Think: Social Innovation

How Twitter Makes You Smarter

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:30:00 +0000

Yes, it started out as a way to let the universe know, in 140 characters or less, bits of utterly inconsequential information like the fact that one has just eaten dinner and is now sitting on the couch. And apparently, this immateriality was precisely the idea around which the service was built. Four years later, though, Twitter is a truly valuable communication tool.

In June of last year, for example, Twitter was instrumental in allowing protesters after the Iranian election to remain in communication with the world in the face of repressive retaliation from the Ahmadinejad government. This past January, it helped to share stories, images and messages in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, and played an important role in rallying the world to send $10 million in text-message relief donations in three days.

On a day-to-day basis, Twitter is a very effective way to discover great content (whether news articles, blog posts, videos or other resources). In fact, it's one of the most effective ways, I have found, when used in the right way. Twitter has far transcended its stigma, for me, by pointing me to horizon-expanding and thought-provoking ideas and resources.

The question, then, is about how to use Twitter effectively. Out of the 50 million tweets now being sent each day, a good chunk are bound to be useless, just as they were anticipated to be in Twitter's early days. There are good tweets, too, but with so many, using Twitter sounds like certain information overload. It doesn't have to be, though; the key is in who you follow. (If you need a Twitter mechanics primer, read this.) Following a small set of key, active tweeters in the areas in which you are interested will give you access to most of the good, relevant information. These tweeters either originate links to this material or retweet the relevant tweets of others. Not every tweet will be particularly insightful, but a quick scan will help you choose which links to follow. I follow 40 or so tweeters and am connected with the right amount of a variety and a quality of content I simply cannot match with other media sources.

If you're not already on Twitter, try it out. I list below a select few tweeters who consistently share high-quality content and who might be of interest to readers of this blog.

Recommended Tweeters

@socialentrprnr – Nathaniel Whittemore is a blogger on Change.org, among other things, and shares great content on social entrepreneurship.

@harvardbiz – If you've read my November 9^th post on the ProInspire blog or have heard me rant, you know that I think almost all business literature is useful for social profit organizations as well. @harvardbiz shares links to the great blog posts and management tips that appear on the Harvard Business Review's website at HBR.org.

@NextBillion – Tweets from NextBillion, the community dedicated to exploring the connection between development and enterprise, link to NextBillion.net blog posts and much more from around the web.

@acumenfund – Jacqueline Novogratz's Acumen Fund shares a number of interesting stories and insights from its investments and from Jacqueline's own experiences.

@ntakamine – Yep, that's me. I feed links to these blog posts into Twitter but also share and retweet other good, thought-provoking content I encounter.

Prefer Email?

I know many who would not use a Twitter application on their phone or desktop, as I do, and would never get into the habit of visiting the Twitter website to review their tweets. Fortunately, there's a solution which allows you to have tweets sent to you on a regular basis in one email. If you'd prefer to review your tweets in an email, follow the steps below once you have set up your Twitter account:

Use FreeMyFeed.com to "unlock" the stream of tweets you collect from those you follow. (On your Twitter home page, click "RSS feed" on the right sidebar and log in. The RSS feed URL to which you are directed is the feed you need to unlock using FreeMyFeed.)
Then use feedmyinbox.com to have your tweets emailed to you on a daily basis. Simple as that.

Enjoy!

Ideas in CSR: Three Examples of Leveraged Competencies

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:24:00 +0000

The idea that a business' obligations are broader than maximization of profits is growing quickly these days (I'm going to avoid here the worn-thin indictment of "Wall Street" for neglecting these obligations; seriously people, enough already). A business, the concept holds, is also a social citizen and bears the responsibility of contributing to a just and sustainable society. A core component of this responsibility centers on companies doing business in a socially responsible way. For instance, Starbucks buys only "ethically sourced" coffee beans and Coca-Cola works to reduce its packaging and water footprint. But some companies are also pursuing another, less-common, angle on being a good social citizen.

Successful companies are successful because they have a more masterful command of certain key abilities than anyone else. In business-speak, these differentiating abilities are a company's "core competencies". Google's cloud computing and accessible satellite imagery capabilities are untouched. Coca-Cola's ability to rapidly move high-volume consumer products to retail locations around the world is astounding. Wal-Mart's ability to work with its many suppliers for greater efficiency is unprecedented. These companies have competencies that no other organization on the planet can match, period. Now, they are exploring ways to leverage their competencies to create social value in addition to private wealth.

Google's Deforestation Monitoring Prototype

Deforestation of tropical rainforests is one of the leading sources of carbon dioxide emissions. The UN's REDD framework (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) is designed to make it worthwhile for rainforest nations to prevent deforestation, but implementation will require the ability to accurately monitor deforestation activity.

Google, through its "philanthropy" arm, Google.org, is partnering with forest science experts to combine their software with its Google Earth satellite imagery technology to analyze changes in forest cover. Google then donates computing power from the "Google cloud" to reduce analysis time from what would take days or weeks on even a top-of-the-line desktop computer to a matter of seconds. The result is a prototype tool that brings us one step closer to having the power to effectively implement deforestation prevention strategies like REDD.

Coca-Cola's Pilot of ColaLife

ColaLife is a campaign aimed at engaging Coca-Cola (and eventually other companies) to help address what can be a big problem in the delivery of aid supplies in recipient countries: distribution. The idea is that one can purchase a Coke almost anywhere (the company's rise to dominance was built on the vision of putting a Coke "within an arm's reach of desire"), but that, in contrast, aid supplies like rehydration salts, medicines or water purification tablets sometimes do not make the "last mile" in distribution.

Last year, Coca-Cola and its local bottler in Tanzania began testing ColaLife's idea of leveraging the company's distribution channels to deliver aid supplies. They are exploring the viability of transporting "AidPods", which are packages designed to fit in the free spaces found in a crate of bottles, along with their product. In a good example of how NGOs and the private sector can work together, Coca-Cola is partnering with NGO AED for their expertise in social product distribution and social messaging.

Now, piggybacking on Coke's distribution channels is by no means a full solution to aid distribution challenges. And, indeed, the results of Coca-Cola's initial viability tests are not yet available, so it is unclear if the program will be continued. Nevertheless, that the company is open to exploring these types of possibilities is encouraging.

Wal-Mart's Sustainability Index

Wal-Mart is turning heads lately with its new effort to develop a sustainability index, which aims to assess suppliers, create a lifecycle analysis database and develop a simple tool to help customers make purchasing choices based on sustainability information. In the same way it famously manages its suppliers to achieve lower costs, Wal-Mart is now leveraging the same system for increased transparency around sustainability.

As Joel Makower explains in a thoughtful post:

It's definitely a bold move, one that stands to raise the bar on sustainability and transparency, empowering both retailers and consumers to leverage their buying power to affect change. It stands to spur innovation in products and processes. And it appears to be around for the long haul. Walmart has gone well beyond talking the talk here. It's changing the game.

The Concept of Leveraged Competencies

The word "leverage" is thrown around a bit too loosely, much like the "blame Wall Street" buzz-phrase of recent popularity. In fact, it probably belongs on a generalized version of this list. But, just as "infrastructure", "impact" and "catalyst" are valuable concepts in the right situations, so "leverage" has its appropriate uses.

Heather McLeod Grant and Leslie R. Crutchfield, authors of the nonprofit best practices book Forces for Good, explain the practical concept of leverage well:

In physics, leverage is defined as the mechanical advantage gained from using a lever. In business, it means using a proportionately small initial investment to gain a high return.

In the three cases I describe above, the massive investment these companies have made in business excellence presents us with a unique situation: great social value can be created with a relatively small incremental investment. These companies are, in this sense, leveraging their competencies for social good.

“Back When I Was in College…”

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 01:10:00 +0000

My parents often wistfully remark how lucky my college-aged brothers are to still have the opportunity to attend lectures (just as they used to tell me, too). These days, as I encounter so many intriguing ideas that I can never explore deeply enough, I'm beginning to understand their point of view. How great it would be to have that educational experience again (...perhaps with better beer and with wine that doesn't come out of a box, this time).

