The Digital Economist

The Hero's Journey 

Navroop Sahdev launched The Digital Economist, a global impact platform, at Davos 2020 to build, drive and accelerate the movement toward a human-centered digital economy, galvanizing a global network of over 300 impact leaders.

She is also a Connection Science fellow at MIT Media Lab. She has co-authored Hyperledger Blockchain for Business online course, which has reached over 160,000 entrepreneurs so far globally. Media Shower named her as one of the Top Blockchain Influencers, 2018. She is also the co-author of the 2019 book, “Blockchain Economics: Implications of Distributed Ledgers.” Navroop is frequently interviewed by Forbes as a subject matter expert on the economics of emerging tech. An economist by training, she holds three masters in IP Management, Economics of Innovation and Applied Economics. She wrote her thesis at Harvard Kennedy School of Government and started her career working at UNEP, Geneva. 

Capitalism at Odds with Human Outcomes

Economic bailouts and bond buying in response to the triple crisis facing the world is estimated at $10 trillion dollars, one-eight of the global GDP. It underlines the symptoms of an economic system that is out of tune with the natural world. Resources upwards of $1 trillion are depleted annually. The financial sector and digital technologies which are disconnected with the natural world are in fact vastly dependent on it. It's time to recognize these interdependencies and get past collective blindness to build a human-centered economy where the ‘digital’ protects, preserves and strengthens the planetary ecosystem rather than destroy it. "Our resources are limited but we keep creating more money." - Navroop Sahdev, in Rebooting The Global Economy After Coronavirus: Physical Scarcity To Digital Abundance, Forbes.

Elevating Humanity

Through our programs, we are nurturing heros and facilitating their own hero’s journey.

There is an accessibility gap in purpose-driven entrepreneurship.

Accessibility gap encompasses geography, gender, environment, capital availability, tools and most importantly, the mindset. These are mutually interdependent factors that help build the full picture required to drive innovation. 

Launched in conjunction with the World Economic Forum in Davos, TDE aims to bridge this accessibility gap through its Product, Service and Knowledge platform (PSK) offering.

Bridging the Gap

TDE is building a digital product to bridge this accessibility gap in purpose-driven entrepreneurship and an innovative service platform geared towards existing stakeholders. The organization also operates programs to support collaboration among internal and external stakeholders. Through the Entrepreneur In Training program, TDE is training young global leaders with tools, frameworks, approaches and expertise to be purpose-driven entrepreneurs. 

Engage | Innovate | Transform

The EIT Program stands for our approach to global impact: Engage Innovate Transform. The program is focused towards early stage professionals, recent graduates and students who are looking for practical training in building digital-first businesses. With a focus on social entrepreneurship, leveraging cutting edge technologies and economics training, the 12-24 weeks program provides an unparalleled opportunity to work alongside global leaders in financial technology, emerging technologies and technology investing. Over the 20-day application period, we received over 400 applications from all over the world for our first cohort of EITs. Out of the 60 shortlisted candidates, the final 12 EITs selected for the program would equally represent each continent in the world with parity in gender.

#DiverseByDesign

Communities Served 

Through its digital product offering, The Digital Economist is most directly looking to improve the lives of the first time entrepreneurs from underrepresented communities, and most directly women from underserved communities - who face layers of accessibility gaps, particularly in the developing world. 

Channels

The Digital Economist 5 pillars are sustainability, equity, transparency, decentralization and radical collaboration. By plugging directly into communities of our partner organizations, our collective impact model continues to scale rapidly. 

For example, Navroop Sahdev is an ambassador of GirlsxTech, a non-profit organization working towards closing the gender gap in technology in India.

Direct engagement 

By including our end users directly into our product design (empathy and ideation) sessions, we ensure the needs of the communities we serve are being understood and met. 

The Digital Economist would onboard its first cohort of 12 Entrepreneurs In Training in Q3 2020 who equally represent each continent in the world with parity in gender.

The mission of TDE covers all dimensions of the Elevate Prize as, when it comes to long-standing sticky global problems, all dimensions need to be covered simultaneously. 

With enormous overlap with The Elevate Prize Foundation, TDE's mission is to elevate humanity through understanding and in effect, building better socio-economic systems. 

So who is a Digital Economist? 

'Economy' comes from the Greek word 'oikonomia' or 'household management' - our planetary household. 'Digital' represents augmented human capabilities through technology. The Digital Economist combines imaginative use of technology and the mastery of tools to become a steward of the planetary global economy.

Genesis

I have been deeply involved in the emerging technologies space over the past 5 years. Early on, I started thinking about the economic implications of underlying technological infrastructures. I focused attention on structures that don't merely extract value, but allow co-creation and sharing of value. From an economics perspective, the network users of "platforms"  contributing value to it don't necessarily get a share of the collective value. It became clear to me that it’s not just about one technology, but in fact, the convergence of technologies and what they can do together - that’s a game changer. And that’s the inspiration for The Digital Economist. 

