Kauffman Fellows - Center for Venture Education

The secret sauce of the Society of Kauffman Fellows has two key ingredients. The first is the reach and diversity of perspective and reach of our Fellows and Mentors, and the second is trust. We think diversity and trust are the drivers of innovation to begin with, but more and more experts are realizing how diametrically opposed these two forces are when you try to bring them together in one room. The broader societal challenge of getting diversity to work in large organizations - something that's getting so much press these days - shares most of the challenges that Fellows encounter in small-company boards and partnership situations. As we like to say, small companies don't fail because someone erred on a spreadsheet or term sheet, they almost always fail because of the inability to reconcile differences and create shared agendas. David Brooks in last week's New York Times attributes the problem to modern education: too many narrow skills, such as technical knowledge, and too little few contextual skills, like empathy. The Wall Street Journal does a deeper dive, highlighting a number of academic articles that focus on the challenge of promoting diversity without appreciating the investment required to make it work.

All of this matters because the world is rapidly opening up to innovation. Young people in Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and other formerly isolated or repressed regions are starting companies at a dizzying pace. My recent swing through the more developed innovation eco-system of Europe only validates this observation further. Universities, governments and corporations around the world are enamored with innovation, yet have little understanding of its recipe and no appreciation for the cultural barriers that their own people will need to overcome if they are to engage in global new company creation (and that's organizational culture; forget for a moment the additional challenges of nationality, gender and race). All this explosion is going on while the primary source of capital and coaching - venture capital - is in a state of flux and retrenchment. We believe that this dynamic is where the growth in venture lies, for both existing and new firms.
 
Speaking of generating productive teamwork, I'd like to add a note of congratulations to Canada's gold-medal winning men's hockey team. If you believe the media (and all of my Canadian friends and hockey teammates here in the Valley), this is the sporting event that mattered to Canada over everything else. As Al Michaels said Sunday night, a Canadian loss would have ruined the closing ceremonies, which doesn't strike me as hyperbole. The 3-2 OT win over the USA couldn't have been scripted better for Canada, and the game deserved to be settled in extra time. Once I got past my bitter disappointment of our boys coming so close to winning, I couldn't help but feel proud for both teams with regard to how they played and represented the game. If that was your first time watching a hockey game, then you should be hooked for life on the ultimate expression of athletic skill, speed, improvisational thinking, grit, sacrifice, and determination that went down Sunday afternoon in Vancouver.

My fascination with sports at this point in my life is driven primarily by societal lessons that stem from them. Lost in the media buzz of another potential USA hockey gold, to go with those from 1960 and 1980, is the success of a little known experiment called the US National Team Development Program. Founded in 1996, the NTDP's goal is to recruit and develop the skills and leadership of the top players in the country under the age of 18 (U18 in hockey parlance). The goal has been to bring American hockey up to the level of Canada, Sweden, and Russia, and in the process make us less reliant on miracles to win championships. The Program is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan and there was no congressional or White House involvement in its creation. Instead the solution was conceived and executed by a small, passionate non-profit - USA Hockey - operating in one of the world's hotbeds of expertise and talent. (Detroit is "Hockeytown", after all.) Fourteen years later, we now field an Olympic team that is every bit as talented as Canada while being the youngest in the tournament. The stars of the team: Kane, Miller, Parise, Kesler, both Johnsons, Suter, Kessel, Statsny and many others are products of the Under-18 USNTDP.

So what are the measurable results after 14 years? Had the USA scored first in overtime on Sunday, we would have Olympic gold to go along with gold medals we currently hold in World Juniors (U20), U18 and U17. That's pretty much everything there is to win in the men's game globally, so for the time being the "American Model" looks pretty good. A few questions pop to mind: doesn't this approach sound like Silicon Valley? The American Model is nothing but the best ideas from Canada, Sweden, and Russia, adopted to our culture, and two of our stars - Parise and Statsny - are the offspring of immigrants. Why can't we take this approach with health care and other national challenges, relying on experiments run by passionate experts in established, decentralized hubs? This is what we really know how to do as a nation.

And, finally, when do our girls get their NTDP? (because they narrowly missed gold to Canada as well...).