These topics are organized as laid out in this blog post
Legal Structures - Innovations in structuring organizations using existing legal constructs and legislating new ones. Like b-corps, l3c’s, non-profit/for profit hybrids (like Mozilla), flexible purpose corporations, cooperatives (‘t-corps‘) and more. Plus ZNP ideas like the 'pay it forward' corporation.
Culture - Right now HR is often just a department that deals with ‘people stuff’. This topic is an expansion of HR – to all aspects of how companies function internally, including big ideas like workplace democracy, purpose-driven culture. But it will also compile many small tactics to help people relate to their work more positively, like ending meetings with 'thanks', more holistic reviews, transparency in compensation, etc.
Governance – At the intersection of the two above is how the day-to-day and the culture interact with the big legal structures. How do we get maximum accountability and balance of power? How can we scale culture, turning informal innovations in to flexible institutional practices? Topics include supervotes towards a purpose, kamikaze clauses, planned sunsetting, size limits, voting trusts and contracted relationships that serve a mission. And what language can you put in corporate charters and other governing documents that have real effects on the day-to-day.
Financing – If you are starting a company there is an overabundance of resources on the internet and beyond on how to raise Venture Capital. But VC is actually a very small portion of capital available. This will catalog practices in other ways to get sufficient capital to start new enterprises, like customer-funded ‘kickstarters’, family and friends, family foundations, PRI‘s, government grants (like SBIR‘s in the US), flexible foundations (like Omidyar Network) and the new JOBS Act-enabled equity crowd-funding (like Wefunder).
Society – Our new structures will not exist in isolation, and indeed will likely be more interdependent than our current institutions. This topic is concerned with how we collectively build the movement to bring about this more positive vector of progress. What meta-institutions will help work towards our goals. Two ideas are ‘badges’, for organizations to communicate their values, and ‘guilds’, as cross-organization career development organizations. B-Labs and Muhummad Yunus's Social Business work are two leaders in this area.
'Branding' - Or 'semantics'. How do we present our research in ways it can be understood, and easy to spread? How do we talk about it and position it, what names do we put on things? How does that fit in to the current global dialog? This topic will examine the words we use to talk about the concepts we care about. Profit, capital, corporation, purpose, etc. Do we try to 'reclaim' terms, or bring new ones in to play?