"Our mission is to be a driver in technological convergence, because technology is an enabler and our collective power to steer it towards human and planetary betterment is the most urgent need of the hour". 

Technological Convergence 

On Jan 23, 2020, The Digital Economist Night in Davos, Switzerland convened over 300 CxOs, entrepreneurs, investors, academics and social impact leaders with a Council of 35 global leaders and 16 partners, led by MIT Connection Science to discuss the impact of emerging technologies and the larger global socio-economic and political systems they are embedded in.

Growing up in India and watching poverty and inequality all around me, I was a motivated child and teenager. 

Considering a gifted artist by friends, family and teachers, my family encouraged me to study art but I chose to pursue Economics because I wanted to elevate humanity directly. The problem we are trying to solve through TDE is my personal story and the story of millions of entrepreneurs - creative individuals who want to do good in the world, protect and preserve our resources and serve communities locally and globally. 

Navroop Sahdev TEDx talk - Want to Innovate? Here's a better place to start

Raised in a Sikh community, the values of charity, fairness, honesty, integrity and service are deeply embedded in my upbringing. In a way, the missions we pursue in our adult lives are an actualization path for what we already knew as kids. Indeed the hero’s journey of expanded consciousness: going through personal hardships, learning key life lessons and bringing them to the world, are passed down to us through cultures, religions, mythologies and histories. And we must take action to bring those gifts to the world in service of humanity. 

The best background, skills and experiences you can help in order to solve a problem is when you have yourself faced that challenge. 

Growing up in a middle class family in India, I faced many restrictions, challenges and gaps in mentorship. Curating my own path was an uphill battle.

It was during my time at Harvard, I realized that I had achieved academic success but, in fact, my passion lied in applying my learning and creativity to solving bigger problems. 

The journey of the hero is that of an ever expanding Self and taking on bigger and bolder challenges. 

At that time, I declined the PhD offers I had and went on to build my first company - a crowdfunding platform on blockchain and wrote the first paper on the topic to bring into focus practitioner challenges to my academic community. 

I went on to live in 8 countries (across 3 continents) and 13 cities, gaining understanding of peoples, cultures, attitudes, mindsets, challenges and languages along the way. I consistently saw the gap when it comes to entrepreneurs - they lacked the resources, support and mentorship on one hand, while systemic issues, status quo, vested interests and fixed mindsets hindered the relentless testing, and trial and error needed for innovation - needed to elevate humanity and address well recognized challenges. Innovation as change that creates a new dimension of performance, but not only. Innovation is a necessary property of the system, the creative destructive which allows the system renews itself. 

I believe in being antifragile.

Antifragility goes beyond resilience. While being resilient means staying the same when subjected to stress, antifragility refers to the property of being strengthened by the stressors. It’s this property of antifragility that allows positive reframing, and converts obstacles into opportunities leading to growth. Creativity (problem solving) and perseverance requires being antifragile. 

Once Covid-19 happened and the world got locked down, TDE’s business model had to be completely reimagined since we could no longer hold our global in person convenings/roundtables to drive the agenda. 

Over the past 6 months, we’ve now morphed into a product, services and program company with a lot more skin in the game and channels to create impact. We are building out the entire ecosystem, truly driving convergence of tech and humanity in a way that elevates the collective human condition. 

My work and The Digital Economist is the physical modality by which I consciously engage, modulate and drive the vision of the world I want to see. The desired outcome of this journey to awaken the hero in all those whose lives we touch. We built our collective impact model by mobilizing around the hero’s journey and we continue nurturing that. 

Mobilizing high impact leaders around the world to serve as stewards of a human-centered global economy through a platform like The Digital Economist is a culmination of learning about the socio-tech-economic structures in the world and the interactions of various stakeholders with it, over the past one decade. With a career spanning academia, corporate, startup, international non-government and venture capital, responsible leadership involves integrity and responsiveness to the state of the world in an engaged way. 

Ultimately, leadership is about how we empower others and facilitate their own hero’s journey. 

Over the course of the past years, whether it’s through open source projects in collaboration with MIT, thought leadership at stages like the World Economic Forum, published research or media articles in journals like Nature and at platforms like Forbes, or building products, services and programs (like The Digital Economist Entrepreneur in Training program) focused on nurturing diverse talent across the world and bridging the accessibility gap in purpose-driven entrepreneurship, my thrust has always been to add value to the community being served.

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PSK Model: Digital first businesses focused on large scale impact need an ecosystem of stakeholders and offerings to cater to a global audience. The Digital Economist is focused on multifaceted impact through a unique three-tier approach: Product, Service and Knowledge platform or the PSK model of innovation. 