Well, I can look forward to grad school, but in the meantime, I have been making use of another great resource for hungry minds: SpokenWord.org. It's a search engine/directory of audio and video podcasts from around the web. There is a ton of great content there, including an eye-opening Stanford University talk by Siddharth Kara on how to end modern sex slavery by attacking its economics (I mention this one not to kill the mood, but because it's one that everyone should listen to). You can find excellent content from Stanford's Social Innovation Conversations channel and the TED Conference's TEDTalks series, among many, many others. It's like being back in college—without the 8 A.M. classes. And the tuition.

With about 3,500 members, SpokenWord is still a relatively small community. Frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't taken off yet. But it's growing and there are already over 500,000 programs to browse. Chances are you'll find many a program to help keep you productive even on that morning commute. For starters, check out Think: Social Innovation's collection for a selection of great podcasts.

Like other value-enhancing knowledge management tools, SpokenWord grows in its power to point users to relevant content with each new program rating or comment. So pour a glass of non-box wine, take a look around and, if you find something interesting, rate it—and share it with a friend.

TRASI: New Tool for Impact Evaluation Resources

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 19:29:00 +0000

The Foundation Center has long been a crucial source of support for both philanthropic and service delivery organizations in the social sector. In early 2010, it will launch yet another resource in an area crucial to enabling a jump to the next level of progress in the sector: impact evaluation.

What Foundation Center is calling Tools and Resources for Assessing Social Impact, or TRASI, is a database of 150 approaches to impact evaluation for social sector programs and social investments, with contributions from Acumen Fund, Dalberg Global Development Advisors, Independent Sector, among many others. The first document returned in my first search was a great report, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, containing a detailed overview of social impact concepts. An aggregation of knowledge and resources like this (and, importantly, one that is available for free) is a key step in truly empowering the sector with impact evaluation knowledge and tools.

Other essential steps, of course, include continuing to develop these approaches—the impact evaluation field, after all, is nascent—and helping to build the capacity to implement the approaches within the social sector. It is therefore encouraging that TRASI was developed with help from McKinsey, who appears to be working on a very similar initiative of its own. McKinsey is among the institutions that do a wonderful job of creating knowledge—and sharing it. How the sector internalizes the knowledge and builds the capacity to make the concepts central to its work remains to be seen.

TRASI is in beta testing right now, and needs feedback to help improve the tool before launch. Learn more and sign up here, or simply browse the database for resources for your organization. And, in the spirit of supporting progress within the sector, share what you find helpful!

Climate Change and Biodiversity

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:57:00 +0000

This post is a participation in Blog Action Day, an annual event held every October 15^th that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance.

This year's Blog Action Day issue is climate change. But rather than add to the plethora of discussion about why climate change is bad, I want to share a very interesting initiative that responds to the challenge. And interestingly, as "biodiversity warrior" Cary Fowler points out in this TED video, this initiative may be the only example of a project in which all the countries in the world, literally, have come together to do something that is both long-term, sustainable, and positive. Mr. Fowler describes here a backup seed bank system, hosted by Norway, with the task of protecting our agricultural output in the face of climate change by preserving diversity in the genetic resources of our crops. A mighty task indeed.

Elegant Solutions

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:50:00 +0000

"In dance or martial arts, elegance is minimum motion with maximum effect. In a mathematical proof or a computer program, elegance is the minimum number of steps to achieve the solution with maximum clarity…Like an elegant theory, an elegant solution is recognized by its parsimony of definition and power of explanation."¹

An abalone shell, self-assembled, molecule by molecule from ions in seawater, is twice as tough as high-tech, man-made ceramics. The tiny lenses that cover the body of a brittle star, also self-assembled in a water-based process, are the best optic lenses that we know of. A beetle's entire exoskeleton consists of just one material—chitin—which is sturdy, breathable, waterproof, and colorful, without pigments, just by virtue of the structure of the material.

In its ability to solve the greatest of problems with remarkable elegance, nature has us beat by a mile. There is much for us to learn.

Janine Benyus, recognizing this, is leading a field called biomimicry, which seeks to learn from the 3.8 billion years of "R&D" that nature has generously performed for us. For many of the problems we face today, Ms. Benyus points out, nature has already developed a solution in one situation or another—and has done so in ingenious, elegant ways.

In her 2009 TED Conference talk below², Ms. Benyus chooses to focus on the physical applications of biomimicry, but the principle is relevant in any context. So my question to you is: what can you learn from nature that will make solutions in your line of work more elegant?

If you're curious about what you can learn from nature and apply to your work, visit Asknature.org, a project of Ms. Benyus' Biomimicry Institute. This innovative website organizes biological information by design and engineering function so that, in the words of Ms. Benyus, "Any inventor, anywhere in the world, in the moment of creation, will be able to type in 'how does nature remove salt from water,' and up will come [information about that process in] mangroves and sea turtles and your own kidneys."

Ingenious. And elegant.

¹ Although this quote comes from the politically oriented website http://www.elsol.org/, I quote it here in an apolitical context.

² Check out an earlier presentation by Ms. Benyus on the PopTech website here for additional interesting applications of biomimicry.

Conferences of the New Paradigm

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:26:00 +0000

Since moving to Washington, D.C. last month, I have been excited to see what kinds of interesting conferences and events come through town, in part because, as this area is the seat of the federal government and home to a unique ecosystem of people, businesses, and social sector organizations, the D.C. perspective on social innovation may very well be of a different flavor than that of the Silicon Valley/San Francisco Bay Area to which I am accustomed (more on this idea further down the line). As it happens, two very interesting events—a conference and a panel discussion—are scheduled to be held in the coming weeks.

The one problem, unfortunately, is that they both occur in the middle of the day during the work week, and I won't be able to attend.

The Leadership for a Better World Forum, hosted by the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, and a panel discussion titled "Do We Need a Nonprofit Capital Market?," hosted by the Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, are both events that I would have loved to attend. Back in June, I wrote about Opportunity Collaboration, another great event I won't be attending, in this case because it will be held in Mexico, costs $4,750, and is designed as a series of working business meetings for people who are already leaders in social entrepreneurship, social sector organizations, and social capital markets or philanthropy.

The information, insight, and perspective shared at these events have so much potential to inform and inspire meaningful change. Yet, there must be millions of people worldwide who, like me, cannot take advantage of the learning opportunities they present.

That's why I'm so grateful when organizers make a commitment to bringing their event to the world when, after all, they can't bring the world to the event. These organizers post video, audio, and transcripts of conference sessions for the world to access for free online. TED, a leader when it comes to this idea, makes a great effort to ensure its content is accessible by everyone, including non-English speakers and the hearing-impaired, by adding subtitles and by having volunteers translate videos into various languages. What's more, TED publishes all of its content under a Creative Commons license, so the information can be freely shared and reposted.

To me, this kind of openness is a reflection of what might be considered a new level of consciousness, perhaps even a new paradigm, in which the principles of information sharing, transparency, empowerment, and connectedness, among others, are seen as being central to progress. After all, the more that knowledge from events like these is shared, the greater impact it will have.

Below, I have put together a list of some of the conferences and organizations who exemplify this idea and support the social innovation field by making their content available online (are there others you know of?). I encourage you to browse and to leave a comment to share anything you find that inspires you!

Hudson Institute

To begin with, the Hudson Institute posts transcripts and audio files of the events it hosts. Watch for information from the "Do We Need a Nonprofit Capital Market?" panel, to be held on September 17^th, at the Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal's website. Click here for archived content.

TED

As we have said, TED does an amazing job of sharing content from its TED Conferences in accordance with its mantra of "Ideas Worth Spreading." The Conference began in 1984 to bring together the worlds of technology, entertainment, and design (hence T-E-D), but these days hosts the greatest thinkers in a number of disciplines, including Bill Gates, Al Gore, Jane Goodall, and many, many others. Videos can be found directly on the TED homepage.

Social Innovation Conversations

This collaboration between the Conversations Network podcast service and the Center for Social Innovation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business publishes podcasts of social innovation-related discussions with experts and practitioners in a broad range of fields, as well as recordings of a variety of Stanford-hosted panel discussions and presentations. Podcasts can be found here.

Skoll World Forum

The Skoll World Forum is a collaboration between The Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford and The Skoll Foundation. The Forum "connects prominent social entrepreneurs with essential actors in the social, academic, finance, corporate and policy sectors – all working to accelerate sustainable social benefit." Find videos from the 2009 Skoll World Forum here.

