Table of Contents for Venture Meets Mission
Prologue
The time is now to mobilize a collective sense of mission to tackle the larger problems of society. But how? A future that is increasingly uncertain with accelerating technological, social, and geopolitical change requires an agile, entrepreneurial mindset to identify solutions for today's large societal problems. It is time to power up "purposeful" entrepreneurship, but with a key difference—to embrace the fact that to truly make impact at scale possible, we need to see government as a partner not an obstacle. This creates a generational opportunity to repair the triangle of trust between individuals, business, and government with a model in which venture meets mission. The moment is right for us to rebuild trust by starting with a "capacious sense of we" that builds on the power of partnership between private and public enterprise, fosters the sense of meaning, and shuns the polarizing labels of shareholder capitalism or government.
1.Idealism and Impact: Transforming with the Optimism of Entrepreneurship and the Scale of Government
The time is now to mobilize a collective sense of mission to tackle the larger problems of society. But how? A future that is increasingly uncertain with accelerating technological, social, and geopolitical change requires an agile, entrepreneurial mindset to identify solutions for today's large societal problems. It is time to power up "purposeful" entrepreneurship, but with a key difference—to embrace the fact that to truly make impact at scale possible, we need to see government as a partner not an obstacle. This creates a generational opportunity to repair the triangle of trust between individuals, business, and government with a model in which venture meets mission. The moment is right for us to rebuild trust by starting with a "capacious sense of we" that builds on the power of partnership between private and public enterprise, fosters the sense of meaning, and shuns the polarizing labels of shareholder capitalism or government.
2.Shared Values: Rediscovering the Common Ground Between Entrepreneurs, Government, and Society
We may have the right purpose, but the real challenge is turning this intention into action. In this chapter, we dive deeper into the common hurdles of this intention-action gap, and potential solutions that can catalyze action in the Venture Meets Mission ecosystem. Most notably, polarization of entrepreneurship and government presents the largest hurdle to achieving action, creating a dichotomy of misunderstanding of these two fields in which people think of entrepreneurship as "value extractive" and governments as "inefficient." This hurdle can only be resolved, we argue, through personalizing entrepreneurship and humanizing government. Here, entrepreneurs can be changemakers for good, and the outcomes of government cannot be underplayed, as it touches upon every facet of daily life. By resolving these misconceptions, we can realize that the work of government and ventures is not a "purity test" but an opportunity to find a middle ground and promote social good.
3.A Different Compact: Innovating Public-Private Partnerships
Developing working arrangements between government and ventures is hard, and these arrangements face a number of design challenges beyond simple misconceptions. While collaborations between public (state) and private (business) actors have long been the focus of academics and policymakers seeking to create positive change by tapping into the efficiencies of the public sector and the scale of government, traditional public-private partnership frameworks fall short of addressing needs for government-venture alignment. In this chapter, we highlight five sources of uncertainty in the relationship: outcome, process, relational, incentive, and temporal. We describe the sources of these uncertainties through case studies of ventures that have worked with the government, and discuss what these mean for both governments and entrepreneurs as they navigate a rapidly changing technology and sociopolitical landscape.
4.Mission Venturing: How Entrepreneurs Partner with Government to Create Value and Scale Impact
The design challenges of a government-venture arrangement highlight the urgent need to revisit the entrepreneurial model and reconstruct it such that these ventures can successfully support the mission of government. The concept of public value presents one way in which the private sector can begin to organize its value-creating activities accordingly. In this chapter, we discuss how ventures can work toward creating societal surplus by resolving some of the design challenges of government-venture arrangements. Through detailed discussions with entrepreneurs, we highlight the important actions for entrepreneurs in the Venture Meets Mission ecosystem to consider as they construct their venture. Using case studies of ventures from different industries, we bring a flavor of the creative approaches by which these ventures manage the uncertainties that characterize public-private collaborations, more broadly, and government-venture arrangements, specifically.
5.A "Venture Meets Mission" Ecosystem: How Government Can Catalyze Innovation
While governments strive hard to create economic opportunities for their citizens, they also play a key role in laying the framework for a Venture Meets Mission ecosystem. In this chapter, we elaborate on the role of the government in creating the conditions for mission-driven ventures to thrive. Engaging with government officials and public-sector organizations around the world, we explore the five main roles of the government, as an enabler of impact, orchestrator of mission, developer of talent, mobilizer of capital, and procurer of value. Drawing from examples of liberal democracies around the world, we chart a pathway by which the government can create the conditions for mission-driven entrepreneurs to scale their societal impact. Partnering with nonprofit organizations, we argue, is critical to further catalyzing the Venture Meets Mission ecosystem.
6.Resolve to Act: Making a Bigger Impact with Your Career
In this chapter, we shift our focus to the individual—you. Building a career does not require a trade-off between doing good and doing well. Quite the contrary. In the Venture Meets Mission ecosystem, you have the chance to be intrinsically and extrinsically rewarded for your efforts. But it requires rethinking career pathways. Peer pressure, structured recruiting patterns, job offers, and speed of decision making among corporates are making it harder to not get pulled into a cycle of social conformance. Colleges funnel graduates into known career pathways because of the ease in recruitment and placement, and parents reinforce this mentality of risk aversion, as the burden of education loans becomes heavy. By featuring narratives of individuals who were able to navigate this space, we highlight strategies they took to overcome these challenges and thrive in the Venture Meets Mission ecosystem.
7.The Virtuous Cycle: Aligning People, Purpose, and Profit to Create the Future We Want
Large, seemingly intractable societal problems make this new compact between entrepreneurs and government necessary. With growing challenges from climate change, biodiversity, poverty, and education, there seems to be no end to the issues that will require this partnership. Despite these mounting challenges, there is a quiet optimism across sectors as ventures increasingly work with the government to create positive impact. We highlight companies and opportunities in climate, cybersecurity, education, energy, food, health, and space sectors. Environmental, social, and governance compliance and board-level governance discussions emphasize that these opportunities have now become necessary for future competitive success. As this generational reset shifts people toward a mission-oriented mindset and new ventures are formed, venture capitalists see funding opportunities for mission-oriented ventures, opening the door further for high-quality talent and stories of success. Embracing and catalyzing this virtuous cycle will bring together the power of people, purpose, and profit.