The Feast gathers the world’s greatest innovators from across industries and society to empower, inspire and engage each other in creating world-shaking change.

The Feast was started to inspire action and create world-shaking change.  Over the years, it began as a conference but now has the opportunity to extend itself into so many new opportunities and be more than just an “event.”  I spent the afternoon strategizing the future of The Feast, and thinking about where to take it the next couple of years.

This is where you come in to help. We’ll be submitting a final idea to the Pepsi Refresh Everything campaign this week.  We’d love for you, our community of all-star social innovators, entrepreneurs and doers to let us know what you want.  Leave ideas in the comment section below.

“I’ve been thinking a lot, actually, about Clay Shirky’s TED@State talk from the summer. In it he talks about how media is no longer just a broadcast to be consumed but a site of organizing. His point is that as people consume media, they then organize groups around that to take the ideas, inspiration, or dissent generated by that media and turn it into action.” — Nathaniel Whittemore, Change.org

In order to talk about about how to improve The Feast, we should probably start with the end point.  We’d love for The Feast to be the SXSW/TED for our community in 5 years.  Our secret sauce lies in a healthy combination of passion, creativity, and entrepreneurship to shift the way things are done – thereby changing individuals, industries, and ultimately the world. How can we make The Feast more than just an event?  How can we organize groups to take ideas and turn them into actionable ideas?

Nathaniel Whittemore from change.org wrote about how the conference model is dead, and I have to agree on a lot of his points.  But rather than talking about why it’s dead, I’d like to focus on new and better solutions to make it valuable for you.  I’ve listed some ideas and concepts below to help kickstart the discussion and brainstorm…

1. Accessible Ticket Prices:  ”Starting with #140conf NYC ‘10, the ticket prices will be more reflective of the cost to attend the theater and/or a music concert in New York City than a typical tech event.” I read this blog post by Jeff Pulver that goes into the new pricing model for the 140 Conference, which I think is genius.  Traditionally, conferences have high ticket prices because companies (not individuals) usually pay for the tickets, but that’s doesn’t hold true today.  Why have ticket prices that reflect the old model?  Our audience for The Feast consists of people that are on the ground making the world a better place.  Most of them pay for The Feast out of their own pockets.  Should we implement “social pricing” for The Feast?

2. Act of Creation: “TED is an act of recitation: smart people stand on stage and explain the amazing things they’ve been up to. Phoot Camp was an act of creation: things came into the world that would not have otherwise.” Another great article from snarkmarket.com ties the future of media to physical events.  They created a great list of a “media product” below:

• Live. It’s an event that happens at a specific time and place in the real world. It’s something you can buy a ticket for—or follow on Twitter.
• Generative. Something new gets created. The event doesn’t have to produce a series of luminous photo essays; the point is simply that con­tributors aren’t operating in play back mode. They’re thinking on their feet, collaborating on their feet, creating on their feet. There’s risk involved! And that’s one of the most compelling reasons to follow along.
• Publishable. The result of all that generation ought, ideally, to be something you can publish on the web, some thing that people can hap­pily discover two weeks or two years after the event is over.
• Performative. The event has an audience—either live or online, and ideally both. The event’s structure and products are carefully considered and well-crafted. I love the Bar Camp model; this is not a BarCamp.
• Serial. It doesn’t just happen once, and it doesn’t just happen once a year. Ideally it happens… what? Once a month? It’s a pattern: you focus sharply on the event, but then the media that you produce flares out onto the web to grow your audience and pull them in—to focus on the next event. Focus, flare.

3.  Actionable Ideas:  The Clinton Global Foundation and Initiative transforms ideas into action. All members of CGI have to “devise practical solutions to global issues through the development of specific and measurable Commitments to Action.”  TED does something similar with the TED Prize and Pop!Tech implements action through the Accelerator.  How can we galvanize The Feast community to create real world-shaking change versus inspiring them to do the same?

4.  GOOD Ideas: I love the project that GOOD recently did with IBM titled “Rethinking Cities” and “Ideas for Cities” which is a brainstorm on the future of cities.  I’m in love with almost all of the ideas listed out which range from a “Slow City” to “Media Reform.”  Can The Feast network list out innovative ideas to share with the world?

