclipsed by a larger issue--the issue of how this technology can continue to remain relevant and become useful to us in generating new sources of revenue through YouTube videos and the like.

How could any of the players in this arena take it to the next level, technologically speaking? As it stands right now, any time a song is in a YouTube video, the content producer must go in and tag their content (in this case, a song). Wouldn't it be easier if the process could be automated so that anything in a YouTube video could be identified by applications such as Shazam or Midomi (or an as-yet-uninvented Google app) and automatically tagged? If the technology is already there, then it might be easier than having content producers "claim" a song in every YouTube video.

Midomi's parent company, Melodis, might be ready to set themselves apart from leader Shazam by being the first innovator in this arena: GigaOm reports that they have raised $7 million in Series B funding. Whatever Melodis is up to with their cash is anyone's guess, but one thing is for sure: innovation is necessary to take this technology to the next level. Of course it goes without saying that Google has the resources to simply build an application like this themselves anyway and integrate it seamlessly into YouTube. Guess we'll have to stay tuned and see how it all plays out.

In a sea of competitors offering the same service, companies that want to survive (and thrive) simply have to put their unique stamp on goods and services. Essentially, they must do business differently.

So what exactly is "doing business differently"? A really good example comes courtesy of JetBlue, the airline that prides itself on offering a friendlier (and funnier) flying experience. Part of what makes the company so different is that they really do live up to their friendly image, and flying is therefore a bit less stressful. And TV at every seat does not hurt either.

But what really makes JetBlue different is their desire to take calculated risks.

Case in point: JetBlue recently announced that they'd be expanding their services at a time when other airlines are cutting costs and putting the brakes on new projects. Is this a mistake? If the risk is calibrated properly, my answer is "no." Why? JetBlue has done their homework, and that's the first step in evaluating whether or not a potentially risky move could spell disaster or not.

Nicole Wong of the Boston Globe profiled JetBlue on October 21st, revealing the company's plans to make Boston one of three cities integral to their expansion project. It's all due to the unique composition of the market in Boston: you've got a steady supply of students flying in and out of Logan every day, with no signs of slowing, and a solid amount of business travelers, such as myself. In addition, the article points out, there's a growing demand for shuttling groups to and from events across the country. Boston boasts successful sports teams on both the professional and college levels, as well as biotech companies moving key team members, both of which require a plane to get them where they need to go. For JetBlue, it's a lucrative market that has the potential to become even more so if they play their cards right.

But JetBlue isn't just expanding without doing a little maintenance. It appears they're willing to do what it takes to pull in customers that don't already rely on their 26 non-stop flights out of Boston, more than any other carrier out of Logan. Doing what it takes will, according to JetBlue, include boosting in-flight internet access, as well as doing a better job of promoting some of JetBlue's amenities such as refundable fares and substantially more flights than competitors. According to the Globe piece, JetBlue's Chief Executive, David Barger said, "The business customers are saying, 'Give me at least three [flights] a day, or four a day, or five a day,'". The customers spoke, and apparently, JetBlue listened.

I know from personal experience that it's hard to find a non-stop flight to a preferred destination out of Logan, but when I do find it, it's usually from JetBlue. In fact, I regularly fly from Boston to Austin, Texas, where GotVMail's second outpost is located. I've never been unhappy with JetBlue's services, so the idea that they're only going to improve upon them is exciting.

JetBlue's approach is reminiscent of that taken by Southwest Airlines, the airline that originally did things differently (an idea discussed at length in Mavericks At Work). Both JetBlue and Southwest take the institutionalized quality that other airlines often have, and make customer satisfaction and freedom their primary concerns. During times in our history when it seems like businesses are thinking of anything except the regular person just trying to visit their family or close a deal on a business trip, that's a pretty smart move.

Mark Cuban his putting his money where his mouth is. After offering up $50 million of his own money to to buy into a fund created by the treasury comprised of all the assets and related items from the bailout, Cuban's hot on the trail of the U.S. government with BailoutSleuth.com to see if, in fact, we're really doing anything different from what we did to get ourselves into this financial mess. As it turns out, argues Cuban, we're really not (what a surprise!).

For example, the U.S. government has awarded its first contract after the bailout to Bank of New York Mellon Corp., and instead of opting for transparency (which would be ideal given that the lack of it created the crisis in the first place) and revealing how much they're paying the private corporation to manage the bailout transactions, they've blacked out all of the information pertaining to payment. So much for learning from your mistakes!

Even though I haven't gone "back to school" for a few years now, I'll always associate September with returning to classrooms and the general excitement associated with starting a new school year. Although I was fortunate to return to classrooms that boasted ample school supplies and a bevy of resources, many kids don't have access to simple things like pencils and textbooks. I'm reminded of how serious a problem this is by my own sister, a teacher in an inner-city classroom. Many of the classrooms at her school and many others just don't have the funding to stock their classrooms with the items their kids need.

