Success Measured by What You Build for Others
Measure success by how generously you build something for others. — Benjamin Franklin
From Achievement to Contribution
Franklin’s maxim reframes success as a public, not private, accomplishment. Instead of tallying titles or revenue, it asks whether our work enlarges others’ possibilities—whether it equips neighbors, customers, and strangers to thrive. This shift moves the metric from self to society, from accumulation to contribution. Consequently, generosity becomes an operating principle rather than an afterthought. When the yardstick is how well others flourish because of what you built, choices about scope, price, access, and governance become ethical decisions as much as strategic ones. To make such success tangible, history offers practical models.
Civic Inventions as a Model
Franklin’s life provides a blueprint: he helped found the Library Company of Philadelphia (1731), the Union Fire Company (1736), and Pennsylvania Hospital with Thomas Bond (1751)—institutions designed to multiply benefits beyond any single patron. He also declined patents for inventions like the Franklin stove and lightning rod, writing, “as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others…” (Works of Benjamin Franklin, 1840 ed., vol. 2). This ethos treated innovation as a civic asset, not a private trophy. In effect, Franklin turned ingenuity into infrastructure, proving that when tools and know‑how are widely shared, resilience compounds. Translating that spirit into method brings us to design choices.
Designing With, Not For
To build generously is to build with users. Franklin’s Junto (1727) was a discussion club for artisans and tradespeople that surfaced real community needs—an early form of co‑creation. Similarly, Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) shows how sidewalks and mixed uses emerged from residents’ lived patterns, not top‑down plans. Thus, generosity starts by listening: shared discovery, iterative prototypes, and feedback loops ensure the solution enlarges others’ agency, not the builder’s ego. Yet ideals falter without measurement, which leads to the question of how to count what truly counts.
Measuring Impact, Not Applause
Generous building demands outcome metrics—lives improved, time saved, harm reduced—rather than vanity numbers. The Social Return on Investment approach, developed by groups like REDF in the late 1990s, converts outcomes into a transparent ratio, while B Lab’s B Impact Assessment (2006–) standardizes stakeholder performance. Still, Goodhart’s Law (1975) warns: when a measure becomes a target, it can distort behavior. Therefore, pair quantitative outcomes with qualitative narratives and independent verification. Track not only who benefits, but who is excluded, and monitor long‑term durability, not short‑term spikes. Some of the highest‑leverage designs for this purpose are open systems.
Open Systems Multiply Generosity
Open platforms let others build atop your work, compounding value. Wikipedia (2001–) and Linux (Linus Torvalds, 1991) exemplify how permissive licenses, shared governance, and transparent processes convert individual effort into global infrastructure; Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar (1997) describes why distributed contributors outperform closed hierarchies for many tasks. Notably, Franklin anticipated this logic by refusing patents to speed diffusion. Openness turns a gift into an ecosystem: as more participants remix and localize the tool, its relevance and resilience grow. Beyond outcomes, such generosity also reshapes the giver.
Why Giving Works Psychologically
Prosocial work often increases the builder’s well‑being. Self‑Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) shows that supporting others’ autonomy, competence, and relatedness also fulfills our own basic needs. Adam Grant’s Give and Take (2013) documents how “givers” succeed when they combine generosity with discernment, avoiding burnout by setting boundaries. Moreover, James Andreoni’s “warm‑glow” model (1990) explains why people value the act of giving itself, not just outcomes. This inner dividend is real—but intent is not enough; generous projects can still misfire without humility.
Avoiding Paternalism and Optics
History is littered with well‑meant failures. James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State (1998) chronicles how top‑down schemes ignored local knowledge and harmed the communities they aimed to help. To avoid this, embed beneficiaries in governance, compensate their expertise, and share power over priorities and budgets. Practical examples illustrate the balance: Muhammad Yunus’s Grameen Bank (founded 1976) centered borrowers’ agency through group lending and local decision‑making. In short, generosity succeeds when it listens first, then co‑decides—and when it is accountable for results.
A Practical Scorecard for Builders
Operationalize Franklin’s metric with five lenses: reach (who accesses it), depth (how much it improves life), durability (how long it lasts), equity (who benefits or bears costs), and spillovers (what it enables others to create). Publish these alongside financials, and revisit them quarterly with user representatives. Then, align structures: adopt open licenses where feasible, become a B Corp or public‑benefit entity, dedicate a budget for community stewardship, and pre‑commit to sharing learnings—even failures. As 1% for the Planet (2002) shows, small, codified commitments accumulate into outsized impact. Measured this way, success is not what you own at the end, but what others can do because you began.