Google 10^100 award voting is Launched. There are two sectors that we believe would have the greatest impact on the greatest amount of people; building a better banking system and funding social entrepreneurs. You can’t have one without the other – if Google funds these two sectors in concert, the outcome would be incredible.
Build A Better Bank
In the old banking system we assume that we have the knowledge to execute a business plan and we go to the bank to borrow the money. In the new banking system, we will assume we have the money and we go off in search of the knowledge. Social Media is an excellent “public accounting system” for knowledge assets.
Our current banking system has gotten it backwards.
Technological change must always precede economic growth. The supranational currency may be backed by productivity and not debt. Social media provides an excellent platform upon which to design such a banking system. People trade “social currency” at a tremendous rate. This is evidenced by the amount of destructive innovation is occurring in many legacy sectors due to social media.
Better Banking Tools for everyone
“Partner with banks and technology companies to increase the reach of financial services across the world. Users submitted numerous ideas that seek to improve the quality of people’s lives by offering new, more convenient and more sophisticated banking services. Specific suggestions include inexpensive village-based banking kiosks for developing countries; an SMS solution geared toward mobile networks; and ideas for implementing banking services into school curriculums”.
Suggestions that inspired this idea
1. Enable prepaid cell phone bank accounts for millions of people working in the informal economy
2. Create a community-level electronic banking system for rural areas
3. Build IT-enabled kiosks which provide access to financial services
4. Create a single world bank or supra-national currency, uniform rules and transparent public accounting
Fund Social Entrepreneurs
Venture Capital is ridiculously expensive. Corporate innovation serves shareholders value over social priorities. Some say that the financial risk of funding innovation is too high. The top ten reasons why start-ups fail are due to knowledge deficits, not money deficits. A new banking system that trades knowledge as currency would solve this problem.
The key is to match most worthy knowledge surplus to most worthy knowledge deficit. Google is perfectly able to build a search app for knowledge assets if there were an inventory of knowledge assets. With the most worthy match, Risk can be reduced and new financial instruments can be developed such as the innovation bond, innovation insurance, tangential innovation markets, and destructive innovation transition contingency options, etc.
Help social entrepreneurs drive change
Create a fund to support social entrepreneurship. This idea was inspired by a number of user proposals focused on “social entrepreneurs” — individuals and organizations who use entrepreneurial techniques to build ventures focused on attacking social problems and fomenting change. Specific relevant ideas include establishing schools that teach entrepreneurial skills in rural areas; supporting entrepreneurs in underdeveloped communities; and creating an entity to provide capital and training to help entrepreneurs build viable businesses and catalyze sustained community change.
Suggestions that inspired this idea
1. Provide targeted capital and business training to help young entrepreneurs build viable businesses and catalyze sustained community change
2. Create a non-profit, venture capital-like revolving fund to invest in high-impact local entrepreneurs
3. Send young American entrepreneurs to underdeveloped communities to help create small businesses that would economically benefit those communities
4. Create schools in rural areas to teach local people how to become entrepreneurs
5. Create a private equity fund to help immigrants in developed countries finance business development in their countries of origin