Craigslist Foundation Boot Camp

The 2009 Boot Camp was one conference I was lucky enough to attend (it was held on a Saturday). Podcasts of sessions from the 2009 Boot Camp are being posted over time, but you can already find the great opening address by Arianna Huffington and the closing panel discussion, in addition to podcasts from past Boot Camps, here.

Social Capital Markets

The Social Capital Markets 2009 conference wrapped up just last Thursday. According to their website today, video of panel sessions and blog highlights will be available in the coming week. In the meantime, check out the SOCAP09 blog and the Social Capital Markets YouTube channel.

I'll be the first to share something that inspires me. Here is a TED video featuring Jacqueline Novogratz, one of my heroes, discussing the power of Acumen Fund's approach to social venture capital:

Idea in Knowledge Management: IssueLab

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 12:30:00 +0000

I'm kind of a dork when it comes to knowledge management. Something about it just gets me excited. It's a very important topic, after all. When you think about it, knowledge is a sustainable, non-polluting resource—and it happens to power everything we do.

The beauty of it is that knowledge is also one resource that, when managed properly, grows strong and full and bears fruit while cross-fertilized seedlings germinate and sprout under its canopy and grow to become tall and strong in their own right. The forest of knowledge that results is an ever-growing and -evolving, rich, and productive resource. In that sense, it presents the world with a singular opportunity in its cultivation that probably deserves more attention. Just imagine if other resources were similar and fields of solar panels or wind turbines grew in the same way.

Image by Jon Wiley.

When I get excited by the idea of knowledge management, then, it's because of the vast potential I see in the cultivation of knowledge.

So, when I came across IssueLab, I was immediately intrigued. Co-founders Gabriela Fitz and Lisa Brooks saw a great, unfulfilled potential in the thousands of research publications created, but hidden, across the nonprofit landscape. "Despite the widespread interest in this work and the billions of dollars spent each year to produce it," the IssueLab site reads, "most nonprofit research remains unpublished, hard to find, underexposed, or archived in issue-specific information silos." So they created IssueLab to seek out, organize, archive, and share the work being produced by the third sector.

The basic concept is at the same time elegant and striking. By creating a portal through which this research content, otherwise generally tucked out of sight, is brought to light instantly increases the richness of the world's knowledge resources. The research is then available for anything from academic literature reviews and public policy discussions to high school papers and hungry minds.

As investment bankers we called the process of an initial public offering (IPO) a way to "unlock the value" of a privately held, illiquid asset. IssueLab is doing much the same thing with this research.

Of course, that value isn't realized until that knowledge informs people's actions, so visit the site to see what's available. The 2,870 research pieces currently available range in topic from economic development to disability to substance abuse and more.

Visit also because an important element of the IssueLab model needs your participation. While the archive has criteria that submissions be data driven and contain citations, IssueLab itself can't judge the quality and relevancy of all the work it shares. It has "handed the quality judgment back to the community" by allowing users to rate and comment on publications, according to a podcast interview with Ms. Fitz¹.

Ensuring a healthy discourse surrounding the research, which does not benefit from a structural peer review system as does academic work, is perhaps where IssueLab has the most work to do going forward. The more earnest ratings and insightful comments that are given, the more powerful this tool becomes for fertilizing the world's body of knowledge and for helping that resource to grow.

¹ The interview begins roughly 6m 45s in.

The Social Innovation Fund Debate

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 03:38:00 +0000

Last week, Fast Company published a blog post about the federal government's new Social Innovation Fund (the "Fund"), and I think the post deserves some discussion. Fast Company contributor Brian Reich wrote that he's worried that the Fund won't truly drive innovation if it funds proven (though still young) ideas, as is currently the plan. Instead, he writes, it should decide which social issues should be allocated funding and "force social innovation to happen."

I was directed to Mr. Reich's post via Twitter and I think the author of the tweet had the right response: "Force social innovation?...Really?" Seems to me that we can force effective social innovation just about as easily as we can force the discovery of an inexhaustible source of clean, affordable energy.

If only we could.

Still, Mr. Reich gave some guidelines on how we might force social innovation. Trimmed down, his recommendations are these:

Guide the efforts of the social innovation community to a few prescribed areas, otherwise it will never stay focused. Direct all funding and support to these areas (presumably he means all Social Innovation Fund funding and Office of Social Innovation support).
Identify the high-potential people who are not currently applying their efforts to social innovation and recruit them. Truly new ideas and approaches will come from the people who aren't currently involved.
Keep pushing for continuous innovation and new solutions from projects, ideas, and people, not organizations. Organizations may "get lazy" and focus on maintaining their work rather than innovating. "Use the money to make things happen, not support things that are already happening."

I must say, I disagree. In what follows, I don't specifically intend to pick apart Mr. Reich's argument, but each of his points prompts some useful thought and, in a strange way, illuminates some of the ways in which the Social Innovation Fund and the Office of Social Innovation (the "Office") will have positive impact.

The Social Innovation Community Needs Guidance?

The notion that the social innovation community needs direction lest it get distracted seems misguided itself. One of the exciting aspects of the field is the very fact that it does represent such a rich ecosystem that solutions to social problems are bound to sprout. In contrast, the idea that the government can best determine where people should focus their efforts brings to mind a parallel in command economics, along with all of its failings. Indeed, the Chairman of Venture Philanthropy Partners, Mario Morino, in a great piece on how innovation is like a coral reef, describes innovation as:

A natural, chaotic, unpredictable process that is hard, perhaps even impossible, for well-meaning outsiders to foster. If we try to control or micromanage innovation, we risk squeezing out the very life forces that give rise to successful new ideas. Instead we must focus on finding ways to nurture and accelerate the natural processes of innovation once they've begun organically.

(The Stanford Social Innovation Review also published an opinion piece that appears to be an earlier version of his thinking on this topic.)

Image by Sam and Ian.

Of course, the Fund and Office will be guided by the Administration's policy priorities and will focus its support in the areas of education, health care, and economic opportunity. But there is a difference between the artificial channeling of people's energy that Mr. Reich describes and the targeted support of people's efforts in certain areas, which the Fund will do.

Can the Fund and the Office support social innovation, then, even with the social innovation community trailblazing a million new paths? I think so. And, apparently, so does the President: creating a policy environment in which (all) innovations can thrive is one of the tenets of his new governing approach in this area, according to a White House blog post. The Fund will not—and should not—tell people where to focus their energy. In the words of Mr. Morino:

We have an enormous amount of innovation taking place all through our nation—in physical and virtual worlds, in well-financed laboratories and converted garages, in corporations and small businesses, universities and charter schools, nonprofits and social ventures, and even government agencies…The challenge before us is to inspire all innovators and those who may not even know yet that they are innovators.

Look to New People for the "True" Innovation?

Mr. Reich's second recommendation corresponds, to a degree, with this last idea—that we need to harness the potential of those who don't yet consider themselves to be innovators. He recommends that the Fund and the Office find and draft the people who do not currently apply their passions and expertise to activities with social goals, and to look to them for the "truly new ideas and approaches."

I agree that increased diversity in perspective and expertise should be beneficial to innovation. But I much prefer Mr. Morino's phrasing. We should inspire people from all backgrounds—not draft and direct them—to apply their perspective to socially beneficial activities.

And we must be careful not to devalue the potential of the people who have been and are currently generating the innovations that have social benefit, as Mr. Reich's phrasing comes dangerously close to doing.

Nor must a social innovation necessarily arise from an effort to generate a social innovation. Ashni Mohnot's blog post on social entrepreneurship (not to equate the term with "social innovation") draws from commentary by a Colombian entrepreneur to explain that, for many, social entrepreneurship is not a hobby, it's a necessity. This insightful comment by John Alexis Guerra Gómez in a socialedge discussion (search for his name) illustrates that many people generate innovations with social benefit not because they go looking for problems to solve, but because the problems come looking for them. The idea that the revolutionary innovations of the future will come from the people who actually face the challenges is rapidly gaining credence.

Suffice it to say that true social innovation will come from many more areas than a corps of bright minds that the government recruits. Fortunately, by strengthening the infrastructure of the social innovation field, the Fund will encourage more activity across the board.

