Ideas for Project 10^100: Multiplying Power Community

This idea is one of a series of ideas that I posted to Google’s Project 10100 (it’s just before their deadline now, so I need to hurry up somewhat …). The other ideas were the psycho hygiene system and Natural Scientific Theology. In this project, Google collects ideas and will honor the five ideas that help the most people by sponsoring their realization with 2 million USD each. You’ll notice that this idea is a derivative of my community concepts … I think that’s adequate because the style of community I intend is also meant to help a lot of people while starting with very little starting capital.

Now, I’m jus’ going to copy the answers to Google’s central questions for idea proposals here.

10. What one sentence best describes your idea? (maximum 150 characters)

One powerful, self-sustained 10-people community can help the world by founding a social company, and similar communities by divide-and-multiply.

11. Describe your idea in more depth. (maximum 300 words)

It’s sad that one day of an industrial nation does not really help the world, though it encompasses hundreds of millions of man-days. That’s because nearly every resource is used up for private lives, to gain “fun” and “meaning”. But these can be by-effects of helping the world to live. Therefore, here’s how to make helping the world an interesting and rewarding experience (and hopefully a mass phenomenon). It’s all about carefully orchestrating an environment where it’s fun and rewarding (flow-state like) to serve the world in. This needs:

  • Social integration. Therefore we propose founding organizations that are small enough to consist of just friends (10 people).
  • Synergy. It’s fun to be part of a team and see the synergistic effects of team work. Therefore, helping the world “alone” makes no sense. A synergistic group is needed, here 10 people, carefully selected and orchestrated
    personalities, with appropriate technologies, to be as effective as possible.
  • The feeling of really making a difference. Therefore, the organization must be small (10 people) and flexible enough to not waste the manpower to just steer it.
  • Time to rest. Helping the world is no fun if it causes burnouts. Therefore, the group must be able to provide a family atmosphere of rest.
  • Scaleablility. The success of the service must grow linearly with the group’s size, as it’s too frustrating for humans to see it grow slower. Therefore, the whole is modularized into 10-people communities, and every one can see it’s own success in service grow. Which helps to not be frustrated about a possibly slowly growing total number of communities.

12. What problem or issue does your idea address? (maximum 150 words)

Current ideas to help the world on its way suffer not from their quality, but from poor organizational structure, which makes funding philantropic activities the most difficult part of them. NPOs are commonly either central, government funded ones (which cannot do their work in countries with poor governments, and suffer greatly when the government must cut its expenses) or small ones, funded from a circle of private supporters (these cannot grow as private funding cannot grow fast). As the alternative, a type of organization is proposed here which: (1) needs no external funding, (2) grows by divide-and-multiply, so that there is redundancy that makes the project survive even if some 10-people communities decay.

13. If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how? (maximum 150 words)

The people benefited by this idea are foremost the employees of the companies that the communities will found, each around 1000 employees. They will be able to lead a self-sustained life, and will profit form the internal education system in the company, which fosters higher life quality. Additionally, as these companies are social, a lot of people will benefit from the products of these companies. The kind of product is limited by the requirement that the company must make profit to nourish the founding community and its employees, but possibilities (here, in development countries) include: micro-credits, construction of public infrastructure like bridges and streets, teacher seminary, elementary school / high school, university, water processing unit, hospital, private security service (esp. for areas with corrupt policemen).

14. What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground? (maximum 150 words)

The first of these power communities needs to be created (it will multiply itself after that). It’s mainly about defining the intended “social system” to be created (after some research what would provide the “fun and meaning in serving” experience) and carefully selecting the 10 desired people to implement it, giving them the technology they desire (and some money), and let them start to do their job of serving the world. Their first steps as a community will probably be internal communication trainings, decision structure negotiation, getting money for their running expenses, finding the idea for the social company to found, then founding it.

15. Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it? (maximum 150 words)

The optimal outcome is if the first community finally results in a mass movement, by the divide-and-multiply principle, so that finally several hundreds of millions of people benefit either from the products of the social companies, being an employee of these companies, or even being a community member. This outcome might need some hundred years to develop.

Indicators to measure the current result are: number of communities, number of community companys, number of employees. This should bear some correlation to the effects on the human development indices of the impacted societies, which are too difficult to measure themselves. Indicators to measure the progress are the speed by which the before mentioned numbers change.


Start date: 2008-10-19
Post date: 2008-10-19
Version date: 2008-10-19 (for last meaningful change)


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