Women create own Radical change
The 3-D toy fits like this. But it can also give you fits.
How one responds to the verbal instructions, whilst blindfolded, is a calculated lesson in empathy.
That’s the keyword for Ilana BenAri, who invented the gewgaw, originally her thesis project as an industrial design student at Carleton University, and intended for the visually impaired so they could play with the sighted. But Ben-Ari envisioned something much bigger.
She’s in her third year as basically one-woman do-all for 21 Toys, the Toronto company she launched on her own dime as neophyte entrepreneur. And it’s been successful — the award-winning plaything is now being used by 1,000 schools in 43 countries.
“We design and manufacture toys that teach empathy, failure and other key 21st century skills,” BenAri explains. “It’s more about the bigger question which is, how do we prepare our students and our workplaces for the 21st century? Empathy is one of the many social socials needed in order to be collaborative and innovative. So when we talk about teaching, it’s a combination of getting people acclimatized to the idea of using toys to teach these skills.
“But the larger issue is we need to encourage teachers to be facilitators in helping students understand the importance of empathy, not just in their social interactions with others but as it relates to them being better at engineering, being better at business, being better at design.”
Ben-Ari laughs, well aware that she’d just spewed a slew of eyerolling buzzwords. “I’m always practising our messaging,” she admits. “It’s such a weird thing that we’re doing. Essentially the training has more to do with the shift in culture of both schools and organization. People think toys are going to be a fluffy doll and a box of Kleenex.
“No, for us it’s about giving you a substantial tool where you can play with this toy — it takes five to 15 minutes (to put it together) — and you get an amazing understanding of how you personally deal with frustration, patience and creatively communicating with another person.”
The toy has been accepted in MBA programs, by businesses — including FedEx and Deloitte, a recent workshop at Scotiabank — which use it when interviewing for new hires and for training purposes.
Ben-Ari’s product was recently selected as one of the five beneficiaries of an equally innovating funding initiative for women-led companies called Radical Generosity, the brainchild of Vicki Saunders, founder of SheEO. Saunders’ scheme is almost ridiculously simple: paying it forward.
A network of 500 women across Canada — from Saunders’ 12-yearold niece to a lady in her 90s — each contributed $1,000. That $500,000 pool is split five-ways in no-interest five-year loans. All the donors were invited to participate in the online vote, from among the 29 shortlisted out of 236 applicants. Winning submissions run the gamut from Ben-Air’s toy, to a reusable beeswax food wrap, to a company that creates mobile apps aimed at people with autism.
“Our goal is to create a new funding support mechanism that brings women together to support the next generation of women to come along,” explains Saunders. “The existing models haven’t worked well for the past 10 years.”
Saunders, an entrepreneur who took two tech companies public, rattles off dismaying statistics: 99.8 per cent of the economy is made up of small and medium-sized businesses, just 0.2 per cent are “the kinds of companies that venture capital would support”; only 7 per cent of venture capital is received by female entrepreneurs.
“It’s not a sexy return. Five to eight per cent is not something that people get all excited about. But for us, five to eight per cent is pretty amazing. I think women have a different risk profile. When we had the economic crash in 2013, we found $13 trillion in three weeks to bail out the banks. That’s equivalent to 600 years on the planet without poverty. It’s kind of a crazy world we live in right now.” More crazy: “When we look at how we need to grow our economy, we rarely focus on how do we grow small and medium-sized businesses which are the majority. We focus on where we can find a unicorn. So the current narrative is everybody’s out there chasing unicorns. I looked at that and said, this huge pool of capital is going after the home run. In venture capital, one out of 10 is a success.”
Saunders is hoping to change that landscape, via Radical Generosity, which two weeks ago dispersed its first pot of money. The only two parameters for applicants: “You can’t give it all to one because we know winner-takes-all doesn’t work. But you can’t divide it up evenly either because this isn’t socialism.”
Small to less small, a workforce of one or two to maybe 10, maybe 20, using funds that make an impactful difference. “If you want to go and disrupt the universe, good on you, but that rarely happens,” notes Saunders. “And if you’re sitting there with a hundred million dollars on the table” — which is what she hopes the Radical Generosity kitty might one day reach — “you don’t just bet it all on red. But that’s what the world seems to do these days. It’s like a giant casino.”
The initiative is already expanding — Radical Generosity is expanding to Los Angeles and has just received the green light for Mumbai — with more women going on the website to pay it forward for the next round. A thousand contributors is the immediate objective, sponsored by BMO (covering the administration costs to get the endeavour off the ground). All donations go directly to the companies with Saunders taking her profit by licensing the model globally.
This is a good point in history to invest in female-led businesses, notes Saunders. “There’s a kind of perfect storm going on right now. The largest wealth transfer in history, ever, is happening right now and women are going to inherit 75 per cent of that wealth. We make 80 per cent of purchasing decisions so we’ve got buying power. Women are starting businesses at almost oneand-a-half times the pace of men, so we’ve got a pipeline of businesses.”
There’s also a built-in networking component to Radical Generosity — women with a vested interest in seeing the companies succeed.
For Ben-Ari, the windfall means money to stabilize her manufacturing operations and putting two contractors on the payroll.
“Before, every time I went to manufacturing I basically had to empty our entire bank account and then cross my fingers.” Women helping women. What a concept. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.