5.  School of Life: “The School of Life is a new social enterprise offering good ideas for everyday living.” What attracts me to the School of Life is the discussion and focus on personal improvement.  It’s kind of like a school for all the things you never learned in school.  Should we focus on individual improvement throughout the year?

6.  The Long Now:  Last year, the theme of The Feast was on the Long Now, which was inspired by the Long Now Foundation.   “The Long Now Foundation was established in *01996 to creatively foster long-term thinking and responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.”  Very, very powerful.  How can we start a discussion about improving our future?

7.  Random: Some other ideas I thought of include making it a week long event like Internet Week NYC, allowing participants to host their own events like TEDx, and keeping it open like SXSW.

Based on the ideas listed above, I’ve been thinking long and hard of how to make The Feast more than just a “conference” held in New York every year.  How can we collaboratively work together to create social change that impacts millions? Inspiring our community to make the world a better place is one thing.  Actually making it happen is something completely different. Here’s where I’m thinking of taking The Feast for 2010 and beyond.

1.  Reinventing Industries: Throw out canned speeches and inspirational presentations about what people have done. Instead, each presentation should focus on hacking and reinventing different industries for the future.  Each speaker would answer one question in 18-minutes: “If you could re-invent [education, healthcare, food, cities, etc], what would you do differently?” We’ll ask thought-leaders to present their take which will inspire our audience to…

2.  Innovative Ideas: Submit ideas on The Feast website (similar to GOOD Ideas).  This creates a two-way conversation and engagement between our speakers and our audience.  Our website will have an endless list of innovative ideas that list out new and better solutions to create world-shaking change.  This will happen every year.  I’m a true believer that ideas are 1% creativity and 99% perspiration (thanks to Behance!).  We would encourage people to steal these ideas and implement it themselves.

3.  Make Good Ideas Happen: Much like the CGI, we’ll ask our attendees to make commitments to making these innovative ideas happen.  We’ll create a short list of commitments we’ll achieve every year.  Similar to the TED Prize.

4.  Rinse and Repeat: An endless cycle of awesome goodness.

5.  Personal Improvement: Sprinkled throughout the year, we’ll hold seminars, salons, and thinkweeks that focus on individual improvement for our community.

With all these different concepts and ideas, what would you like to see happen with The Feast? How can we make it more than just an event?  How can we impact millions of people around the world? Please list your ideas below and start the discussion.

This article was written by Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Co-Founder of All Day Buffet and Feast Curator. You can follow his updates on twitter.

“It’s a simple idea.  Inspire action.  Change the world.  Have fun.  Because doing good shouldn’t feel like a chore.”

Those were the words that started our company…

A couple of years ago, Jerri Chou and I had a great idea to expand All Day Buffet.  We wanted to channel our creative energy into a company that allowed us to filter all of our charitable ideas through one company.  I dug up an interview from 2007 I did with Influx Insights that goes over this into a little more detail…

We noticed that even though people wanted to do good, the options to do something were very limiting. People are willing to subscribe to Good Magazine but may not necessarily want to spend their weekend planting trees. Up until now, there’s always been a separation between the things we like with the things that matter most. We want to break the conventions of doing good by infusing the somewhat prude non-profit/charity industry with the creativity and energy of the Creative Class. If we can make it easy and accessible to do good, as well as infusing creativity in everything we do, we can help raise awareness and inspire young people to take active steps to making change.

We were a lot younger back then but our goals were idealistic, pure, and simple.  We wanted to “make doing good cool.” Our team consisted of Scott Hechinger, Justin Hakuta, Adrian Lai, Victor Jeffreys, Nikki Bagli and about a dozen other awesome people.  We were tired of using our creative skills in the corporate world so we designed, coded, and brainstormed for weeks on how to make the world a better place.  They lived in NYC, and I worked remotely from New Orleans.  It was the best time of our lives because we had nothing to worry about but create something that would be appealing to us.

