Our Process
Pivotal Leaders uses a proven two-step process to select its leaders. The process -- community nomination and peer selection -- is based on James Surowiecki’s book The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations (2004). Surowiecki's thesis is that, with certain types of decisions, a diverse collection of people will make better choices than individuals or even experts would.
Email addresses and other personal information is being used to communicate with nominees and individuals selected as Pivotal Leaders. Pivotal will not sell, rent or make any email addresses or personal information public without approval.
Community Nomination
Nomination requests, created in collaboration with several organizations in the region and a host of partners including entrepreneurs, service providers and government, are sent to more than 2,000 individuals and institutions in the region. This request is then forwarded virally to anyone who might wish to submit a name for nomination.
Anyone can nominate up to 20 individuals they believe are likely to lead a successful clean technology company in the Northwest as CEO or CTO in the next three to five years.
- Nominees do not need to currently hold CEO or CTO titles
- Nominees do not need to have current involvement in a clean technology company
- Individuals should have ties to the Northwest, but are not required to be a Northwest resident
Additional Nomination Rules
- For a nomination to be valid, it must include name and email address of the nominee
- Anyone may submit a nomination
- Individuals may nominate themselves
- Once nominated the individual is automatically in the selection process (it doesn’t matter how many times he/she is nominated)
- No more than five people who work contemporaneously in the same organization at the time of voting may be nominated; in these cases, only the first five nominees will be included
Peer Selection
Once nominations are approved, the nominees are informed via email of their status. Nominees are given a unique URL to log on to the proprietary online selection tool and vote. He or she will be directed to a list of all nominees. Each nominee may then cast up to 10 votes within the total nomination pool. Those with the highest number of votes will be notified of their selection as a member of the Pivotal Leaders network for that year. They may opt out if they do not wish to be a member. Once a member of the Pivotal Leaders, always a member.
Additional Voting Rules
- Nominees may not submit new nominations at this point in the voting process
- Although nominees may vote for themselves, they may only vote for any individual once
- Individuals who are presently and actively associated with venture capital or private equity organizations may not be selected as winners
- We reserve the right to include or exclude people from the list
