Marc Freedman: Generativity

John Elkington

April 22, 2010

Volans is working with Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility at Cranfield University and Accenture on a new work program, provisionally entitled ‘The Second Half’ – and focusing on the over-50s. More specifically, we’re looking at a space defined by the overlap, in a Venn diagram, of the sustainability, entrepreneurship and ageing trends and agendas.

Last night’s session, again hosted by Accenture at their 30 Fenchurch Street offices, attracted a capacity audience, though in a slightly smaller room than last time, and kicked off with a presentation by Second Half co-founder David Metz, previously Chief Scientist at the Department of Transport. A lively discussion then followed, before we heard from Marc Freedman, who heads Civic Ventures in the USA. We already knew of their work, partly because we had come across their Encore Program through our ongoing work with HP, but also because they also received grant aid from the Skoll Foundation last year.

And Marc’s background?  He is the founder and CEO of Civic Ventures, a think tank and R&D organization “helping society achieve the greatest return on experience.” His bio continues: “He spearheaded creation of the Experience Corps, now America’s largest nonprofit national service program engaging Boomers, and The Purpose Prize, which annually provides five $100,000 prizes and five $50,000 prizes to social entrepreneurs in the second half of life.”

Freedman was described by The New York Times as “the voice of aging baby boomers who are eschewing retirement for…meaningful and sustaining work later in life,” while The Wall Street Journal explained: “In the past decade, Mr. Freedman has emerged as a leading voice in discussions nationwide about the changing face of retirement.” He is author of Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life; Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America; and The Kindness of Strangers. His new book, Shift, about midlife and the transition of the boomer generation to a new stage of life, will be published in January 2011.

Recognized by Fast Company in 2007, 2008 (when SustainAbility was one of 10 for-profits recognized for the first, and so far only, time by Fast Company), and again in 2009 as one of the nation’s leading social entrepreneurs,  Freedman is widely published and quoted in the national media, and has been honored with numerous awards and fellowships, including an Ashoka Senior Fellowship.

One of the ideas that Marc got into was that of generativity, a slightly complex label for what we have been trying to do from the outset with SustainAbility (in such areas as intergenerational equity, also complex!) and are now also increasingly getting into at Volans.