In August ‘07, we launched a spanking brand new website and our first project – Cause for Drinks.  The idea was simple. Host a happy hour.  Take $2 from each drink.  And donate it to a local charity.  It started in New Orleans and NYC and quickly spread across the country like wildfire.  By the end of the project, we were in nearly two dozen cities and raised over $10,000 for local charities.  But more importantly, we empowered creative professionals across the country to do something good in their own communities.

Holy shit.  We just built a community of creatives that were hungry to do more.  Cause for Drinks was their gateway drug to doing good.

A year later, at a BBQ in Brooklyn, Scott Hechinger, Justin Hakuta and I were talking about the TED Conference and how awesome it would be to attend.  There was only one major problem… the $6,000 price tag.  So, we did what anyone else would do in that situation.  We decided to create our own conference in our backyard — New York City.

It made sense for us because our goals were changing and all us were starting to get the entrepreneurial itch.  We also gave our community a taste of doing good and they wanted more.  So why not combine entrepreneurship, creativity, and innovation together?  Why not channel all the energy from our network to create real change with massive social impact?  Thus, The Feast was born.

Our mission still holds true today.  Change the world through creativity and business.

We held the very first Feast at Scandinavia House in October ‘08.  I convinced Jerri that it was a good idea and she believed me (Jerri, I had no idea what I was doing back then ha).  We put together a conference in 8 weeks (I still don’t know how we pulled it off), and packed Scandinavia House with 125 of the most amazing social innovators, entrepreneurs, and non-profit leaders New York has ever seen.  (It will still go down as one of the most memorable experiences of my entire life.  The energy in that room can and probably will never be replicated anywhere else.)

A year later, we expanded to The Times Center and tripled to 375 attendees.  This year, we’re looking to double our attendees to a little under 800.  We’re also focusing on “the future” as our overall theme moving forward.  The growth has been tremendous and our goal is to make The Feast into the SXSW for our community.  We could not have done this with the support of from our community.  So, thank you!

Get full on good.

While working on The Feast, Jerri and I had a brilliant idea to create a new business model for startups.  Rather than working on one idea, why not throw a bunch of ideas against the wall and see what sticks?  So, in 2009, we went into prime brainstorm mode and emerged with By/Association, TBD, and Lovely Day.

Our business model has always been extremely simple.  It’s non-traditional but it works for us.

All Day Buffet is the parent company.
It advises, invests and incubates for-profit/for-good ventures.
Each venture has a CEO with their own teams.
Each venture has a 5.0% option pool that gets shared across all our ventures.
All Day Buffet takes the remainder of each venture.

If 2009 was about incubating ideas, 2010 will be about growing them.  So, it’s extremely hard for me to say that Jerri and I will be splitting our time to focus on our individual ventures.  Rather than spreading ourselves thin over 4 different companies, Jerri and I will be focusing on a few.  I will take over on The Feast and By/Association & Jerri will be taking over on Lovely Day and TBD.

Be an entrepreneur.  Not a social entrepreneur.

Throughout the past couple of years, we’ve worked hard to blend creativity, entrepreneurship, and social change together. It’s been our goal to show the world what our community is capable of when creative people get together to change the world.  Sprinkle that with some entrepreneurship and voila!  It’s a recipe for success.

What does the future hold for All Day Buffet?  In 5 years, we want to have a portfolio of companies that are profitable, sustainable, and world-changing.  We believe that New York City will be the epicenter of social innovation, and we hope to be the leaders that spearhead that movement.  Our end goal is to launch a venture fund that allows us to fund innovative startups that are changing the world with seed investments, lifetime personal investments, mentorship, advisement and support.

We achieved all of this without one penny from outside investors.  We couldn’t have done this without the support of our team, partners, community, and mentors.  And most importantly, I could not have done this without Jerri Chou who has wanted to punch, kick, and beat me up on numerous occasions for all my crazy ideas.  Without her as a business partner, All Day Buffet will not exist as it does today.  And to all of you that have helped and supported us along the way, thank you. We hope you’ll continue getting full on good with us.

This was written by Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Co-Founder of All Day Buffet.  You can follow his updates on Twitter.

