Stay Informed!

By Sean Luechtefeld on 02/08/2010 @ 09:15 AM

Tags: Innovation, Innovators, Events

February is flying by and it’s already been a week since we launched our blog series!

Today we feature the next in our series of Top Takeaways from the 2009 Innovation Summit. Today’s remarks come from Ed Khashadourian of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles. Ed’s innovation, Hybrid Individual Development Accounts (IDAs), involves rethinking and redesigning matched savings accounts to improve participation and saving rates in programs. His top takeaways from the Summit are:

1. The Summit provided a lively, interactive and motivating environment for the innovators. It reenergized me to pursue my innovation until completion and adoption by asset-building practitioners. The presenters were very good and their comments were thought-provoking. I left the Summit ruminating on a comment that one of the presenters quoted in his speech: “the only thing that is given in an innovation is your vision.” The more I thought about this, the more confident I became in the idea that if I stick to my vision, there will be many more opportunities to explore until I can finally be successful in completing my Hybrid IDA work. Perhaps this is the natural process of perfecting any idea—with every iteration, the overall vision of the innovator becomes more refined.

2. In terms of the flow of the day, I felt the activities were well-balanced and suited the purpose of the Summit. However, my elevator speech did not prove to be very effective as visitors were interested in learning more about the details of the innovation. With people visiting the station at different times, the process of repeating the speech on the one hand while responding to questions by others was challenging.

3. I received interesting comments from visitors, including one regarding the possible impact of the proposed financial regulations on the ability of nonprofits to offer flexible matches on savings. Most of the visitors at my station represented nonprofits. A few representatives from policy and research organizations were also among them. I also had one visit from a foundation, but did not have anyone from the banking sector. I hoped to have better access to foundations and financial institutions at the Summit.

Thank you, Ed, for your helpful input! We hope that your comments and those of the other innovators we’ve featured are helpful to those who weren’t able to make it to the Summit.

We want to hear from you! What do you think of the new blog series? What would you like to see posted in this space? Use the comments feature and let us know how we can improve the innovation@cfed blog!

Comments

Leave a Comment

Email*

First Name*

Last Name

Title

Comment*

Formatting Help

You Type	You See
*italics*	italics
**bold**	bold
[ask google](http://google.com)	ask google
+ item 1 + item 2 + item 3	item 1 item 2 item 3
> a really cool quote from a nice person	a really cool quote from a nice person

Comment

* Required information

Preview