They turned Chris Nolan into a star—not a movie star, but a cinema star. No director had accomplished this, except Spielberg. [...] The materials cut by the WB team were taut, dramatic, consistent, and told a narrative:

1. This is an event.
2. This Director (Capital D)—who made Dark Knight—is the Real Thing.
3. It’s about dreams.
4.  This movie is cool.
5.  Here’s all the story you need.
5.  It’s action: mucho action.
6.  Here’s Leo.
7. He goes home.
8. Visuals are mind-blowing.
9. More action.
10. You have never seen anything like this.

Novogratz is the CEO of the Acumen Fund, and I’m a big fan of the work that Acumen does. (Learn more about it below.) Her book, The Blue Sweater, reflects on her work using investment as a tool to fight poverty. It is a fine book — part memoir and part rallying cry — and full of the kinds of stories that help you see why it’s so hard (and yet so essential) to get development work right. And now for the interview:

Heath: Most of us are familiar with two tools for combating poverty: aid programs and microcredit. But you’re adding a third. You founded the Acumen Fund to make investments in organizations that could improve the lives of the poor. (A “venture capital fund for the poor,” as you write.) Why have you committed yourself to building organizations instead of assisting the poor directly?

Novogratz: When 3 billion people on the planet are living in poverty, you have a systems problem. We don’t need more small programs serving a few thousand people, but new constructs and approaches to solving big problems of poverty altogether. Markets alone have not solved problems of poverty; and tradition top-down aid or charity alone too often create a sense of dependence rather than dignity. We need a middle way, one that lies between the markets and traditional charity. I believe the world is ready for new models that recognize that unbridled capitalism will not create a world in which all people can pursue their dreams. Patient capital is one such way. By investing long-term in organizations that see the poor not as passive recipients of charity but as agents who want to change their own lives, I’ve seen patient capital bring affordable, quality services to millions in the developing world. That’s where dignity starts.

Heath: If you wanted to make a believer out of someone — to show them firsthand the power of Acumen’s approach to fighting poverty — where would you take them? Whose work would you want them to see?

Novogratz: There are many places I’d take them now, which is the good news! I might start with taking them to harsh, drought-ridden fields where some of the poorest farmers in the world scratch out hardscrabble lives growing and selling crops like tomatoes and okra, often earning less than a dollar a day. For decades, development agencies have tried to help the 200 million smallholder farmers in India alone, providing them with seeds and other inputs that for various reasons did little to improve their productivity. On the other hand, Israel has been using drip irrigation to transform desert lands to emerald fields since 1960, and yet the price of their technology is too high for the smallholder farmer to afford.

Amitabha Sedangi, founder of IDE-India, was fascinated with the Israeli model. He asked what it would take to re-design the drip irrigation technology to be affordable – and useful – to the smallholder farmer. He determined he needed to follow three principles based on how farmers themselves make decisions (rather than starting with what he thought they needed). First, Miniaturization: if a typical smallholder farmer has one acre of land, he will risk no more than a quarter-acre to try an untested technology. Systems built for farms of a thousand acres had to be “miniaturized” down to fit a quarter acre. Second was Extreme Affordability: a farmer would need to see his investment returned to him after a single harvest to feel comfortable investing in the new technology. And third, Incremental Expandability: with the profits earned from the first quarter acre, the farmer could buy a second; and so on….

To date, IDE-India has sold more than 400,000 drip irrigation systems to some of the world’s poorest farmers. These farmers have experienced, on average, a doubling or tripling of their yields and income levels. That means more than two million people are benefiting from higher crop yields due not to charity but because low-income farmers are able to make their own decisions and invest in a way that creates real economic returns to themselves and their families. This is the power of customer-oriented innovation combined with patient capital, for it creates sustainable, scalable change – systems change that enable us to imagine a different kind of world.

Heath: I suspect your book and your TED talks will create a lot of “sympathetic spectators” — people who support your efforts but can’t write you a $100,000 check or contribute to the fieldwork. Are there little things we can do to support you?