Don't Fund Organizations? Really?

Mr. Reich is not alone in his third area of concern. Social Velocity, in another post about the Social Innovation Fund debate, points to discussions here and here, which concern the fear that only organizations with established and proven concepts will end up getting funding. "It has become all too easy, too common," Mr. Reich says, "for successful organizations to fall into a pattern, to get lazy, to focus on maintaining their work instead of innovating continuously and looking for new solutions." Don't fund organizations, he advises, fund projects, ideas, and people. The IssueLab blog (linked above) poses a related question: "How [do we] ensure that the government doesn't just reward the largest and most tested programs in lieu of smaller, sometimes newer, and even untested efforts at innovation[?]"

Well, I challenge the assumption that this vehicle must fund nascent innovations.

On the contrary, funding proven innovations is its explicit mandate. The press release says it without a hint of disguise: "The Social Innovation Fund will identify what is working in communities across the country [and] provide growth capital for these programs." The idea was never for the Fund to identify the garage project that will become the next HP. The idea is to help winning innovations (yes, they are still innovations even if they are no longer on the fringe) to scale up and spread their impact.

And, contrary to what Mr. Reich says, this is an appropriate goal. When an organization is implementing an innovation that makes a difference, we should be concerned precisely with helping it to continue its work and to increase its impact.

It seems an appropriate role for a government fund, too. What reason do we have to think that a government agency can "root out new innovations" from each nook and cranny in which they are hiding? That's a job for angel investors and social venture capital groups (although it's true that this sector needs development). The Social Innovation Fund, in contrast, will support the next stage of funding to help the organization scale nationally. The Fund is filling a gap here, where no Series B and C financing is available to take an idea to the next level, as might be available from a traditional venture capital firm in other sectors. What's more, the Fund will leverage its role to mobilize "foundations, philanthropists, and corporations which will commit matching resources, funding, and technical assistance" (press releas).

In the end, it should be no surprise that the government will insist on funding models that can demonstrate their impact; after all, it does not want to be too speculative with public money.

Don't Force It

"Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each."
– Plato

Social innovation can't be engineered. The best we can do is to support that "natural, chaotic, unpredictable process" of Mr. Morino's coral reef and nurture the innovations that take hold.

This experiment is not the full solution to that challenge, but it's a great start in strengthening the social innovation field in the U.S. And, as I mentioned in a previous post, for the federal government to espouse the need for an explicit focus on social innovation is a huge step in the right direction. Social Velocit got it right when they wrote, "If we are truly going to scale social solutions then the largest funder of those solutions [i.e., the federal government] has to be on board" (emphasis added). We as the social innovation community (if we can even call it that) should be excited for this support.

Malaria, Resistance, and Paying Attention in Class

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 20:40:00 +0000

There is still no vaccine for malaria¹. And despite efforts to prevent the mosquito bites that transmit the disease, it kills one child every 30 seconds and a total of one million people each year (for perspective, this is a full half of the number of people who die from AIDS each year).

Nations in areas where malaria is endemic use several tactics to control mosquito populations and some, like insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs), have been very helpful in preventing deaths². However, these methods mainly focus on killing the mosquitoes with insecticides and, while the tactics certainly do lower the number of bites and infections, they become less effective over time.

Image by smccann.

Because of genetic variation, some mosquitoes are naturally resistant to the insecticides used in anti-malaria campaigns. When insecticide is used, the mosquitoes with susceptible genes are killed and the resistant mosquitoes survive to pass the resistance on to future generations. Mosquitoes reproduce relatively rapidly, and, in some instances, populations have become resistant to insecticides within only a few years. In fact, resistance was a major impediment for the failed Global Malaria Eradication Campaign in the '50s and '60s. The situation could have been a case study in evolution and resistance in any introductory biology textbook. (Wait, that evolution lesson in high school bio was this important?)

All kidding aside, resistance to insecticides is a big problem in the war against malaria. It's not that people don't understand the concept, of course, it's just that there hasn't yet been a better alternative.

An effective and affordable vaccine would certainly be one of those alternatives. In the meantime, however, regions with endemic malaria will continue fighting the disease by controlling the mosquitoes that transmit it. Fortunately, a recent study³ by Dr. Andrew Read and his team at Pennsylvania State University might lead to another alternative. The researchers believe they have developed an approach to disease control that works around the problem of evolutionary resistance. When refined, they think the method could reduce the number of infectious bites by 95% and significantly prolong the useful life of an insecticide.

According to an article published in The Economist:

Dr Read started from the observation that it is old, rather than young, mosquitoes that are infectious. Only females can transmit malaria (males suck plant juices, not blood) but they are not born with the parasites inside their bodies. They have instead to acquire them from humans already carrying the disease, and that takes time. Once a female does feed on infected blood, the parasites she ingests require a further 10 to 14 days to mature and migrate to her salivary glands, whence they can be transmitted to another host when she next feeds. In theory, then, killing only the oldest female mosquitoes—those at significant risk of being infectious—could stop the transmission of the disease. Since these females would have had plenty of time to reproduce before they died, the evolutionary pressure imposed by killing them would be much lower.

So the question is: how do we kill only the old mosquitoes? More diluted insecticide solutions may work because older mosquitoes are more vulnerable than younger ones. Alternatively, experiments are underway with a fungus that becomes lethal to mosquitoes in 10 to 12 days, a short enough time period to kill them before they are at highest risk to transmit the parasite, but long enough that they can reproduce and pass the susceptible genes on. Other insecticide compounds might also have the desired effect. The authors of the study label insecticides that act in this manner "late-life-acting," or LLA, insecticides.

Unfortunately, current policies are structured to select insecticides for their ability to deliver rapid mortality in exactly the population that leads to the highest pressure for development of resistance. According to the study, the World Health Organization (WHO) requires, for laboratory testing approval, that insecticides target greater than 80% mortality within 24 hours post-exposure for young female mosquitoes.

The authors concede that insecticides that work in this way have greater initial effectiveness in reducing mortality, but point out that they provide "very poor medium- to long-term disease control" because of the effects of resistance. With the Global Malaria Action Plan (GMAP) aiming to spray 172 million houses with insecticide annually and to distribute 730 million ITNs by 2010, they write, the threat of widespread resistance would be unprecedented if the program is implemented with existing insecticides.

Hopefully, this study will begin a conversation that leads to further research into LLA insecticides. And, hopefully, it will help high school students bridge the gap between the (sometimes sleepy) theory in the classroom and its real, life-or-death implications out in the world. Thankfully, Dr. Read must have paid attention on the day he was given this lesson.

¹ Fortunately, a major clinical trial by GlaxoSmithKline and Gates Foundation-funded Path Malaria Vaccine Initiative is underway and, if successful, would mean vaccines could be available by 2013.

² According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, insecticide-treated bed nets, or ITNs, have been shown to reduce mortality by 20% in field trials. For an interesting account of local production of ITNs (vs. traditional production in Asia), see Jacqueline Novogratz's presentation upon accepting the CASE Leadership Award (roughly 17 minutes in).

³ I recommend reading the study, entitled "How to Make Evolution-Proof Insecticides for Malaria Control," as it explains some interesting facets to the fight against malaria, including the implications of current methods of insecticide use, the process by which proposed insecticide compounds are approved by the WHO, and practical recommendations for next steps.

Yes, You Read That Correctly: New White House Office of Social Innovation

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 07:21:00 +0000

Of all the changes the Obama administration is bringing to the U.S. government, one is particularly exciting from the perspective of my views on social innovation.

For the first time ever, there is now a White House Office of Social Innovation. Wow. For the federal government to espouse the need for an explicit focus on social innovation (note their use of this term in particular) is a huge step toward the kind of interaction between sectors we will undoubtedly need in order to solve the world's worst problems.

Complete with a $50 million Social Innovation Fund, the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation will, among other things, "catalyze partnerships between the government and nonprofits, businesses and philanthropists" and "identify and support the rigorous evaluation and scaling of innovative, promising ideas that are transforming communities," according to a press release.

