One of the biggest challenges social entrepreneurs face is securing funding to set up their organizations and realize their ideas. Especially in the early days, it can be nearly impossible to pay the rent, give employees a decent salary, and hire the external help you need.

Companies seeking to create scalable social businesses need a measurement system that monitors their progress in delivering social benefits and economic value. Only by tracking both the social and business results and how they're connected can firms hope to have a large-scale social impact.

I was skeptical of the idea being pitched to my team. Two decades in philanthropy, including eight years at The Gates Foundation and six at Google Giving, had shown me the power of development done well. Living in India, I saw firsthand how an HIV prevention program could literally save millions of lives.

What was your favorite TED talk this year? I found both Amanda Palmer's and Nilofer's spectacular. Yet, this year, TED made me wonder about Great Ideas, and our relationship with them. And I began to ask myself: even if we enjoy a great TED talk, should the rise of "TED thinking" concern us just a tiny bit?

In the Fall of 2012, shortly before the most well-known creativity index in Germany was about to be published (Manager Magazine Kreativ Index), two leading advertising agencies in Germany, Jung von Matt and Scholz & Friends, announced that they would not participate in any creative or advertising award competitions in 2013.

It's happening right now.

Thousands of very lucky individuals are seated in the Long Beach Performing Arts Center are atTED 2013.

Jamming has become a popular way to unearth innovations — bringing together people of many different backgrounds to creatively brainstorm around a company's competitive challenges, expressed as "problem statements." Yet although the process is widely hyped, many companies struggle to make them work.

How does he find time to meet with 10 customers a week and make his yearly quota in the first quarter?, a salesman wonders about his top producing coworker. I can barely find time to have five appointments a week and get all my paperwork done correctly and turned in on time.

I could not be a bigger proponent of technology. My career has been built mostly around the Internet. My day job as a venture capitalist focuses on innovations in digital media and big data, and new models of business information and community connectivity. Personally, I am virtually "always on" — usually responding to emails if not instantly then within minutes, while in parallel scanning some document or talking a call. I have a Blackberry for production, and a Samsung Galaxy and an iPad for consumption.

I find myself, probably like many of you, spending way too much time in front of my computer. When I do face-to-face meetings, my colleagues and I typically met around some conference table, sometimes at an airport lounge (nothing like getting the most out of a long layover), and quite often at coffee shops (hello Starbucks!). But that means that the most common denominator across all these locations wasn't the desk, or, the keyboard, or even the coffee. The common denominator in the modern workday is our, um, tush.