Acknowledgments

This book owes its genesis to the wisdom that has been shared with me by too many people to properly list them all here. In every place I have ever worked, whether not-for-profit, government, or business, some part of our time was spent imagining and trying to make real a better world. And in each place I’ve been gifted with the wisdom and experience of all of my colleagues. If I have worked with you, next to you, or even against you (think Dick Cheney), thanks.

I could not have written this book without the truly amazing support of the David and Lucille Packard Foundation and the staff in all the different programs there that were interested in innovation and how to bring more of it into their work. Audrey Chang, Chris DeCardy, Alexia Kelly, Carol Larson, Kai Lee, Jamaica Maxwell, and Diana Scearce were my most regular partners in discussion and sources of insight into how philanthropy and lean startups might start to come together. Walt Reid, director of the Conservation and Science Program, gave me the backbone and the support to bring all that I could to the table in service of this book.

The Movement Strategy Center in downtown Oakland housed me as I wrote, but also spiritually grounded me through its commitment to doing right and making a big difference. Thanks particularly to Philliph Drummond, Taj James, and Lisa McCalla. (And Taj is an encyclopedia of change models.) My editor/publisher at Berrett-Koehler, Steve Piersanti, was on me for years to put more of my words in writing, and he was then patient and strong for the process. Andre Carothers coached me through some big doldrums with great care and thoughtfulness.

Steve Blank really started it all for me, first with his first book Four Steps to the Epiphany, and then with his mentorship in my first company and in the finishing of this book. Eric Ries has been a huge role model about how to elegantly prod practitioners, how to make it simple and popular, and how to keep values at the heart of the business of promoting the lean startup. Leah Neaderthal and Leanne Pittsford have been at the forefront of customer development for lean in the social sector, and I owe them a debt for the meetings and the networks that they have assembled over the last couple of years. Christie George, Colin Mutchler, and Rachel Weidinger are real blackbelts out there pushing the boundaries of lean in the social sector, and Amanda Berger, Ludovic Blain, Vivian Chang, David Hodgson, Mimi Ho, and Meena Palaniappan are just some of the people who helped me workshop the concepts and gave me early and helpful feedback.

I can’t possibly list all the people in government, grassroots advocacy, academia, the faith world, policy wonk-dom, and business who helped shape this material. Some of my most influential business colleagues were Katherine Brittain, Scott Cook, Gary Dillabaugh, Paul Dixon, John Donohoe, Brian Dooley, Tony Fadell, Chris Farinacci (the da Vinci of marketing), Stephanie Hess, Joanna Hoffman, Mike Johnson, Joe Krasko, Olivier Marie, Brett Newbold, Ray Picard, Ruth Protpakorn, Alain Rossmann, Skip Rudolph, Rupesh Shah, Jonathan Skelding, and Joe Teng. Academic mentors and colleagues who never seem to stop innovating include Bunyan Bryant, Bob Bullard, Carmen Concepcion, Michael Dorsey, Pier Gabrielle Foreman, Ruth Gilmore, Jackie Goldsby, John Holdren, Dan Kammen, Dick Norgaard, Dara O’Rourke, Julie Tse, and Beverly Wright. The spiritual teachers who taught me about the inner pivots that keep us all going include Thich Nhat Han, J. Alfred Smith, and Barbara Brown Taylor.

Watching and working with some of the greats in government and politics taught me how much I didn’t know about power and its role in shaping the world. Thanks there to Gale Brewer, Shirley Chisholm, Jack Clough, John Dingell, David Dinkins, Mike Finnegan, Dick Frandsen, Patrick Gaspard, Bill Lynch, Ruth Messenger, Basil Patterson, Victor Quintana, Charlie Rangel, Percy Sutton, and Mike Woo.

I have served the Natural Resources Defense Council and CERES as a board member for, cumulatively, over thirty years, but I’ve been the one learning every step of the way. The extraordinary leadership and staff of these organizations and others I’ve had the privilege to advise or serve coached me, inspired me, and showed me new ways to get past the dead ends. For that I thank particularly Adam Albright, Frances Beinecke, Paige Brown, Maggie Fox, Peter Goldmark, Michael Green, Paul Hawken, Andrew Hoerner, Rampa Hormel, Michael Klein, Mindy Lubber, and Ansje Miller, but after them the list gets super-long!

The most intense startup I’ve ever been part of is the environmental justice movement and its global counterpart, the climate justice movement. It’s the place where I learned that, when all else fails, even “the stones will cry out.” Some of my teachers there include Dana Alston, Ben Chavis, Luke Cole, Cecil Corbin-Mark, Jihan Gearon, Tom Goldtooth, Richard Moore, Peggy Shepard, and Damu Smith, but there are far too many others to name here. First among my teachers across all domains, though, have been the frontline communities I’ve had the privilege to serve: Williamsburg, the South Bronx, and Harlem in New York; Camden and Newark, New Jersey; Vieques, Puerto Rico; the Sac and Fox Nation and Akwesasne; and so many others. I owe them the lived experience of their innovations for the most basic rights, for their survival, and for their dignity and grace.

My friends’ unwavering support and excitement for this project has been revitalizing on every day I was tired or juggling too much: Amanda Berger, Brad Edmondson, David Ellington, Maurice Emsellem, Shiela Hingorani, Rhodessa Jones, Adam and Dorothy Kahane, Miles, Jay Ou, and Nora Pauwels.

For motivating me every day to value her fully, to accept her gifts and her perfection, thanks to our Mother Earth, her trees and mountains, smells and tastes, and animal and vegetable partners in the whole of creation.

I was raised with an ethos of “innovate or die.” Another book or two would be necessary to tell about that, but it was always tempered with love within our family, love for each other, and, sometimes even more, love for our community and for making the world a better place. This was a feeling that came from every side and down from on high. Thanks to my grandparents, Norbert and Hela Gelobter and Muriel and Herbert Warren, and to my super-activist parents, Barbara and Ludwig. I’m so glad I have my siblings, David and Lisa and Valerie, to trade notes with and love how, even though we do very different things, they roll like committed and conscientious entrepreneurs wherever they work.

The best for last: three teenagers I lived with while I wrote this book showed me the miracle of invention, of starting up every day. Nathan, Marco, and Troy—you have polished and perfected me, opened me. Thank you for my life.