Product: Currently under development, the digital product is one of a kind end to end journey for entrepreneurs worldwide since innovation is context and environment specific, and a what works in one part of the world may not work in another part of the world given the differences in socio-economic and technological structures. TDE's ecosystem offers access to top academic institutions, and experts on economics, behavioral sciences and policy. 

Service Platform:The Digital Economist platform is focused on custom stakeholder offerings around key competency areas with a value proposition that extends beyond traditional domains and short time horizons, we believe that the greater risk is not being innovative enough - innovation that’s not just incremental but in fact, based on a sustainable socio-economic baseline. 

Knowledge Platform: TDE's Center of Excellence on Human-centered Digital Economy pools creativity, innovation and intellectual power to build actionable insights, best practices, frameworks and tools for different stakeholders. The driving force is a curated community of Fellows who engage in an ongoing discourse on pivotal ideas and knowledge. The fellowship and EIT programs focus on innovative ways of engaging problem solvers in a distributed and decentralized way across the globe, dramatically accelerating the path and achieving scale.

Long-term Outcome: Building a human-centered digital economy based on 5 pillars: sustainability, equity, transparency, decentralization and radical collaboration. Locally rooted and globally focused.

Immediate Outputs: Steer existing institutions and stakeholders towards purpose-driven and human centered-focused businesses outcomes, metrics, measurements and assessments - while igniting, supporting and facilitating entrepreneurship globally as a way of tackling some of the world’s hardest problems. 

Activities and stakeholders: The PSK model mirrors interventions as in the traditional theory of change, where interventions are directly traced onto outputs and outcomes. 

1. Build a digital product that digitally delivers the tools, mentorship, problem solving ability, global network of mentors and peers to entrepreneurs worldwide and; 

2. Build a service platform focused on existing institutions (corporations, startups, nonprofits, governments and private equity/VC) that delivers advisory on key areas of strategic importance: risk management, responsible leadership, sustainability and policy guidelines. 

Existing channels of change delivery: TDE’s globally distributed team (from Japan to Hawai'i) and organizational structures are build to plug into existing communities and ecosystems through partnerships (18 partner organization and more in the pipeline). With relationships that have existed over years and with an alignment in missions, the strength of these channels continues to grow and thus our ability to rapidly achieve scale. 

Evidence supporting identified channels of activities and interventions: Research and insights from Networks Science (groundbreaking paper - “The Strength of Weak Ties"), Social Physics, Behavioral Sciences, Behavioral Economics, etc. TDE team has expertise in these domains. 

Current community (July 2020): 2500 community members including 300 CxOs and impact leaders we hosted at the World Economic Forum in Davos 2020 during the launch event, 35 council members of The Digital Economist, 15 Entrepreneurs In Training (3 current and 12 upcoming in Q3 2020), 10 team members, 18 partner organizations (including MIT Connection Science, University College London Centre for Blockchain Technologies) and their members in turn.

1 year goal (July 2021): Scaling the EIT program to directly train over 100 EITs, grow the core team to 20, double the number of strategic partnerships and tangible engagements and; each a wider community of 1 million through impact campaigns, products, services, programs and thought leadership.   

5 year goal (July 2025): Grow TDE into a globally recognized platform, serving over 50 million people worldwide, with a full time staff of over 100.

IMPACT GOALS: With the EIT program, we would have trained over 100 EITs  with our current scaling plans. We would impact each continent on the planet and foster parity and equity, by design.

HOW WE PLAN TO ACHIEVE THEM: Through our unique PSK offering with targeted product, service and knowledge platforms that are built to scale.  

Within the next one year, The Digital Economist would be a revenue generating company with its PSK model fully operational. 

1. The Product MVP would be complete, either already in production or in testing. 
2. The Service platform would be revenue generating with a pipeline.
3. The Center of Excellence Fellows would continue to be invite only ecosystem based on expertise 
4. The Entrepreneur In Training program can be monetized starting Q4 of 2020. 

In 5 years, we plan to realize the potential of The Digital Economist as a high impact organization in the world. Starting from the philosophy and vision of a human-centered digital economy to actually building the infrastructure to realize this mission, we see ourselves as an inclusive and decentralized body. We are global from the very first day and we are inclusive by design. Key focus towards realizing this mission include:

1. Gender Equity 
2. Access to capital
3. Climate change an
4. Quality education

1. The biggest barrier for female-led organizations is often access to funding, particularly venture capital. Risk capital is key to experiment and innovate with new product, services, business models and impact models. While the landscape is slowly shifting, the biggest potential barriers are the vested interests where the status quo may not shift rapidly enough, as the world needs, in to order to rapidly transition towards a human-centered economy (encompassing sustainability and equity). 
2. Climate change is a ticking time bomb. The current pandemic is a case in point in highlighting the consequences of constantly overstepping planetary boundaries. The consequent risks and challenges would be high on the agenda for both existing organizations and startups. 