Thankfully, there is a way people can help. DonorsChoose is a website my sister introduced me to a year ago. This is how it works: teachers post "projects" on the site. These projects are essentially descriptions of what teachers across the country need to complete a specific project in their classroom--one person recently posted a project with a request for a CD player so she could finally play a set of educational programs for her students. Another teacher works at a school where almost the entire student population has a mom or dad serving in the military, and wanted some art supplies so the kids could express their emotions through drawing and other art projects. These are just a couple of examples in a vast array of requests on DonorsChoose

Recently, I was going through my RSS feeds when I stumbled upon a TechCrunch post about an auction for a copy of a Google Chrome comic book. The comic book, created by Scott McCloud, was one of only a few printed and given to select media. According to TechCrunch, the proceeds from the auction they were sponsoring would go directly to DonorsChoose! Being the geek that I am, the thought of having my own copy of the Google Chrome comic book was appealing. But the prospect of bidding on the comic book and being able to donate that money to DonorsChoose made it even more so. I am happy to report this morning that not only did I win the comic book with a winning bid of $1,600, but another bidder won a second copy with another bid of $1,575. The best part? All $3,175 are going directly to DonorsChoose.

Beyond helping schools and getting a cool piece of geek memorabilia, the folks at Google were kind enough to let us know after the auction closed that the comic book would be signed by creator Scott McCloud and many of the team that created the application. For a geek who wants to do something good, it just doesn't get any better than this.

As an entrepreneur, you often find yourself with a jumble of different business ideas floating around in your head at any given point in time. If you settle on pursuing one of those ideas and start shaping it into a solid vision for a business, the next step is articulating all of the fundamental concepts that support your idea (e.g., a business plan). This can be really difficult for a lot of entrepreneurs--we're so excited to jump right into something new that we forget that sometimes it's important to be methodical.

A few months back when GotVMail was engaging in an executive level strategy session and crystallizing our core values, I had lots of ideas floating around in my head--but this time it wasn't about which business idea I wanted to pursue, it was about the amazing things still in store for the company. Despite the fact that my company is past its infancy and well into its childhood, as a team we wanted to ensure our collective focus was aligned, and actually effective when executed. We also wanted to nurture our identity from the inside out, to lay the foundation for the future, but it was difficult with so many opinions on the table.

Two weeks earlier I attended a talk given by Cameron Herold for EO Boston during which Collective Next produced an amazing graphic representation of the ideas discussed at his presentation. The way the facilitator visually deconstructed the ideas about creating a world class "work culture" struck me as incredibly useful and very productive. The even more amazing part was that Cameron and the facilitator never met before the event, or prepared any graphics in advance; they didn't require any interaction during the process, they just produced an amazing visual on-the-spot. (It's unfortunate there's no video of this, since the process is fascinating.) Since I'm a visual learner, "seeing the ideas" as we discussed them really helped me retain the overarching principles of the topic at hand. At that point, I knew that in order to drive the executive level strategy session, we had to do a series of graphic facilitation exercises.

This is how it worked for us: a really talented graphic facilitator we obtained through Collective Next came to our strategy sessions. With very little coaching or knowledge of the topics, she was able to create--in real time--a visual representation of all our discussion points, in one easy-to-share visual. As a result of the graphic facilitation, we were able to come up with lively and informative visual notes for the sessions. Individuals were able to review the documents at their leisure outside of the sessions, too, since we had the representations disseminated to key players via email.

Planning, strategizing, and articulating your core ideologies and goals isn't the sexiest way to spend your time as an entrepreneur, but if you don't do that in the beginning of your business, trust me, in order to grow, you will need to do it at some point. Our graphic facilitation exercises really helped us take that next step in growing GotVMail, and it helped us formulate our core values as a company.

We're now considering using graphic facilitation in a number of different areas. I recently discovered The Grove, a company that offers pre-packaged solutions as well as training in the graphic facilitation skill set. If you feel like you need a little help getting to that next level, I highly recommend using a process such as this.

Update: Kristen Schaefer of Grove was nice enough to provide a great resource for finding a local graphic record, Visual Practitioners Association.

When people talk about entrepreneurship, they almost always use the word 'risk'. It's often said that entrepreneurs are "risk-takers," and as a result, they're often characterized as risk-lovers. It's true that you'll probably find some entrepreneurs who wholeheartedly enjoy that thrilling facet of the process, however, characterizing entrepreneurs as a group as people who only enjoy a thrill would be pretty narrow-minded, and also false.