For the first time in a long time, the marketing & advertising sector have the opportunity to do a lot of good (gasp). I know, here’s why.

It’s a hugely powerful medium — the power of persuasion. If the people behind Coke can convince millions that drinking the stuff will make you happy — anything’s possible. But, despite sounding like a cliche super hero reference, like any powerful force, it can be used for good or evil.

There’s a huge camp of people who blame many of the problems of society on advertising. It’s notorious for creating false needs and selling products that are not good for people or the environment. More consumption is not always the way to better business.  Instead of working with companies to rethink that strategy, the goal is just to push more by any means possible. It’s resulted in unsustainable ideas and aspirations about how we should live our lives and many people can not discern for themselves what is real from fake anymore (hell, even I have a hard time sometimes).

The thing is we created this entire world. It’s a series of stories and beliefs that we are told and convinced ourselves of. This world continues to exist this way because we continue to believe the stories. We can believe in something better.

The marketing and advertising communities are masters at story telling and brilliant at understanding how things work. For the first time, the people at these companies have the backing of the masses who want more good, more decency, and more responsibility. They want a better future. So for the first time, this community has the opportunity to create a new story. One where people are interconnected, kindness is valued and community is king. One where we believe in quality over quantity. One where waste is something shunned like a sin and where we understand and respect the earth. And one where we see the potential in every individual and offer them opportunity.

Of course, this takes dedication to creating messages which drive more responsible corporate behavior. The last thing the social innovation movement needs is false marketing that exploits a genuine sense of optimism and dedication for the sake of the sale. This short term approach is largely what’s gotten us into so much trouble to begin with and would turn this movement into the next greenwashing which would be the saddest thing marketing could possibly do.

But the power of marketing is that it faces two ways — outward toward consumers and inward toward driving profit. Business cases for for-profit for-good business models are being made by the day and, done right, they can be made in the corporate context. Why do I believe the folks at the marketing and advertising wheel can leverage this two-way power to drive innovation? Because they get how things work. They understand the puzzle better than anyone because they’re always trying to see new relationships between its pieces — if there’s anyone who can help figure out how to make things work better, it’s this crowd.

There’s a huge opportunity for the discipline to do some serious good by shifting society’s aspirations and understanding of what’s possible. What kills me and inspires me on a daily basis is that people are powerful and they can do better. It’s time to inspire them to do so.

Lovely Day is an agency for (human) brands. We develop strategies for global brands to do well by doing good. Our strategic focus is Corporate Social Innovation (CSI).  Why? Because we believe business is run by people and people are inherently good. We exist to let that shine. Like a Lovely Day.

As we move into 2010, our team at Lovely Day has put together a short list of ideas and examples of doing well by doing good that we’re giving away to the top Fortune 500 companies as a special holiday bonus. Our goal? Encourage global brands to support social innovation as a new way of doing business in 2010 and beyond. If you’re new to Corporate Social Innovation, check out our presentation on (human) brands.

COLLECTIVE ACTION:  ADD ADDITIONAL IDEAS IN THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW. WE WILL FORWARD THE LIST TO FORTUNE 500 BRANDS TO TAKE ACTION ON CORPORATE SOCIAL INNOVATION IN 2010!

1. Corporate Social Innovation

Example: Grameen Danone
“The yogurt Danone would make would be fortified to help curb malnutrition and priced (at 7 cents a cup) to be affordable. All revenue from the joint venture with Grameen would be reinvested, with Danone taking out only its initial cost of capital, about $500,000, after three years.”

“The new wave in business is, forget corporate social responsibility and philanthropy – how do you integrate this into your core business?  The idea Danone has of creating a social dividend for shareholders – that’s cutting-edge. No one else has come up with this interesting a model. It supports your brand, returns your capital, you’re not going to lose money and you give your shareholders a vision of doing something good.” — Emmanuel Faber, Danone’s former CFO

Actionable Idea:  Rethink your market and utilize your brand to create social enterprises that lift the BOP out of poverty.  Teach them how to fish.  Stop giving them fish.