Novogratz: Thanks for asking that question! There are so many things people can do. First, any contribution to Acumen Fund is appreciated, and for every dollar WE invest, we see an additional $4 in co-investment in our companies. I remember a seven year old girl who sent me an envelope filled with twenty $1 bills – that was one of my favorite contributions. Second, people can blog about Acumen as well as The Blue Sweater to get the word out that there is a new kind of approach, a middle way to effecting social change by investing patient capital in social entrepreneurs who are building systemic approaches to change. Third, you can join Acumen Fund’s community and find not only a group of like-minded, committed individuals from around the world, but also a host of ideas for other ways to get involved! You might also join one of our 40 communities around the world. Fifth – and importantly – you can support Acumen by integrating the ideas of patient capital and treating the poor as agents who want to make their own decisions into the work you already do.

We need a new way of solving poverty and it must begin with how we think about poor people altogether. And then we need examples of what works — and a commitment to talk about what fails as well so that we can accelerate learning around the world. Imagining, and then creating, a world without poverty starts with changing the way we think about the poor, and then building systems that enable greater freedom, greater choice, and, ultimately, the ability of each and every one of us to reach our greatest potential.

Football coaches pore over game film to spot things they’d never see in real time. Check it out: When the defense blitzes, the free safety picks up the running back. So by picking off the safety, the middle of the field will be wide open for a screen pass. The value of this meticulous observation is intuitive in the sports world. After all, coaches get a week to review a 60-minute game. In the organizational world, where every day is game day, such analysis is less common. It’s unfortunate because studying the game film can yield unexpected insights. … [read more]

The video below provides a 3-minute intro to his thinking. (Disclosure: I helped to create this video, along with my friends Jeff Sims and David Hamburger.) You can learn more at his website*.

I desperately want Singer’s idea to stick: We can, and we should, save lives. If you agree, will you help me spread the word about his work?

Here’s a suggested Tweet*: “I’m IN to end poverty. http://bit.ly/ca490h”

* Special thanks to Brains on Fire (and Justin Gammon) for their extraordinary work on the site. Also thanks to Paul Rand for the slogan.

See our take on this campaign here.

The business world is obsessed with “talent” — hiring it, retaining it, rewarding it. We’re urged to “get the right people on the bus.” (And, really, what better symbol of the high-performing enterprise than a bus?) The metaphor implies that good workers are portable units of competence. They can bring their talent to your bus or your competitor’s bus, but ultimately, it’s their prize to bestow.

What if talent is more like an orchid, thriving in certain environments and dying in others? It’s an interesting question, full of nature-versus-nurture overtones; we could debate it endlessly. But Boris Groysberg, a professor at Harvard Business School, has spoiled the debate with an unsporting move. He’s gathered some data. And what he discovered forces us to rethink the argument. … [read more]

This theme emerged in some educational research cited by Amanda Ripley in her new Time piece called, “Should kids be bribed to do well in school?” The most successful “bribe” programs rewarded behaviors rather than grades. At first look, that seems odd. Why reward an “input” rather than the “output”? Well, here’s why:

The students [in New York City] were universally excited about the money, and they wanted to earn more. They just didn’t seem to know how. When researchers asked them how they could raise their scores, the kids mentioned test-taking strategies like reading the questions more carefully. But they didn’t talk about the substantive work that leads to learning. “No one said they were going to stay after class and talk to the teacher,” Fryer says. “Not one.”

We tend to assume that kids (and adults) know how to achieve success. If they don’t get there, it’s for lack of effort — or talent. Sometimes that’s true. But a lot of the time, people are just flying blind. John List, an economist at the University of Chicago, has noticed the disconnect in his own education experiments. He explains the problem to me this way: “I could ask you to solve a third-order linear partial differential equation,” he says. “A what?” I ask. “A third-order linear partial differential equation,” he says. “I could offer you a million dollars to solve it. And you can’t do it.” (He’s right. I can’t.) For some kids, doing better on a geometry test is like solving a third-order linear partial differential equation, no matter the incentive.

I’ll give a 60-min talk followed by Q&A and a book-signing. If you’re interested, you can register here.

National Cathedral

This week I checked the Web sites of the four largest banks in the country — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo — to see what they were offering on an ordinary savings account, say, one with $5,000 in it.

Chase, the retail operation of JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo were offering 0.05 percent. That $5,000 would produce monthly interest of almost 21 cents. If you left such an account untouched for 20 years, and rates stayed where they are, the glories of compound interest would lead to a profit of $50. Before taxes, of course.

At that rate, if you wanted to put away enough to produce a retirement income of $50,000 a year, without touching the principal, you would need $100 million on deposit.

In the piece, we wonder whether sugary sodas will be the next cigarettes…