Exploration of the concepts of entrepreneurship and risk (and the relationship between the two) was the central task of a working paper published in 2005 by Brian Wu, of The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and Anne Marie Knott, of the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Virginia. Wu and Knott's paper, entitled "Entrepreneurial Risk and Market Entry," discussed the work of F.H. Knight, who elaborated on earlier discussions of the matter by identifying entrepreneurs as important economic players, not as thrill-seeking risk-takers.

Wu and Knott pointed out that as the market developed, entrepreneurs served a crucial role as "undertakers" of important tasks at all levels of society. But perhaps the most striking observation the authors make is that entrepreneurs were (and continue to be) those individuals that are willing to take risks in order to innovate new and better ways of doing things. Entrepreneurs are those that, faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, take the risk because the reward is a better way of life not just for the entrepreneur, but society as a whole.

This brings me to the subject of social entrepreneurship, which is a huge topic to cover in one post (which is why I won't). Does it seem a bit redundant to anyone else to use the term "social entrepreneurship"? It seems to me that the root of entrepreneurship is social-- that is, it's based on interaction and social life. It's one person identifying the need of a group of people, the available resources and the desired outcome and trying to reach that goal with whatever tools/resources he or she has available. In this way, entrepreneurship is less about risk taking than it is about vision building. For whatever reason, the social experiences entrepreneurs combine with the intellectual skills they possess and produce an ability to visualize the desired innovation or outcome.

It's probably true that we've come to think of entrepreneurs a little differently than how they began--as the "undertaker class" outlined in Wu and Knott's article, people like farmers, merchants, and craftspeople. But, as with anything, there is an evolution of terminology that is based on history, society, and the market. The excess of the 1980's and the explosion (and implosion) of start-ups in the late 1990's have made the roots of entrepreneurship worthy of further evaluation, particular how their skills can be best utilized during tough economic times.

Today my company, GotVMail, launched the Gary Busey on Business viral campaign. The Busey on Business series features the actor's musings on everything from cultural clichés to business insights, all delivered in trademark off-the-cuff Busey style. And there's something for everyone. One of my personal favorites--and what really propelled this project forward-- is the "Buseyisms" video in which Gary shares several acronyms that help explain the meaning of various words (e.g., "TEAM--together everyone achieves more!"). In the past few years Busey has become well known for this routine on VH1 Celebrity Fit Club and even on his visit to Jay Leno.

Busey is a free spirit, that's for sure. He says what's on his mind, often without filtering it first, and that's what we love about him. More than anything else, it's funny and gets people interested in the topic of entrepreneurship, and all of the crazy ways ideas take shape.

As the campaign progresses I will post updates, as well as a yet to be released video featuring our company core purpose and core values. Until then use the widget to post this to your social networking sites or blogs. A channel was also created on YouTube which shows all 40 videos.

Telling your employees to quit might be the best way to keep them (the good ones, anyway). At least that's the thinking behind Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh's plan to pay any employee $1,000 to quit the company. Employees who can't contribute--for whatever reason--take the money and run.

It's definitely a splashy new story--CEO pays employees to quit!--but does Hsieh's plan work? It certainly could, but it requires companies large and small to have a few crucial elements in place before a plan like this should be implemented. In order for the plan to work, a company needs, at minimum:

1. A rich core values ideology that translates into an identifiable work culture. Hsieh decreases the chances of having too many employees that are a bad fit by screening them before they're hired, and then engaging in an extensive training period (during this time they are being paid as regular employees). "We interview people for culture fit," Hsieh stated in 2006. By having a strong identity and a training program, Zappos makes sure that anyone that doesn't share the same ideology is quickly weeded out.
2. Accountability. Business leaders can't just pay lip service to a certain philosophy of management--he or she has to make sure that the ideology of the company permeates the entire organization. This means holding under-performers accountable at every level, from entry level to senior staff.
3. Investment in employees. Hsieh's plan is meant to attract and keep only the best and most capable employees. Capable employees will leave if a job isn't what they signed up for. That's why in order to minimize turnover, a business needs to do one simple thing: make staying more attractive than leaving. Investing in an employees' future makes staying more worthwhile, especially for those who are especially talented because it allows them to build on previous skills, and learn new ones. Employee investment may come in the form of professional development offerings, or the type of personal investment discussed in books such as The Dream Manager, but it has to enter the picture somehow in order for a company to retain the best talent for as long as possible.

You can't overstate the importance of these three points, especially the one about core values and work culture. Zappos' culture is unique and forward-thinking (many of Zappos' employees post on social media sites such as Twitter), and it's what sets Zappos apart from their competitors in the shoe industry, as well as the job market.