Stephane de Messieres

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2009

Stephane de Messieres

Citizens Market

Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

Community Improvement & Economic Development

The Bold Idea:

The Bold Idea: Leverage crowd-sourcing tools and citizen journalism to better inform consumers seeking to engage in ethical consumption and enable these consumers to use their full market power to influence environmental and social issues.

Many of our most pressing societal issues are profoundly impacted by the private sector, such as global warming, equal opportunity, labor practices, and campaign financing. Consumers often fail to reward companies with strong performance on these issues—or punish companies with poor performance. Consumers have the leverage to change business incentives, but need reliable information and tools to make responsible marketplace decisions.

Citizens Market is a user-generated website where anyone can contribute a review and a rating for any company's performance on a social or environmental issue. Consumers can access a company’s scores by searching the site or by using text messaging or a barcode scan for the product when purchasing. Citizens Market’s aim is to host a vibrant online community of one million information contributors.

Stephane de Messieres pitching at Echoing Green Selection Weekend (May 2, 2009)

Biography:

Stéphane de Messières conceived Citizens Market during his own efforts to be a responsible consumer. Stéphane holds a Masters in Public Policy degree from the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was the Co-President of the Student Corporate Responsibility Council. He works as a Collaborations Consultant for the Private Sector Team at Oxfam America, designing tools for developing innovative collaborations with companies.

Moment of Obligation: What experiences led to the desire to start your own organization?
I conceived Citizens Market five years ago during my own efforts to be a responsible consumer. I was energized by a New Year's resolution but I was quickly overwhelmed. Information about large companies was scattered across websites that focused on one social or environmental issue at a time. One site would talk about labor practices, and another would talk about greenhouse gas emissions. I couldn’t find any information at all about local companies or even mid-tier brands like Eastern Mountain Sports or Heineken. I was exhausted at the research required. I once spent two hours online before I found a unionized company that made blue jeans, which turned out to be so woefully ugly and uncomfortable that I had to return them. I decided there must be a more convenient solution for consumers. My 'aha!' moment came when a cousin told me about new technology to scan product barcodes with a mobile phone camera, and I realized that I could access all the information I was looking for at the point-of-purchase. Further research convinced me that a crowdsourced model like Wikipedia is the best way to gather enough information to be systematically useful to consumers.

Gall to Think Big: What has given you the ability to dream big and take on deeply entrenched social and difficult problems? (Such as experiences, skills, events, etc.)
I've been concerned about social and environmental issues since I was a kid. I remember my father insisting that I read the news before I could turn to the comics section. I thank my parents and my peers for that perspective. But I think the educational opportunities I've had are most responsible for translating that concern into action. I had never even heard of social entrepreneurship before attending the Harvard Kennedy School. I don't think I would have ever had the confidence to launch Citizens Market without taking Gordon Bloom's "Social Enterprise Collaboratory" class, where I recruited two students to join me in developing a business plan and incubating our concept.

New and Untested: What's innovative about your new idea for social change?
Our main innovation is our crowdsourced approach, which has unlimited capacity. Almost all of the organizations in our field depend on in-house staff or outsourced services for research, and are therefore limited to covering only the largest multi-national corporations. Our crowdsourced model is best positioned to return a score for each search query by a consumer, even for a local brand, which minimizes the frustration of searching for a brand or company and seeing no score. Our model will also lead to company profiles with a wider range of perspectives than any one group of experts could provide. Finally, our company profiles will be updated in real-time by our users as new sources of information become publicly available.

Seeing Possibilities: What are the most important qualities to be a successful social entrepreneur?
Vision, leadership and tenacity. Especially tenacity!

Which musical artists/albums get you going and keep you inspired?
I've learned that I work best listening to classical, jazz or blues. I'm listening to Muddy Waters right now. A few other favorites are Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Chopin. If I need to get pumped up to deliver a pitch, I'll listen to some great funk that my teammate Isaac shared with me: The Sugarman Three & Co. or Nico Gomez & His Afro Percussion Inc. Or my favorite new party song, "Como El Agua Cale", an amazing Latin hip-hop collaboration by Macaco & Ms. Maiko.

What books do you recommend (pleasure, work and anything in between)?

• Fold a Banana, by Erskine / Morane - good for a sense of perspective... and laughs.
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, by Oliver Sacks - this will simply blow your socks off.
• The Road, by Cormac McCarthy - dark, dark, dark.
• Random Family, by Adrian LeBlanc - I couldn't put it down, and it's a true story.
• The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki - illustrating that crowds can be wise, but only under certain conditions.
• The Starfish and the Spider, by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom - a quick and enjoyable read about the power of non-hierarchical organizations.

Which websites do you visit often (work and/or personal)?

• citizensmarket.org
• wikipedia.org
• nytimes.com
• 37signals.com (Basecamp and Highrise)
• pandora.com

What advice or quote do you keep close to your heart as a social change leader?
The best advice I've received is from our team of volunteers, about the importance of visualizing our own success.