2. Corporate Social Innovation

Example: Marks & Spencer Plan A
Plan A is a five-year, 100-point ‘eco’ plan. “It tackles some of the most important social, environmental and ethical challenges facing our business and our world.” Through Plan A, Marks & Spencer is working with their customers, employees, and suppliers to combat climate change, reduce waste, use sustainable raw materials, trade ethically, and help their customers live healthier lifestyles. Why? Because there is no plan B.

Actionable Idea: Crowdsource ideas from your employees, customers, and stakeholders to create your own 100-point plan.  Implement it over the next 5 years, and make the world a better place.  Or hire us.

3. Strategic Philanthropic Investment

Example: GOOD + Pepsi
GOOD has recently partnered with Pepsi to “drive positive change in the world… around their bold new Refresh campaign — a $20 million grant-giving effort that will support ideas big and small that are designed to create positive social change.” Pepsi will start accepting submissions on refresheverything.com from people on how they will create change in the world.

Actionable Idea: Shift capital from non-profit donations to creating an investment fund for social entrepreneurs and changemakers.  It’s no longer about charity.  It’s about investment.

4. Collective Action Campaign

Example: Carrotmob
Carrotmob is a “network of consumers who buy products in order to reward businesses who are making the most socially responsible decisions.” The idea is that a big mob of consumers will buy products in order to reward businesses that make the strongest commitment to improve the world. It’s the total opposite of a boycott. Awesome right?

Actionable Idea: Leverage collective action and community thought to do big things and make sweeping changes. Or sponsor an international Carrotmob to support those who do good business.

5. Employee Engagement

Example: Freedom, Inc.
According to a recent article on changethis.com, “Work has always been seen as a constraint and the workplace as a ship’s galley. But this is beginning to change, and it comes by using a source of benefits neglected by most — complete freedom and and responsibility for employees to take action they, not their bosses, decide are best.”

Actionable Idea: Hold an internal social innovation competition, and give the winning employee free reign to put together an action plan for their proposal.

Lovely Day is an agency for (human) brands. We develop strategies for global brands to do well by doing good. Our strategic focus is Corporate Social Innovation (CSI).  Why? Because we believe business is run by people and people are inherently good. We exist to let that shine. Like a Lovely Day.

The world of business is changing. Consumers are demanding more — more value, more quality, more responsibility — and more companies are striving to keep up.

As information becomes more transparent, people are starting to realize that brands are not siloed and that businesses touch many parts of our world and society. A bank is no longer just a bank; it’s an international institution that can directly affect our daily lives (and livelihoods), which mean its operations are important to us.

The more a business remains an opaque brand, the bigger the disconnect between what it says and what it does.  What’s happening between the product factory in China and the glossy ad in Wired Magazine? The second there’s a misalignment of mission and action; it’ll invariably lead to consumer mistrust, resulting in people heading elsewhere to fill their needs around genuine authenticity.

Now is the time to gain ground and better the world. The industrial era modes of doing business (linear, resource extracting, need creating) have lead to many of the problems of our day. But many of these businesses were founded on socially driven missions– to create better healthcare products and provide products that create joy for people. It’s time to evolve these companies by using the new knowledge we’ve gained in the last era to correct abuses, realize latent potential, and realign mission with action. It’s time to innovate and evolve those mission statements for the 21st century.

That’s right.  I’d like to see global brands using their mission to drive business and better the world.  We’re calling  it Corporate Social Innovation (CSI).

In my opinion, CSI encompasses three ‘I’s: Innovation, Investment, and Impact.

1) Innovation
The greatest potential a company has for doing good are in the areas it affects on a daily basis and innovating within existing core competencies.  Some argue that this is just good business.  Exactly.

Start by looking at everyone the business touches — shareholders, stakeholder, and consumers — and create a collaborative relationship. How does everyone create more value for each other? Once seen through this lens, new opportunities will surface.

Producers can tackle supply chain issues by solving root problems like living conditions. Companies can create more holistic, socially oriented and powerful products by working across departments — linking community investment, product development and marketing together. And companies can find new markets for their products through socially minded initiatives. All while inviting consumers to participate in the entire process.

