 Hello, Anne-Marie. Hi, Jean. Hello, everyone. So I want to start by asking about the role, how you see the private sector and the social sector in a larger frame. I've just written a column for the Financial Times talking about a new ecosystem for solving public problems. And that's what we do here, right? Where policy walks. Policy is one way you solve public problems. The problems of workforce, the problems of education, whatever they are. And just to set the stage, back in 2006, you wrote an article with First Lady Laura Bush and with former President Bill Clinton. So it was an interesting array there. And you said the private sector can lead with innovation and capital. Non-profit groups can apply solutions where they're needed most and governments can help expand those solutions on a global scale. So I wanted to start by saying, do you still think that or how would you frame that today? That was 2006. We're 10 years on. You get to modify or revise. Great place to start. And by the way, I want to thank you for your leadership, Anne-Marie, but also for the important role that New America plays in vetting out some of these things where we bring different ideas together, different sides of the table, et cetera. So you heard, I got started in the private sector. But in understanding my private sector role, when we looked at AOL, was it a business? It was. But its primary mission really was to democratize access to ideas and information and communications. And it was really, at the end of the day, a community business. And I think from that perch, we looked across, we were here in Washington, and we looked across society, and we did see sort of a divide between business, government, and nonprofits. And I think we became very animated with the idea of what it might look like if all those oars could be kind of rowing together, each taking advantage of their own strengths, but really in more of a collaborative, big bet vision kind of way as we deal with the daunting challenges. So following that article, the following year, we did some important work around sort of what we call citizens at the center, or citizen engagement in solving problems. That then went on to lead to a summon on innovation that we did working with the White House. And the whole point ties in very closely with some of the themes we're going to see coming out of this conference. When I came from the private sector into what we call the social sector, I looked around the table as we were devising ideas and plans, and too often didn't see the very people we were trying to serve, didn't see them at the table, didn't hear their voice in the mix, and yet they were the ones living the problems or the challenges. And so I think that really struck us, and this really is what inspired this work around citizen-centered approaches. And so we did this summon on innovation with the White House. The President wrote a presidential order compelling the agencies to engage citizens as they looked at the challenges that they were trying to address. Out of that came something some of you may know today called Challenge.gov, where at any given time there are hundreds of challenges that are put out across the nation from the agencies saying, you know what, chances are the smartest people in the world aren't in our room where we're devising these things. And chances are citizens know these problems better than we do sitting under fluorescent lights, either at a non-profit or at the government. And so Challenge.gov throws challenges out there. We've had some really great stories around citizen engagements that have just led to amazing innovations. So I have to say it is stunning in a conference on the next social contract to hear you say, so our innovation was to encourage government to talk to citizens about solving their problems, right? If there's supposed to be a social contract. Right, exactly. It should start with that, right? It should start with that. That tells you something really fundamental about how the policy ecosystem is apart from the people you want to serve. So government, if there is a solution, government can scale it. You said government can engage citizens in developing solutions. Can government itself innovate? Is there a... Yes, no question. They can and they have. Again, going back to my sort of chops in the private sector, we have the internet because of the government, right? We have so many things, so much in aerospace. We owe to the good work of DARPA and others. This kind of innovation continues today. But I must tell you, we just heard a long talk about policy and the role of policy. And I think the work that we've been engaged in around policy and looked at how do we sort of drive solutions forward, we think of policy as an empowering framework and encouragement. And too often, if you begin the conversation by saying it's rules and regulations, you've kind of, you know, you've lost half your audience to a certain extent. Because our work, particularly in trying to drive innovation and these innovations focused on key daunting challenges out in our communities, we've used policy as an important tool as to how we build and encourage the right actions in communities. And so I think too often when citizens, when organizations think about policy, they think this, right? They think it's very limiting. It's telling me what I have to... More importantly, what I can't do. And we're saying, hey, don't look at it that way. It is a powerful tool. If you can find certain ways to leverage the strength and what government is best at to enable good things to happen. Thank you. And that is, I think, one of the things a new social contract has to do or the next social contract has to do is to move past a vision of public problem solving only as law and regulation. Absolutely. As you say, as an empowering framework. The Case Foundation does a lot of work around the country. So you are way... And around the world. And around the world. Yes. Right? Talk about some of the places you see the sectors working together and innovating. Some of the bright spots that you have identified and are amplifying. Sure. Well, you know, there's this new movement. Some of you might be quite familiar with called Impact Investing. And really the whole idea is a new class of entrepreneurs and a new generation of companies coming forward that are specifically focused on social impacts in the core businesses that they do. Well, going back to policy being empowering, the GA put a task force together on Impact Investing and I had the privilege of serving on the US advisory board to that task