In an Editors' Note in the Summer 2009 edition of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, James A. Phills Jr. and Eric Nee celebrate the creation of this office and the use of the term "social innovation":

As editors of a journal of ideas we obviously believe in the power of language–that words matter. That is why we are so pleased to see our political leaders' growing embrace of the term social innovation. It is a clear indication that in the war of ideas, the idea that we believe offers the most potential–social innovation–is making significant headway. [Emphasis in original.]

Indeed. Read SSIR's manifesto on social innovation here.

At that time, the editors cautiously pointed out that the journal had published, in the prior Spring, an article by Obama advisor Michele Jolin, in which she first outlined a proposal to create an office of this type. Well, the head of the new Office, Sonal Shah, must have read that Editors' Note. She visited Stanford's Center for Social Innovation for a roundtable on Tuesday and an email from SSIR yesterday quotes her as saying, "In case you are unsure about your influence, Michele's article about social innovation led to the creation of the White House Office." How's that for confirmation that you're the leading publication in the field?

It will be interesting to see what impact this new office has. It may not be big and flashy and may not come right away, but in any case we're moving in the right direction.

Philanthropy for Everywun

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:27:00 +0000

I'm trying out a new way to participate in philanthropy. A tool called Everywun lets users direct donations from corporate sponsors to various areas, including "animals," "education," "environment," "health," and "poverty." The self-proclaimed grassroots campaign is founded on the idea that "Every person deserves the opportunity to participate in making a better world… regardless of how much time or money we have."

By taking small, free actions, like signing up for the email newsletter or donating "Facebook real estate" for a badge on one's profile (or blog–see below), members earn "Everywun Credits," which they can use to direct certain donations, like anti-malarial mosquito nets or the planting of a tree, through partner nonprofit organizations.

Image by USFS Region 5.

Not bad, but what's the catch? Well, I don't think it's a catch, but another way members can earn credits is by taking surveys and playing trivia games. Everywun could do a much better job of explaining how everything works on the website, but, as far as I can tell, this information is sold. This might be a turn-off for some, but there are a few things to consider. First of all, participation in these point-earning activities is optional. Second, information is never tied to an individual and is only used in the aggregate, so there should be no privacy concerns. Third, although Everywun is structured as a for-profit entity, it donates 70% of its revenues (even before expenses) to charity. And not all of this information is used by businesses for private profit. I just completed a survey that will help a cancer-related organization revamp its name to better reflect the impact it makes–and I earned 500 Everywun credits, enough to buy two meals for people or to plant five trees.

Founder Dan Jacobs created the organization after overcoming a battle with a life-threatening illness and realizing that he had no option but to work to improve the world; I'm comfortable that the good intentions are there.

But whether the impact is there is another question. To be sure, Everywun has, as of today, coordinated the donation of 6,499 trees, 76 malaria nets, 1,948 meals for children, 4,594 meals for animals, and 546 books for children. Or rather, it has coordinated the donation of the equivalent of those items: there is no discussion of this on the website, but it's entirely possible that the donated funds are not earmarked for these specific uses. The website does not reveal what these contributions amount to in dollars.

Everywun has an ambitious mission of giving "every person in the world…fun, easy, and cost-free tools to make their lives, others' lives, and the world better." For the moment, I'm skeptical that it can achieve this level of scale and impact, or even whether such a broad goal can be supported with this model.

But then again, someone once said in response to critiques of microfinance guru Mohammad Yunus, "I like what he's doing a lot more than what you are not doing."

In other words, it's good that someone is at least trying new models. Time will tell which ones will have great impact and which ones will not. Progress will only come, as it always has, at the expense of many attempts.

In any case, Everywun is another way for one to give without "giving away." And, as I saw in my experience with Kiva, there's nothing like participation to learn what it's about. Click on the badge below to see for yourself and post a comment to let us know what you think!

Note: I'm not sure how long this will last, but, in a tweet yesterday, Everywun extended an invitation to earn 500 extra credits by entering "#NCVS" (for National Conference on Volunteering and Service) when registering.

Will the Holidays Come Early This Year?

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 06:26:00 +0000

The things you won't be subjected to at the Opportunity Collaboration networking and problem-solving congress this October include plenary speeches, business suits, and "death by PowerPoint." The event–designed to convene, connect, and create solutions to bring about an end to poverty–is about conversations, not presentations, and doers, not talkers. It will bring together "social entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, social financiers, grant-makers and agents of change [to] explore unprecedented levels of collaboration, identify opportunities for leveraging resources across organizations and accelerate proven models for reducing poverty."

I'm incredibly excited for this event–and I won't even be attending. Delegates to Opportunity Collaboration must be "catalytic leaders" ready to discuss their ideas and proposals and to lead workshops relating to their areas of expertise. Perhaps one day, but not this time. Indeed, a panel reviews each and every application to "ensure the creation of a Collaboration community that is exceptionally rewarding for all participants." Though applications are still being accepted, the list of delegates to the summit already includes the Executive Director of Stanford's Center for Social Innovation, Founder and CEO of Root Capital, and the Social Impact Lead for IDEO, among many, many other thought leaders and change makers. The five-day event (launched on World Poverty Day, October 17, 2009), will represent a gathering of minds as rich and as fertile as the Barra de Potosí wildlife sanctuary just 30 minutes from the campus in Ixtapa, Mexico at which the summit will be held.

Jocelyn Wyatt, Social Impact Lead for IDEO and former Acumen Fund fellow, has already posted her workshop topic: "Design for Big Problems: Applying Design Thinking To Social Challenges." Other confirmed delegates, though not all, have indicated their workshop topics as well and I can already see that this event will host a diversity in perspective and expertise that will catalyze nothing less than an "innovation bloom."

Image by Darren Hester.

I have but one request to make of Opportunity Collaboration:

I applaud the bias for action in the facilitation of this event, but I also strongly encourage an explicit effort to share as fully as possible the information, experiences, and insights that arise from the Opportunity Collaboration. Openness and transparency are core to the "Opportunity Collaboration paradigm" and, indeed, will be so to any successful societal paradigm of the future. Let us commit to those principles beginning now.

I'll be watching for more updates from Opportunity Collaboration; perhaps this is already in the plans. Let's hope so–the organizers could kick off the 2009 holiday season early with an invaluable gift to the world. After all, a solution to poverty will necessarily involve both those whom it affects and those who are implicitly part of the problem (i.e., the non-marginalized of society). If you can't bring the world to Opportunity Collaboration, you can surely bring Opportunity Collaboration to the world.

Take Action, Get Involved!

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 04:48:00 +0000

I've just added another way for you to join your fellow Think: Social Innovation readers in participating in innovative approaches to solving (at least some of) the world's problems. If you're already a lender through Kiva.org, join the Think: Social Innovation lending team. If you are not, I strongly encourage you to take a look and get your feet wet–you can test the waters with as little as a $25 loan.

Kiva.org allows individuals to participate in the fascinating field of microfinance, in which loans are given to poor entrepreneurs who otherwise are kept in the cycle of poverty in large part because they don't have access to credit through the traditional financial system. Indeed, microfinance was lauded as an "important liberating force" by the Nobel Committee when it awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize to Mohammad Yunus of Grameen Bank, who is widely viewed as the "godfather" of microcredit.

I myself have been participating in this movement as a lender through Kiva for just over three months now. If you are hesitant to put your money at risk, consider my approach when I began lending. The idea of lending my money directly to an individual I would never meet was certainly new to me at that time (heck, it's still pretty new to the entire world), so I started out with low-risk lending. I diversified my "portfolio" over several loans, lent to group borrowers, and lent only through field partner microfinance institutions with Kiva's best risk rating. Since that time, more than half of my original loan amount has been repaid and I have re-lent that portion of the money.

Still skeptical of your risk? Take a look at some of Kiva's stats. Since 2006, more than $77 million has been loaned through Kiva with only a 1.5% default rate. What's more, the default rate for loans made through Kiva field partners with the two best risk ratings (4 stars and 5 stars), the default rate is 0.0%. Although lenders do not earn monetary interest to compensate them for the risk they take in lending, I do earn a return on my loans. I call it social interest.

UPDATE: For a great article on how Kiva was conceived and launched, as well as some of its drawbacks, challenges, and desired next steps, read this Stanford Social Innovation Review article.

