Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Top Ten (OK, Eleven) Questions

Asking and listening are more important skills than knowing and saying.

Guy Kawasaki knows a lot about startup companies and technology evangelism. - In an interview with David Bornstein, author of How to Change The World, Kawasaki demonstrates his skill at asking good questions (even though he miscounts them). Here are the questions:
  1. Question: Are there fundamental differences between a social and for-profit founders?

  2. Question: Are there fundamental differences in the people who go to work for a social versus not-for-profit startup?

  3. Question: In the for-profit world, you keep score with sales revenue—how do you keep score in the not-for-profit world?
  4. Question: How can social entrepreneurs attract talent when there aren’t high salaries and options?
  5. Question: Is this why many prominent business people move into social entrepreneurship?

  6. Question: People celebrate when a corporate mogul ditches the big bucks and goes to work for a not-for-profit, but has the opposite occurred too?

  7. Question: What makes some people take action and others to just cogitate?

  8. Question: What are the things that keep potential social entrepreneurs from succeeding to fulfilling their potential?

  9. Question: Then what could government or society do to encourage more social entrepreneurship?

  10. Question: Who is the “Steve Jobs” of social entrepreneurship?

  11. Question: Is the entrepreneur in the middle of Africa who gets a micro-loan and supports his or her family much different from Bill Gates or Steve Jobs?

    What?! You want answers, too? Go here. Just looking over the questions you see how business, nonprofits, individuals, communities, social entrepreneurs, regulators, national policies - all matter to understanding how something or someone succeeds.

1 comment:

Pete said...

Thanks for highlighting this piece. Not only were the questions great, but the answers were very worthy of them.