I previously wrote an article on  how social entrepreneurs offer a great testing bed for innovative models. Innovation must remain a core value of a company or incentives will quickly shift to maintaining market share instead of creating new value, which is not good business.

2) Investment
Real investment, by the virtue of the word, means a tie to those you touch. Good investment means that you do well when those you invest in (stakeholders, consumers and communities) do well, which incentivizes an additive approach — that by nature is long term. Corporations have tons of opportunities for investment:

• Shareholders and Employees
  People have a desire to create and leave behind something better — a legacy of goodness in the world. Building the framework for employees and shareholders to realize their maximum potential as human beings, realizes a company’s potential in the process and gets everyone mutually invested. Of course, this means investing in the health and education of employees, allowing them to voice their opinions on how things can be improved, and encouraging employees to self organize to do good. Offering purpose and fulfillment will attract the best and brightest to knock at the door.  It’s a win-win for everyone.
• Supply chain and new models of business
  Investing in those who work with you offers huge opportunities for long term growth and the chance to grow business laterally. From a social entrepreneurship perspective, many new companies are starting up that are proving the success of innovative socially based answers to market needs. Literal corporate investment in these new models holds huge potential for bettering operations and propelling these ways of doing business forward by offering them the chance to scale.
• Community
  Companies have nothing if the communities they operate in are exploited to the point where they can no longer engage with your product — bad morals and bad business. Investing in an educated, and able community is the best long term interest, which results in a stronger presence in the community thereafter.

3) Impact
This touches upon the other two, but it’s essential to think about where you can do the most good possible. Many define it as charity but while charity is amazing, fulfilling, and the gift is a hugely powerful thing — there are many ways of doing good that are long lasting solutions. Consumer education that generates awareness for new ways of doing good are also very powerful.  If businesses no longer exploited poverty, we’ll no longer need nonprofits to fight it. If we’re no longer supporting wars and rain forest cutting through supply chains, we won’t need rain forest preservation non-profits.

Business has a huge potential to do good. We just need to think a little more innovatively.  It’ll be a lovely day when that happens!

Jerri Chou is the Co-Founder of Lovely Day, which develops CSI strategies for global brands to do well by doing good. You can follow her updates on twitter @jchou

LOVELY DAY

Lovely Day creates and shapes (human) brands for the 21st century. We develop strategies for global brands to well by doing good. Our strategic focus: corporate social innovation. We consist of thinkers and doers, strategists and creatives, change-makers and movers that will create and shape brands for the future.

Miss the Lovely Day presentation on (human) brands and corporate social innovation? No worries, we’ve uploaded it to Slideshare for you to browse, and enjoy!

View presentation >>

RECENT PRESS

This has been a great month as we’ve been mentioned in numerous press outlets!

1. New York Times: The Anti-Social-Network Social Network (By/Association)
2. Urbandaddy: Perfect Stranger, The Future of Social Networking (By/Association)
3. PSFK: Lovely Day, The Agency for Human Brands (Lovely Day)
4. Treehugger: Our Future is TBD (TBD)
5. Change.org: Distribution vs. Promotion and The Rise of the Email List (TBD)
6. Huffington Post: Why Social Entrepreneurs will lead Business (ADB)

THE FEAST CONFERENCE

The Feast Conference gathers the world’s greatest innovators from across industries and society to empower, inspire and engage each other in creating world-shaking change. Our early bird tickets are on sale until December 31st. Get yours today before they go up!

Register >>

ADB PARTNER: THE UNREASONABLE INSTITUTE

The Unreasonable Institute is looking for 25 high-impact entrepreneurs who will develop social ventures that history may one day recall defined progress in the 21st century — ventures with the ability to measurably improve the lives of millions of people around the globe. Official applications opened on November 15th and will close on December 15th. .

Apply >>

We’re looking to add a web developer and interactive designer to our startup team.  We’re  doing something a little different though.  Rather than working on one startup (yawn!), you’ll be working across three different startups in 2010.  They include By/Association, TBD, and our third stealth project (which we promise is just as exciting and awesome).  There’ll be five of us so we’ll kind of be like an all-star basketball team.  We’re looking to pick up the Lebron and Kobe of the startup world.  Is that you?