New Feature: Delicious Bookmarks

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:19:00 +0000

I've added a new feature to the blog to help readers discover and share inspiring and thought-provoking content. You can now browse and search links to all resources cited in this blog via Delicious by clicking here or by using the navigation pane on the right. If you aren't familiar with Delicious, check it out to explore a social innovation in its own right. Enjoy!

Time For Report Cards

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 04:23:00 +0000

Acumen Fund, Jacqueline Novogratz's respected social venture capital fund, has declared today World Metrics Day to celebrate and promote the measurement of impact within the social sector. Fittingly, just yesterday, Stanford University released the first national study of the performance of one of today's intriguing social innovations: charter schools.

Photo by dcJohn.

Charter schools, run independently of the traditional public school system, are able to tailor their programs to community needs and have become a rallying cry for the education reform movement. According to the Stanford study,

As of 2009, more than 4,700 charter schools enroll over 1.4 million children in 40 states and the District of Columbia. The ranks of charters grow by hundreds each year. Even so, more than 365,000 names linger on charter school wait lists. After more than fifteen years, there is no doubt that both supply and demand in the charter sector are strong. In some ways, however, charter schools are just beginning to come into their own…[and there is] every expectation that they will continue to figure prominently in national educational strategy in the months and years to come.

Unfortunately for this adolescent movement, the study shows that independence alone does not improve student performance. In fact, "37% [of charter schools] deliver learning results that are significantly worse than their student would have realized had they remained in traditional public schools." Roughly half showed no differential in performance. Only 17% of charter schools delivered superior results when compared to traditional public schools.

But these are general statistics for a data set that varies widely, and the researchers note many encouraging findings, like the fact that "charter students in elementary and middle school grades have significantly higher rates of learning than their peers in traditional public schools," and it is only in high school or multi-level schools that students lag. The study also finds that charter schools perform better than public schools when it comes to teaching students in poverty.

In the end, this report card won't get the charter school movement onto the honor roll, but the study will indeed help the movement "come into its own" by improving accountability. Acumen Fund would approve.

Donate: Idle Computer Capacity

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:16:00 +0000

This morning I joined both the search for scalable clean energy and the search for a cure for muscular dystrophy.

Through World Community Grid, I have joined a distributed computing network of over one million devices that help researchers crunch the data for projects that benefit humanity. Here's how it works. World Community Grid software uses my idle computer capacity—read: computational capacity I don't need when I use my computer or when my computer is on but not in use—to analyze data for various studies. When my capacity is combined with that of others in the network, the time required to complete the analysis is greatly reduced.

Imagine if they were all plugged in to World Community Grid--and not 20 years old...
Photo from Flickr by ariwriter.

Here are brief descriptions of the projects I am currently participating in:
The Clean Energy Project: "The scientists in the Aspuru-Guzik group at Harvard University are using the World Community Grid to discover materials for renewable energy technology. The main goal of the project is to calculate the electronic properties of tens of thousands of new materials and to determine which of these are the best candidates to make the next generation of affordable solar cells."

Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy - Phase 2: "World Community Grid and researchers supported by Decrypthon, a partnership between AFM (French Muscular Dystrophy Association), CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research), Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, ENS Lyon, Université Paris XI, Bordeaux 1, Lille 1 and IBM are investigating protein-protein interactions for more than 2,200 proteins whose structures are known, with particular focus on those proteins that play a role in neuromuscular diseases. The database of information produced will help researchers design molecules to inhibit or enhance binding of particular macromolecules, hopefully leading to better treatments for muscular dystrophy and other neuromuscular diseases."

And what an innovation. The software, developed at Berkeley, allows me to unlock the value of my unused computer capacity. It has apparently been around for a while and has been used since 1999 to power the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence through the SETI@home program, but offers many other options for users through World Community Grid.

I hope you join me with a donation that doesn't even mean you have to give something away. I've created a team called "Think: Social Innovation" to track the contributions of readers. View the team page here and please join!

Thanks to the Idealist.org blog for letting me know about this great tool.

“Hey, Class of 2009, YOU ARE BRILLIANT, THE EARTH IS HIRING”

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Mon, 25 May 2009 17:38:00 +0000

The title of this post was Paul Hawken's message to the graduating class at the University of Portland on May 3rd. The Class of 2009, he said, will have to "figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating." The challenge really applies to the entire generation. "The earth needs a new operating system," he told the crowd, "you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades."

I missed my own graduation and commencement address because my study in Spain had not yet ended, but I am happy to adopt this one as the message that frames the world in which I will put my education to use. I see in this address a message of urgency and, more importantly, of hope. But each person will respond to the message in his or her own way, so read the whole transcript on CharityFocus. What do you think?

Natural Rights

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:54:00 +0000

Yesterday, on the eve of Earth Day’s 39th birthday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published an article contrasting today’s environmental situation with the one that gave rise to the first such event. The environment is now under a great deal more threat, the article argues, but it has finally gained some prominence in American politics. The challenge, it points out, is that many of today’s environmental issues—and, arguably, the ones that are most dangerous—are, in a way, less apparent than those in 1970. Climate change and overfishing, for example, are relatively abstract ideas that consistently seem to “take the back burner” when it comes time to pay for cleaner energy or restrictions on fishing. The article argues that “such misgivings are understandable but shortsighted” because the full costs of these and other activities “are not tabulated in our current system of accounting” (read more).

The issue is now at least up for discussion in the U.S. A bill is being drafted that, among other things, is expected to mandate a cap-and-trade system to attach a price to carbon emissions and let market forces drive the optimal management of those emissions.

One Latin American country, however, has recently taken a different approach to finding a way to exist sustainably on this planet. On September 28, 2008, the people of Ecuador voted to adopt a new constitution that included legal rights for nature for the first time ever in a national constitution. Specifically, Article 1 of the “Rights for Nature” section of the new constitution reads:

Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution. Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public bodies.¹

Whether or not one agrees, on a philosophical level, with the concept that the environment as an entity possesses fundamental rights, Ecuador’s move is significant because it formalizes, in the document that defines what a nation stands for, the value of the earth and its ecosystems. The provisions imply an inherent value, but they also remind us of the value that the environment provides us from a practical standpoint.

The constitutionalization of rights for nature is not a solution. Still, it is an exploration of a path that may change our mindset to account for this value in the decisions that have historically pushed the cost of today’s activities out to future generations. It will be interesting to see how the principle in these provisions is reflected in legislation and behavior in Ecuador. Likely, there will be something to learn.

¹ According to a press release by The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a U.S.-based organization that participated in the development and drafting of these provisions by invitation from Fundación Pachamama, a part of The Pachamama Alliance, which is working with indigenous groups in Ecuador and surrounding areas to empower them to protect their rainforest homelands.

An Expansion on the Concept of the Social Innovation Imperative

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:57:00 +0000

Please read this post in conjunction with About This Blog.

In my first post, I introduced the idea of an imperative, a necessity incumbent upon mankind, that we address the social problems of the world with ingenuity and focus—a concept I would call the Social Innovation Imperative. With this post, I want to expand on that idea to develop a framework for the content of this blog.

What Constitutes a “Social Problem”?

First, let’s define “social problem.” At some level, there seems to be a general understanding of the term; it readily brings to mind images of malnourished children or swaths of rainforest land reduced to stumps from clearcutting, among others. Indeed, according to the Stanford Social Innovation Review, there “tends to be [some degree of] consensus within societies about what constitutes a social need or problem and what kinds of social objectives are valuable (for example, justice, fairness, environmental preservation, improved health, arts and culture, and better education).”¹ Still, it is helpful to understand the term at a deeper level than is apparent from its common usage in order to help us structure our thinking when we seek to address these issues.

Consider this definition from The Sociology of Social Problems, by Adam Jamrozik and Luisa Nocella:

The term ‘social problem’ applies to social conditions, processes, societal arrangements or attitudes that are commonly perceived to be undesirable, negative, and threatening [to] certain values or interests such as social cohesion, maintenance of law and order, moral standards, stability of social institutions, economic prosperity or individual freedoms.²

This definition helps to outline that social problems can have many manifestations and can be more than simply a condition (like the state of being in poverty or hunger). According to the authors, a social problem can also be a process, even an attitude. This is a more holistic view of the term that, broad as it is, helps us to attack social problems with focus.