force that was global. And there, what we simply did was looked at policy opportunities that could help this sort of growing trend of companies who at the end of the day are focused on ESG, good treatment of workers, you know, addressing things like education, transportation, energy. We could go right down the list of really significant sectors that affect how we live every day, our quality of life, and bring benefit to citizens. So we put together a number of different policy recommendations that we announced at the White House less than two years ago. And when we kind of put them together, they were very aspirational. It's like, wow, if we could get to this place, maybe things could really begin to change here. So, you know, I tend to be maybe too optimistic in most cases and I thought three to five years we'd be like so happy if we could get these underway. But what's happened is inside of 18 months, those policy changes have been enacted and I'll give you one example in pension funds who are huge sources of capital, okay, for new innovation and for new companies, etc. They were not even able to consider impacts when they made their investments. Now, consider that many pension companies would love to align everything they have with the benefit of their pensioners or the communities that they serve, but they were specifically restricted by policy to do that. So now you've got two funds you could invest in. They both are showing promise. You can't even consider if this one might benefit your class more. So that policy got changed in the fall. I was with the Secretary of Labor in New York and he announced that and we expect some really dramatic changes to come forward. New capital going to these kind of companies that can benefit society. And so I have to use that moment for a commercial break for Bretton Woods to a new America program that is that that policy change enables, so it's a, to Michael Tillerman leads it and it's an effort to get the major asset managers around the world to commit up to one percent of their investments in the social sector, in impact investing in development finance and civil society finance, and that change has been essential to make that something they can do and consumers or investors, I should say, can then look at that. So it is a great example, in that case, of a small regulatory change which many people in this room know how important to find, you know, to get down to that little lever, and all that comes open. So in terms of specific social impact investments, or maybe let me bring you more to the United States, are there specific cities that you see or are regions that are doing particularly in America? So, you know, talking about this crossover between nonprofits, and I would, you know, add philanthropy, government and business, you know, it's very exciting for some of the cities who've truly hit the wall. So we could talk about Detroit, for instance. What's happening in Detroit is a strategic plan that was put together by that combination of sectors around a table, together along with citizens, okay? And as you see the new Detroit play out, it's really coming from a shared collaborative vision of what the new Detroit needs to be. And, you know, I, in fact, I'm so impressed by it because a few years ago I took our entire Senior Case Foundation team and we did a delegation to Detroit. Now, normally we'd be going to, like, you know, Rwanda or something to look at what's going on there. But in this case, we felt like it's so important to be paying attention to this new model in America today that we really needed to see up close and personal what was going on. And I think a lot of people aren't aware that Detroit is on the move. You know, and Detroit was once a really great city in this nation. It still is, but I mean an extraordinary city. In the 50s, if you were an engineer in America, there was one place you wanted to be and that was Detroit, Michigan. Silicon Valley was mostly a peach orchard at that point, okay? It was a, the car industry was all of that. It was the Silicon Valley of its day. You know, it lost a lot of things that had going for it. There were some really bad policies. Business did, you know, make some bad decisions, etc. And, you know, ultimately the city struggled. But it's been really beautiful to see the collaboration that's trying to bring it back. I love that. And I love the idea of, again, this bottom-up participation. So a collaborative vision. Exactly. Not city hall fixing it, but rather bringing together all the sectors and figuring out a shared vision that people are committed to. Right. So we've talked a little bit about what you just said as you were describing that. You said philanthropy and nonprofits. And I think that is important. We often talk about the civic sector, the social sector. There are lots of different players, right? The philanthropists, the foundations, the advocacy organizations, the research organizations like we are. It's a very diverse sector. And in 2012, so in 2012, you wrote another article in the Stanford Social Innovation. They're not going to be back in their life. But this one, I have to say, hit home for me right now. That's why I wanted to ask you about it. So you essentially apply the startup philosophy to philanthropy and to nonprofits. So the idea of, you know, think big, experiment early and often, iterate, and make and fail your matter. I'm going to come back to that. I think you're going to fail. You're going to learn from your failure. And you argue, you know, this is how we should be thinking in the nonprofit sector, either giving money or taking money. So I have to say, I looked at this and I loved it. But I was reminded of when Secretary Clinton briefly thought about having a reward at the State Department for failure, for the part of the State Department that had failed. And they had the courage, risk-taking. We need all of this. And then somebody sort of said, you remember Senator Proxmire's awards. Let's just imagine how that plays out in the Washington Post. Yes, the Secretary of State is giving an award for who has failed the best with taxpayer money. It doesn't translate. And the foundations who support us who are wonderful don't always think that taking their money and failing with it is not the right thing to do. So I wanted to ask you, how do you, this big, hairy audacious goal, how do you actually change the culture to make that happen? We've obviously been at it for some number of years now. And what Ann Marie is referring to is sort of a campaign that started as a campaign called Be Fearless. And essentially