1.  Web Developer
Yes, we understand that you can program and code in more languages than a foreign language teacher.  But, we’re looking specifically for someone that can solve through problems, manage freelance developers, and build shit from scratch.  And fix those bugs that no one in the world can figure out (we prefer Ruby Developers).

2.  Interactive Designer
We like typography.  We hope you do too.  We like clean interfaces.  We hope you do too.  And we like the movie Helvetica.  We hope you do too.  If you design in grids, and know how to design for the guy we’re picking up in #1.  We want to meet you.

You’ll get massive benefits, and get to work with an excellent team.  We’ll even let you DJ the office iPod. We’re growing fast, and looking to add some folks to our team! If you’re an entrepreneurial, awesome, creative, fun, and brilliant; please email us at hello[at]alldaybuffet[dot]org

Check our other positions at Lovely Day and The Feast here — http://www.alldaybuffet.org/2009/11/30/join-our-family/

My partner recently wrote a great post about the start ups he would invest in, but I figured I would blow out his thoughts into where I see all this leading and it’s this. Social entrepreneurs will lead the future of business.

That’s a bold claim. Why do I think this? Because it’s already happening, and has been happening (albeit more slowly than recently) for the past decade.

Like any progressive movement, it takes pioneers to blaze the way for the rest of us. Companies like Ben and Jerry’s, White Dog cafe have been hacking through the red tape, wagging fingers and sideways glances for years. In the process, they’ve proven that social mindedness and business are not mutually exclusive endeavors and a pack of wide eyed entrepreneurs are stampeding down the now highly respected path.

On the backs of these heroes of the social world, entrepreneurs can now make their case (not to mention that they have all sorts of advantages our forefathers lacked like social enterprise business programs, networks, incubators and a blessing from the government).

Now there are many arguments that social entrepreneurship is praised more highly than intrapraneurship etc. I agree that both are crucial and, in fact, symbiotic (the work of innovators would never attain access to larger operations if not for enlightened people on the inside and those driving innovation there).

But there are some unique aspects to social entrepreneurs that make them the catalyst. One being that they have the least path to resistance to try new models and methods of doing things (no corporate red tape when you’re working out of coffee shop on your world-changing idea).

But maybe the most important part, they are out to save the world, which means they won’t take ‘no’ for an answer and want to move fast and big. This makes them susceptible to the greatest rule for entrepreneurship, “fail often, fail fast”. Social entrepreneurs are the test bed for what will succeed or fail in a business atmosphere. They also show us where huge market exists, often by going against all odds to prove opportunity where it’s been overlooked for ease of profit.

Can they change the whole business infrastructure themselves? Probably not, but they push the frontiers of what we know as possible, which is extremely important and starts a cycle of demand (better business is possible, which leads us to demand better business). This then opens the door for their real potential of proving feasibility and and the integration of their practices into larger scale operations where it makes sense.

Looking to do new something in 2010?  Come join our la familia.  We’re growing fast, and looking to add some folks to our team!  If you’re an entrepreneur/intrapreneur, awesome, creative, fun, and brilliant; please email us your resume at hello[at]alldaybuffet[dot]org.

1.  The Feast (feastongood.com)
Do you like putting together events… more specifically conferences?  We’re looking for an intrapreneur to take over The Feast and grow it to be one of NYC’s premier events.  If you like curating speakers, selecting organic caterers, and striking media partnerships; this is perfect for you.

2.  Lovely Day (itsalovelyday.com)
We’re looking for strategists to work with global brands on developing strategies on how to do well and do good.  If you have an interest in CSI (Corporate Social Innovation), and want to work with likeminded clients; send us your resume!

3.  Interns
We’re looking for New York based college students work with us a couple of hours per week over all of our difference businesses.

If you’re an interactive designer or developer, check out our startup positions here — http://www.alldaybuffet.org/2009/12/02/join-our-startup-family-part-ii/

Lovely Day creates and shapes brands for the 21st century.  Hand in hand with the world’s greatest brands, we develop strategies for global brands to do well by doing good.  Our strategic focus: corporate social innovation.