Consider, for example, an organization that wishes to address the broad social problem of “hunger.” To be effective, the organization must understand which facet of the problem it will focus on. Its goal may be to alleviate hunger among those currently suffering from it or perhaps to seek change in the societal structures and processes that give rise to hunger. The organization’s work would be very different in each of these two cases. In the first, the organization might deliver food to those most in need of it. In the second, it might seek to influence policy or ignite economic development to reduce the number of people who cannot afford to buy food. Now, to fail to define the social problem well enough and to attempt to achieve large-scale societal changes by simply distributing food would not be effective. Similarly, working toward rearranging societal processes does not immediately alleviate the suffering for those who go without food each day. In all cases, an organization is not likely to make the best use of its resources if it does not clearly understand its goals. Thus, a definition that guides our thinking to recognize the various facets of social problems encourages us to be focused in our analysis, efforts, and resources.

Jamrozik and Nocella describe social problems as “negative residue,” or natural though unfortunate byproducts of society’s very pursuit of its values or goals, and the corresponding structural power arrangements and allocation of resources that result. This perspective sheds some light on how hunger can result from societal structures and processes, as in our prior example. Chronic hunger could be considered a byproduct of a markets-based system that results in the marginalization of those who do not have access to the resources needed to compete effectively, for instance. Society’s goal, in this case, is economic prosperity via a markets-based economy, and hunger is a “residue” that results from society’s pursuit of that goal. Now, my example is intentionally simplistic for the sake of illustration, and the authors clarify that “social problems do not always emerge in a simple cause–effect linkage; the linkages may be quite complex, giving rise to primary, secondary and tertiary problems.”³ Nevertheless, the example helps to underscore the key point—that social problems are byproducts of society.

This understanding is crucial because it leads to my argument that, to solve or even to simply alter social problems, we must seek to change the elements of society that lead to them. It helps us identify and focus on the source of the problem, which is often where our efforts can lead to the greatest impact. Take microcredit, for example. This social innovation developed with the realization that poverty in many areas resulted, in no insignificant way, from limited access to capital from the traditional financial system among poor entrepreneurs. To address this “negative byproduct,” microfinance institutions—banks that provide financial services (notably lending) to poor entrepreneurs—developed. Certain structures and processes of society were altered, and the world witnessed increased wealth and greater empowerment among its most marginalized populations. I argue that we must continue to find ways for society to pursue its goals in different ways so as to reduce or, ideally, to eliminate the social problems that result.

Why Address These Issues?

Working within Jamrozik and Nocella’s framework, society’s motivation to address social problems follows directly from our definition: if we define social problems as social phenomena that are generally recognized as threatening by society, it’s clear that, all else equal, society should be motivated to reduce the threat. For practical purposes, however, we want to understand the motivation on the part of the various elements of society—individuals, governments, businesses, and the third sector—to be concerned with social problems, particularly those that may not seem to affect them.

To analyze an individual’s motivations, we can extend Jamrozik and Nocella’s framework to allow for the idea of social problems as perceived by an individual. From this perspective, a person may be motivated to address a problem if it is threatening or offensive to his or her values. Many organizations in the third sector—those which are neither businesses nor government-affiliated—also operate based on what we might call organizational values. Gender inequality in its various manifestations, for example, is an issue many individuals and third-sector organizations would consider a social problem in need of attention. At some level, both governments and business also operate within the framework of a particular set of values. Both are guided by the values expounded in their founding documents as well as the values of their constituents and leaders. A values-based perspective on motivation naturally leads to a philosophical discussion of ethics, but I will deliberately avoid such a discussion here. Suffice it to say that individuals and third-sector organizations as well as governments and businesses are motivated to address social problems at least in part due to personal or organizational values.

In addition to any ethics-based rationale, I would argue that all sectors of society should be motivated to address certain social problems out of self-interest, as well. Climate change, population growth, wars fought over natural resources or ideology, and many other social problems will all have a major impact on the lives of people worldwide—in developed nations and otherwise—in the coming years. If we wish to continue to experience progress in or even to maintain our current standard of living, social problems cannot be ignored.

Indeed, we will soon see an upheaval in the way the world works, according to KR Sridhar, CEO of Bloom Energy. In a panel discussion called “The Role of Entrepreneurship in Solving World Problems,” part of Stanford University’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar Series, he points out that we are at a tipping point where “resources are beginning to trump money.” Soon, he says, scarce resources like fresh water will become invaluable, and no amount of money will be able to entice even a poor nation to sell its rights. When this happens, businesses, governments, individuals, and third-sector organizations will all be forced to think in a radically different manner.⁴ Carter Roberts, President of the World Wildlife Fund, argues in a similar vein that “climate change and the increased scarcity of resources will likely be one of the most disruptive forces in business since the industrial revolution, rivaling globalization and the information revolution, as a vehicle for sweeping change across sectors.”⁵ The same can be said of the impact on other sectors of society as well. Moreover, the story is the same whether we are talking about climate change, resource scarcity, disease epidemics, or war—social problems will have profound implications on our lives and we must handle them deliberately.

In a world that is increasingly interconnected, even social problems that seem remote to an individual can have far-reaching effects. At the time of this writing, a financial crisis that began in the United States and other developed nations has spread and has decimated the world economy. Even countries with seemingly little to do with the loose lending and complex financial instruments that led to the credit bubble have been affected because economies, financial systems, and even public sentiments around the world are so intertwined. In today’s world, even social problems that occur in geographically distant locations are not so distant after all.

Now, I must point out that I don’t intend to be a doomsday preacher with these comments. Rather, I hope to make the case for the significance of social problems—from an ethical and a practical standpoint and with respect to both public policy and private life—and to argue that they cannot be ignored.

Why Innovation is the Key

In a lecture at a Stanford Graduate School of Business event, Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist focused on technologies with social as well as economic returns, poignantly stressed the gravity of the population growth situation as it relates to energy resources. By 2050, he pointed out, there will be nine billion people wanting the same lifestyle and the same energy consumption that five hundred million people in developed nations currently enjoy. “I suspect that in 2050 people won’t be turning down their thermostats as a way to survive [the massive energy demand],” he stressed. “We can’t conserve our way out of the problem.”⁶ In other words, a real solution to the problem will require more than simply incremental improvement; it will require revolutionary change through new technologies, new policies, and new methods of consumption. Again, he could have been talking about a number of other resources or other social problems. The essence of Khosla’s point: the threat posed by social problems demands innovative solutions to the problems.

Now, “innovation” is another term that is generally understood, but would also be well-served by definition to help us structure our thinking. Webster’s dictionary defines innovation roughly as “the act or process of introducing new methods, devices, etc.”⁷ A simpler, decidedly practical definition from Social Silicon Valleys: A Manifesto for Social Innovation is “new ideas that work.” Lead author Geoff Mulgan and his team differentiate innovation from “improvement,” which implies only incremental change, and from “creativity” or “invention,” which are vital to innovation but don’t encompass the implementation and diffusion involved in putting new ideas to work.⁸ The Stanford Social Innovation Review describes two key elements that allow a process or an outcome to be considered an innovation: 1) that it must be novel and 2) that it must represent an improvement—it must be either more effective or efficient than preexisting alternatives.⁹ Innovation, then, is at its core about new and better ideas implemented to achieve a goal. Furthermore, innovation can refer to the act or process of generating and implementing these new ideas as well as to the ideas or solutions themselves.

We are concerned, here, with innovation in the context of addressing social problems, or “social innovation.” The Stanford Social Innovation Review defines social innovation as "a novel solution to a social problem that is more effective, efficient, sustainable, or just than existing solutions and for which the value created accrues primarily to society as a whole rather than private individuals."¹⁰ By extension, social innovation can also refer to the act of developing such a solution. This definition adapts the concept of innovation for use in the social realm by adding the goals of justice and sustainability and the idea that society, not private interests, should be the primary beneficiary. The core of the idea—that innovation is about new and better ideas—remains.

One could argue that all of society’s progress can, at some level, be attributed to innovation. New forms of government, successful inventions like the computer or the car, the application of new understandings in science and math—all can be considered innovations because they represent new ideas aimed at achieving a goal. In a way, then, innovation can be viewed as the driver of progress.