it was calling the social sector to really adopt more of the kind of principles that you see that are present now let me just sort of set the stage for you a little bit. And we have a very diverse audience. I have often said if I'm spending my $100 I can be wild and crazy. I can do whatever I want. I can decide my own risk tolerance or whatever it is. But if you give me your $100 suddenly I'm going to grow really conservative with it. Think about a couple of sectors. Government is somebody else's money. Non-profits, they get grants from organizations. Philanthropies, most of the larger established philanthropies not only have someone else's money they're now managing, but someone else's legacy and reputation. And so I think without meaning to this led to a really, really conservative way of going forward. But when you think about it shouldn't philanthropy be the highest risk capital because we're taking on the highest challenges that exist in the world. But I could also understand at a very human level in government if you take a risk and fail it's called waste, fraud and abuse. No one says that innovative effort didn't really play out. Next thing you know you're going to have hearings. And so I think part of it was true. So part of it is really just coming to terms with the fact that guess what? Innovation does not happen without risk taking. I wrote another blog just two weeks ago that said how to de-risk risk. And essentially if you think about risk as R&D trying new things, piloting, well guess what? In those realms you actually don't expect that you're going to hit a lot of them out of the park. What you're really trying to do is try new things on the hope that maybe one scores. And I think if we could just flip the mindset a little bit that no matter what the institution is or the sector they're in if they're trying to innovate they're going to have to take risks let's call it R&D. And if they're taking risks there is a chance they may fail you have to grow comfortable with that and not sort of beat them over the head when it happens. But the more important thing is we say fail fast and fail forward. And the idea of that is move on and make sure you and hopefully people who come with entrepreneurs all the time it's a big part of our investment both personally and at the foundation. It's actually not something you hang your head over if you're on your fourth startup because the first three failed. I'm more inclined to invest in an entrepreneur who's on his fourth than I am the one that's out there on their first. Why? Because I think failure has taught them a lot and they're better off for it. And so it's just a well understood kind of way of thinking and it's a little bit more foreign and established sectors. And so as you were talking I was thinking this is my parenting philosophy which is not oh please go out and fail but it is definitely of course you're going to fail that's not the issue. The fact that you failed meant that you tried and what is often hardest actually is getting your kids to try and it's because they're so afraid to fail. So I want to push you a little further on that. Does that mean then greater support for unrestricted spending? So one of the things that's happened of course is that that conservatism means you want to be very clear what you're investing in. You want metrics. You want to be very clear about what the deliverables are all of that which I fully understand. But it means there's no room to try something in your face. There has to be a certain amount of unrestricted funding. And for every organization and I spend a lot of time with boards and we spend a lot of time almost teaching if you will some of the be fearless approaches what that really means is you have to understand your own risk tolerance and so for some organizations they're so far over on the conservative have to have the data have to have every T crossed I dotted could you try one thing could you dedicate one percent of your budget and we say we have a love-hate relationship with data. We love data just like anybody else and nothing is better than having confidence because you've looked at data and you know where to go. But that's not innovation. If you have the data that's not innovation. Innovation is when you don't actually know what's going to happen because you're trying something new and in that case we say we are the data. We will become the data through what we do. And so when you look at how to sort of take these principles and apply them to a budget or to an organizational approach you can say well some percentage is the sure thing where we have the data and you know there's enough research to tell us we're on the right track a small percentage in every organization has to decide what that looks like you know for their own sort of risk tolerance level should really be we are in pilot mode here we are in D mode here we don't have data to guide us and there's a Kumbaya moment where we know that and no one gets fired when it doesn't work or you know what I'm saying and I think those are really healthy conversations that we've really been trying to have with our sector and I can tell you in the four years that we've been at this and we've had a beautiful collaborative that's come alongside it's quite striking to see what's happened in philanthropy because of it. It's meaning that different foundations are coming together. No question we talk openly now about innovative approaches and being intentional in trying new things and taking risks. So shift gears for a moment and think about one way of thinking about the work you've done and other foundations are doing is they're finding lots of examples of stuff that is great. Yes. And we you know we now really over my lifetime you've had this explosion of NGOs you know anybody you know their roommate could create an NGO of smaller ones of civic enterprise civic entrepreneurs on the ground the problem with that then is how do they scale and that's something you've thought about a lot of us have thought about and one approach that I find particularly exciting in various ways and I just was reading Sally Osberg and Roger Martin's book on social enterprise called beyond better and talking about scale as building networks. One organization that becomes enormous you find a bunch of organizations and you link them together as a network. So I wanted to ask you about that and specifically what does it take to make the network go in other words if you're going to actually assume there are a bunch of different organizations they're all doing social impact work of some kind or