I think there are 2 issues. First, you're focusing on visible achievements. If some person at big company X streamlined Process Y by Z amount, they could be contributing dramatically to that company, and depending on that company their contribution could be passed on in a way that positively impacts society by a large amount. But by the nature of their work they will remain largely anonymous. In other words, I think there's some bias in your judgment of impact.
Second, it's pretty easy to pick out the thread of unconventionality you've favored with your examples: Founders of non-profits and bloggers or other successful mass communicators. You can encourage either of these by respectively:
First, you're focusing on visible achievements.
Sure, those are the ones that I know about :-)
If some person at big company X streamlined Process Y by Z amount, they could be contributing dramatically to that company, and depending on that company their contribution could be passed on in a way that positively impacts society by a large amount.
Yes, though it seems harder to tell whether one can get into such a position ahead of time, with less transparency.
In other words, I think there's some bias in your judgment of impact.
We're interested in ...
In How can Cognito Mentoring do the most good? I included a section on our potential social value. I want to flesh out what we hope to achieve.
Consider the following people:
Some of these accomplishments are more impressive than others, but all of them are impressive, and most of the people listed are quite young, and will plausible do more impressive things along similar lines as they get older.
Some common threads that I see in these people are:
Unconventionality isn't necessarily a path to success, and there are plenty of people who adopt unconventional paths and don't get much done at all, but when executed well, it's possible to pursue an unconventional path with relatively little risk and high potential upside.
We think that we can enable more people to engage in activities like the ones above. Many of those who are well-suited to them are already engaged in them. But there are others who have most of the relevant traits for whom there are only one or two limiting factors. Some ways in which we think that we can remove the limiting factors are as follows
According to student feedback we've had some success on the first two fronts. We're continuing such efforts, and are in the process of working on the latter two.
By moving people in the directions suggested above, we hope to tip more people into the high achieving pool that has the above as representative members. We expect that we can enable an average of one additional person per year to get into this achievement range, with the benefits accruing throughout their lives.
Concerning the feasibility of this: The number of people with the requisite traits is not very small. As above, the people on the list have in some cases achieved far out of proportion with their ability, so there are a fair number of people of the same ability level who don't. So far we've had a number of advisees who probably have similar characteristics to people on the list above at the same age. So it's not necessary to influence a huge number of people to succeed (though we're casting as wide a net as possible.)
Assuming the estimate here is correct, we get a lower bound on the social value generated by Cognito Mentoring. We have other sources of social value, which we touched on in our earlier post and might elaborate in later posts.