3. There are political risks associated with a ambitious agenda where nationalistic governments around the world may make movement of people and capital across boundaries even harder with the current trend of shutting borders and reversing the liberal, US-led model of globalization. This would have major long-term consequences for the global economy, innovation, and more than anything - the human condition. We are championing policy support at TDE through our Center of Excellence policy working group.

Elevating humanity would require long term policy support, including support for entrepreneurs who are looking to take on the hardest challenges in the world. 

Mitigating barriers

1. The motivation to apply for The Elevate Prize is to address the challenge in accessing funding as a female-led, Asian-let and immigrant-led organization. Where only 3-6% of all venture capital reaches female founders despite evidence for much higher ROI (this number is a decimal point when it comes to women of color), philanthropic capital needs to step in to bridge the gap. Patient capital, focused on long term impact can step up and bridge the gap further. 

2. The political risks associated with a beggar-thy-neighbor international policy that some countries might pursue as climate change and destruction of ecosystems rapidly deteriorates the human condition around the world, particularly in the developing world, needs to be urgently mitigated by radical collaboration and action-focused change-making work by all leading institutions around the world. 

3. TDE’s Entrepreneur In Training program captures this philosophy of individual transformation which is at the heart of all global change (captured in Hero’s Journey) as "Engage > Innovate >Transform" (as a reflection of our theory of change). 

Current resources

1. A global network of extraordinary impact leaders, decision makers, technologists, scientists, CxOs and investors that TDE has galvanized, who support the ecosystem. 
2. A world-class brand and credibility of the leadership team that consistently attracts top talent (EIT program is a testimony to that) as well as senior leaders from around the world (through fellowships and Council Members). 
3. 18 partner organizations and counting (including top academic institutions in the world, media partners, industry partners, technology partners and venture capital firms).

The Digital Economist currently partners with 18 organizations around the world that are part of the TDE ecosystem. The ecosystem includes top academic institutions like MIT Connection Science and UCL Center for Blockchain Technologies; influential global think tanks and leadership organizations like Horasis and Global Citizen Forum; industry associations like Global Digital Finance and Alliance 4 Impact; nonprofits like Black Fox Philanthropy, Caspian Week and Dream Tank; services-based organizations like Infinite Sum Modeling, Digital Twin Labs and Astra Group; technology companies like SnapIT Solutions and Flow VR, venture capital firms like Great North Labs and; media companies like Molinari Media, Blocks99 and Transcendent Media Capital. As of this writing, The Digital Economist has currently open and ongoing partnership conversations with top institutions in the world, led the leadership team, and we will continue to onboard more partners. 

The Davos launch in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the World Economic Forum had 16 amongst the 18 partners onboard at the event led by MIT Connection Science, some of them also our sponsoring institutions. 

The founders, CEOs and Presidents of our partner organizations also participate in The Digital Economist ecosystem as Council Members - an impact enablement and amplification body. 

At the same time, each partnership is unique where depending on the offering in discussion, deeper relations exist and thrive to add value to both organizations as well as the larger ecosystem. 

Specifics available upon request.

Product: Early stage seed capital as well as philanthropic capital with a 3-year runway in sight in order to fund the full TDE ecosystem of activities (product, service platform, Center of Excellence and programs). 

Service Platform: Revenue generating platform with a unique service offering to help steer existing stakeholders towards building a human-centered economy by drawing insights from networks science, complexity, social physics and antifragility. Customized stakeholder offering around TDE’s 15 core competencies through a Council of 35 global impact leaders (who are also subject matter experts). Stakeholder categories: corporations, startups, non profits, private equity and private equity/venture capital. 

Programs: Sponsorship and direct application fees. Enterprise solution monetized through project based fee. 

Sponsorships raised for the Davos launch. Amounts not disclosed due to confidentiality agreements.

Specifics available upon request.

Financials available upon request.

Partnerships are key to amplifying impact and fostering global dialogues that require collective action in order to address key global challenges. Now, more than at any other time, the triple global crisis that Covid-19 has triggered (health, economic and social) has brought urgency to collaborate radical for a shared global response and future prosperity. We need to look beyond mere disaster mitigation toward, in fact, building resilient and antifragile systems.

The prize would be an opportunity to amplify the impact and together build and realize the vision of an equitable human-centered world.

The Digital Economist’s core values (abbreviated as TDE IMPACT: Trust, Diversity, Empathy, Integrity, Mindset, Passion, Accountability, Collaboration and Transparency) are fully aligned with The Elevate Prize Foundation's ultimate objective to elevate humanity at all levels.

Plugging into channels that can amplify TDE's impact and attract more impact leaders are the primary partnership goals. TDE is a young organization and needs tending to and support on the road to financial sustainability. 

Internal list of partners in the pipeline available upon request.