Indeed, social innovations have been large contributors to the state of progress we currently enjoy. According to Social Silicon Valleys,

Looking back [in time] it is hard to find any field in which social innovation has not played an important role. The spread of the car, for example, depended not just on the technology of the internal combustion engine and modern production lines, but also on a host of associated social innovations: driving schools, road markings and protocols, garages, traffic wardens and speeding tickets, and more recently congestion charging systems.

Improvements in healthcare depended on innovations in medicine (including antibiotics) and surgery (from sterilization to keyhole surgery) but also on a host of other innovations including: public health systems to provide clean water and sewers; changing home habits to promote cleanliness in kitchens; new methods of measurement…; new organizational forms such as primary care practices and barefoot health services;…state regulation of food to promote safety, and more recently to cut sugar and salt contents; provision of meals to children in schools (which during some periods did more to advance health than any other single measure); national health services funded by taxpayers; [and] self help groups, and civil organizations for diseases such as Alzheimer’s…¹¹

Social innovations that have built the world as we know it can be found in countless other areas as well, from the internet and related standards and protocols, to open source methods like Wikipedia, to water treatment technologies, to carbon credit markets.

Going forward, we must continue to strive for innovations like these—ones that restructure or aim to restructure elements of society in ways that reduce negative byproducts. At the outset of the manifesto, Social Silicon Valleys outlines the importance of the imperative for innovation, advancing the view that “the development of social innovation [is] an urgent task—one of the most urgent there is. There is a wide, and probably growing, gap between the scale of the problems we face and the scale of the solutions on offer.”¹² Put another way, we need innovation to close this gap. Indeed, the Stanford Social Innovation Review holds that “ultimately, innovation is what creates social value.”¹³

Who, then, is responsible for social innovation? Initial reactions might be that social innovation happens mostly in non-profits/NGOs, but this is not true. Nor is it true that social innovation is the sole jurisdiction of enterprising individuals with new ideas and the passion to push them through. In fact, social innovation also occurs in areas like government programs, large and small businesses, academia, markets, and movements.¹⁴

Moreover, one of the keys to successful, large-scale change is collaboration, particularly between sectors. According to the Stanford Social Innovation Review,

We believe the most important implication [of our paper on social innovation] is the importance of recognizing the fundamental role of cross-sector dynamics: exchanging ideas and values, shifting roles and relationships, and blending public, philanthropic, and private resources…Most difficult and important social problems can’t be understood, let alone solved, without involving the nonprofit, public, and private sectors. We cannot even think about solving global warming, for example, [without involving companies] such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP p.l.c., national agencies such as the EPA and the Department of Energy, supranational governmental agencies such as the United Nations and the World Bank, and nonprofit groups such as Greenpeace and Environmental Defense…Interestingly, innovation blossoms where the sectors converge. At these intersections, the exchanges of ideas and values, shifts in roles and relationships, and the integration of private capital with public and philanthropic support generate new and better approaches to creating social value.”¹⁵

For these reasons, this blog will maintain a broad perspective of social innovation and will encourage a dialogue to facilitate the exchange of ideas that is so important.

Closing Thoughts

So far in this post (a “minifesto,” if you will), we have discussed what constitutes a social problem, why it is important that we solve these problems, and why innovation is crucial to developing sustainable solutions. Often, however, just as important as the development of solutions to problems, is the development of methods to mitigate the effects of the problems we seek to address. In our prior example of hunger, the world needs efforts to change the elements of society that give rise to hunger, but it also needs efforts to feed those in need of help in the meantime. While our discussion in this post may be predominantly phrased in the context of solutions to problems, the principle of social innovation applies to new and better methods of mitigation, as well.

Similarly, although our discussion thus far has framed our goals in terms of solutions to social problems, I would argue that, for practical purposes, it is also important to think in terms of “social opportunities.” There are many opportunities to create social value that we might overlook if we are too focused on searching for “problems.” Identifying a problem—both generally and within the framework of Jamrozik and Nocella’s definition—requires the identification of a situation or activity that is wrong or undesirable. Yet, some of the most beneficial innovations are revolutionary in the sense that they open peoples’ eyes to a reality that, previously, was not even conceived. Prior to the invention of the computer, for example, the fact that one couldn’t word process, browse the internet, send and receive email, edit digital photos, and play video games was not perceived as a problem because no one other than, perhaps, the most forward-thinking of visionaries had the slightest idea it was possible. The term “problem” is not an appropriate description of the status quo in these situations. Thinking in terms of “social opportunity,” on the other hand, opens the mind to possibilities above and beyond solutions to problems that are manifest. Keeping this in mind can help us drive social innovation.

The Think: Social Innovation Blog

We have developed, here, a framework for the perspective this blog will take with respect to the concept of social innovation. In subsequent posts, the purpose of this blog will be to share the inspiring ideas and helpful resources I encounter as I study and explore this field. My hope is that it will serve to facilitate the exchange of ideas that is so important to social innovation and that readers are inspired to internalize the motivation and mindset I would call the social innovation spirit. After all, “the world is already amply equipped to produce and disseminate ordinary innovations.” ¹⁶ We must improve, on the other hand, our ability to produce and disseminate social innovations. This is the Social Innovation Imperative.

¹ James Phills Jr., Kriss Deiglmeier, and Dale Miller, "Rediscovering Social Innovation," Stanford Social Innovation Review Fall 2008, 12 Feb. 2009 (http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/rediscovering_social_innovation/).

² Adam Jamrozik and Luisa Nocella, The Sociology of Social Problems: Theoretical Perspectives and Methods of Intervention, Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press 1998, 14 Feb. 2009 (http://books.google.com/books?id=J5erJArq5gEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Sociology+of+Social+Problems+jamrozik).

³ Jamrozik, et al.

⁴ KR Sridhar, “The Role of Entrepreneurship in Solving World Problems” Panel Discussion Podcast, Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar Series, 13 Feb. 2009 (http://www.spokenword.org/program/22056).

⁵ Carter Roberts, “Environmental Challenges & Profit Opportunities” Presentation Podcast, Social Innovation Conversations, 20 Feb. 2009 (http://www.spokenword.org/program/25321).

⁶ Vinod Khosla, “The Black Swans of Energy Invention” Presentation Podcast, Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders, 2 Feb. 2009 (http://www.spokenword.org/program/22017).

⁷ Michael Agnes, ed., Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, Foster City: IDG Books Worldwide, Inc., 2001.

⁸ Geoff Mulgan, et al., Social Silicon Valleys: A Manifesto for Social Innovation, London: The Basingstoke Press, 2006. (Can be ordered here: http://www.youngfoundation.org/publications/reports/social-silicon-valleys).

⁹ Phills, et al.

¹⁰ Phills, et al.

¹¹ Mulgan, et al.

¹² Mulgan, et al.

¹³ Phills, et al.

¹⁴ Mulgan, et al.

¹⁵ Phills, et al.

¹⁶ Phills, et al.

About This Blog

nicolas.takamine@thinksi.org (Nicolas Takamine) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 01:17:00 +0000

The Think: Social Innovation blog shares inspiring ideas, useful resources and proposes for conversation thoughts surrounding social innovation and the design and management of social profit organizations. These contributions aim to enrich the conversation around solutions to social problems and the pursuit of social opportunities.

In An Expansion on the Concept of the Social Innovation Imperative, I lay out a framework for this blog’s perspective on social innovation, including what it means and why we need it. In summary, social innovation is the process of (or product of) generating new and better solutions, the value of which is largely “social” in nature, versus economic in nature. We need it because our continued progress as a society depends on it—and because we need improvement in so many areas already. Many posts on this blog revolve around the inspiring ideas I encounter, which I hope can help lead to social innovation by sparking a connection between different ideas in the disparate contexts in which readers work.

Other posts relate to the design and management of organizations, generally within the social profit context. After all, organizations are often the vehicles of our efforts for social progress, and their effectiveness is therefore central to addressing the challenge.

In each post, I include links, where possible, to other resources discussing the idea being highlighted. My posts represent brief summaries and commentary and I encourage readers to review these resources themselves. Furthermore, because this blog represents a collection of the ideas I encounter as I explore the fields of social innovation and organization design and management, it is an evolving body of thought.

Please leave comments or respond in a blog post of your own; indeed, the richer the conversation, the healthier the fruit it will bear.