other. I'm going to link them together but how do you make that an actual ongoing concern rather than just a dead database. Yeah so I think again you know organizations, institutions have to embrace it as an approach meaning they're checking themselves as they take something on what is our network effect going to be and who do we need to partner with you know partnerships and particularly in the nonprofit world have been harder to come by because there's this sense that we're all fighting for the same dollar but I do, I feel better in recent years that there's an awakening to the fact that we can be stronger together even if we don't have 100% of the pie at the Case Foundation our approach is absolutely cross sector. So for every major initiative we undertake we must have a private sector partner a public sector partner in the nonprofit and we have just seen the power of this kind of network effect in driving big change and you know you talked before I reference the government you know can really do some remarkable things at scale so you know you just have to kind of figure out what are the areas of expertise or sort of assets that aren't represented by your own organization if you're really after something and then who do you need to put around the table that's kind of obvious and I will give you an example of this so the National Geographic Society is 128 years old but when the then new media was coming along which at that time was cable they were quite concerned about getting disrupted by cable now they were a venerable institution they were doing quite well thank you very much they had this magazine but they saw where the world was going and they knew they had to adapt and so they joined Venture with Fox 18 years ago to deliver the National Geographic Channel and in those 18 years that has represented the lion's share of funding that funds all the cool stuff we love about science exploration and education I would not I really have to tell you I'm just not sure is like I tend to think of myself as a little out of the box but I wouldn't have guessed that a non-profit could align with a major company to basically further its mission extend its reach and sustain its business model and that's what it did so we call that reach beyond your bubble and our be fearless work and that means who's not at the table who don't you know who can really do some of those things I just talked about for you and what you're trying to do and it's powerful have you found you have to fund what I call partnership brokers I see you can create a partnership but it won't last unless somebody is there constantly you know you have to nurture these things it's business development I mean it's partner management no question but you actually have to pay people to do that in other words that that's a role that we need to create I can tell you the case foundation part of what our people are paid for is to nurture those relationships those networks and in some cases just even help others ideate around what networks could benefit them so yes I do believe you have to have dedicated resources that are about supporting the network and partners but again if you put your business lens on it's a no brainer that you do that every day you would never have like a network of partners and not have someone tagged with that's your job is to make sure that's successful so it's really just adapting some things that we see in other sectors that are almost secret sauce items and bringing them over to the social sector that's interesting it is obvious when you say it in the private sector but I will just say you know again from the point of view of non-profit where you have programs and everybody has their dedicated role it's hard to realize wait a minute we need people whose job it is to put things together and similarly the citizen thing because again from business I had a stint in consumer marketing and you just would never build a product or a service without hearing from your prospective customers but to do that it takes intention and it takes work and it takes someone managing that so if you're going to bring citizens into the work that you're engaged in someone's got to be responsible for what does that look like and what are they saying and have we checked with them lately? So let me ask you a final question because we're getting flashed at so just think big and optimistically for a minute and talk about how you could envisage a a system or a society where we are providing basic services for citizens where we have innovation participation with all those sectors how do you see that ecosystem if you could wave a wand and imagine a different model of citizens getting what they need and a role for government and the private sector? Yeah so this month we're going to host something called MCON here in Washington it's a six year old conference made up just of millennials and we've been funding one of the largest study each year of millennials around social good and how they see sort of the world and addressing social challenges and so it'll be you know a few days here in DC we'll have about 600 with us and we'll have 50,000 engage with us online it started as a virtual conference and so almost any subject I'm coming anywhere to talk about I will say it's nice we're all gathered here it's nice we all have these ideas but in some ways I feel like we could get out of the way because this next generation they just I'm telling you all the silos all the baggage all the limitations and reasons why not that we have they don't see okay I spent a lot of time with this generation teaching in universities at Case Foundation and all the work that I do and I think they envision a very different world the structures don't work for us anymore you know we grew up in a world where there was like business government and that social stuff that's not how they see it they really don't they don't want to even be restricted to thinking about sectors as we look at business structures today it's quite possible that everything we know you know will be upended in the generations I hope that's the case because there is a better way to care for our citizenry to make sure that the things we're doing benefit society you know in impact investing I've said that my vision is when there's no qualifier on impact because all investing will think about values and how people are served by it so I'm actually really encouraged because of the time I spend with the next generation and I think that they have the ideas we should be listening to that's a perfect note on which to end join me in thanking Gene Case that's perfect