Most people treat Jewish community work like a casual non-profit. But perhaps there’s a more effective, more business-like way to encourage innovation within a responsible, results-oriented framework?

PresenTense Editor and Publisher Ariel Beery and his frequent business partner Aharon Horwitz think so, and tell you all about it in their new article in Ha’aretz, “Investing in Value.”

To save our community from the boom-and-bust dynamic, we need to prioritize value over image, and encourage young entrepreneurs to seek out value-enhancing opportunities that will allow them to generate returns on investment. To do so, the model of today’s Internet start-ups might be instructive: Start-ups now begin with a prototype and seek small seed investment. When a prototype is deemed to work, the start-up may choose to go it alone and build upon its revenue, or convince an investor to help scale its product up. Each subsequent period of growth has self-sustainability as its end – that is, growth will not exist unless the market trial shows that the value generated by the start-up will be sufficient to sustain the venture once funding ceases.

Find out more about these guys and their revolutionary ideas at Haaretz.com. And check out their projects, too:

PresenTense.org
CreativeZionism.com

And probably five others that they’ve founded in the time it took me to write this blog post. Really. They’re that impressive.

Esther Kustanowitz is a writer and speaker extraordinaire focusing on the intersection of Jewish life, pop culture and online social media. Among her multitude of credits, Esther is Senior Editor of PresenTense magazine, blogs at My Urban Kvetch and Jdaters Anonymous, contributes to Jewlicious and ROI120 and is a member of the steering committee of CreativeZionism.