Accelerating social changemakers: it’s all about the people
Martin Stewart-Weeks, Chair of the Australian Social Innovation Exchange (ASIX), reflects on the first year and where the organisation is headed next.
For the past couple of months, we’ve been thinking about who we are, what we do and what we want to achieve. Aided by Rachel Botsman and with great input from a number of people in the social innovation community, we’ve been refining the way ASIX should define its identity and purpose.
This blog post sets out the basic story. We’d be keen to hear from anyone with any thoughts and reactions to the way we’ve defined our identity and purpose. And if you haven’t already, sign up at the ASIX website and register as a ‘changemaker’, part of the steadily growing community of people becoming more active and engaged.
ASIX has had a busy start and some early successes. So a process of reflection was timely. Not that you want to do too much of that, of course – navel-gazing is rarely productive. But a little bit of time to think and regroup at this stage of a start-up venture is never a bad thing.
So a few things have become clear…
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The Innovation Exchange (ASIX) is all about the people. Our ambition is to create spaces and places where people with an often unusual mix of skills, resources, ideas and energy can connect and do business. But the emphasis is clear…as the ‘tagline’ suggests, we’re keen to ‘accelerate changemakers’, help people to be more successful faster than they might otherwise be on their own.
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We’ve also confirmed the need to create a platform for social innovation in Australia. What exactly does that mean? Well, it means that, rather than being direct players ourselves, we’re interested in making it easier for other changemakers – innovators, entrepreneurs, investors – to succeed. And we do that by making it easier to find each another. We’re in the business, I guess, of creating those spaces rather than trying to compete with the people who want to invent and create. Maybe “platform” isn’t quite the right word…maybe the analogy is more “town square” or even more basically, “shared space”.
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But whatever you call it, the space you end up creating is only as useful as the other people and the services, information and opportunities that you find when you get there. The space will grow more useful as those services and opportunities grow over time, often created by the very people who come to add their ideas and resources to the mix. ASIX can build or encourage some of those services and resources, and we’re defining some priority areas to concentrate on. We want to be almost a curator of this growing mix of services and assets that the social innovation community in Australia will build and share.
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Finally, as we thought about the best way to help, we confirmed our instinct to focus on people who are at the earliest stage of turning great ideas for social innovation into viable projects. Often the real gap is the inability to make relatively modest investments of time, finance and expertise to nurture the spark of creativity and passion into a sustained ‘burn’ of innovation that will go on and have a real impact. I think we can play a part in making that happen more systematically than it does at the moment.
So, our vision is
TO ENABLE AUSTRALIA’S CHANGEMAKERS TO ACCELERATE PIONEERING EARLY-STAGE IDEAS INTO POSITIVE SOCIAL CHANGE.
The key elements are all there – concentrate on people, connect to accelerate their success and try and help them as early in the process as possible.
To make that happen, our mission is
TO BUILD NETWORKS THAT CONNECT AUSTRALIA’S SOCIAL CHANGEMAKERS WITH THE RIGHT PEOPLE, TOOLS, INVESTMENTS AND KNOWLEDGE.
In other words, our work will be all about filling the ‘shared space’ with a rich and unusual mix of people, services and opportunities to which everyone can contribute.
And our values fell out naturally as we refined out ambition and focus…
…empowering, pioneering, making the process of connecting people more systematic, being as open and collaborative as possible and, crucially, learning and sharing more about what works and why.
The basic ASIX story is simple.
Like a lot of other countries, Australia has a pretty well developed system of innovation in science and industrial R&D. But we have barely started to think about approaching the urgent and often daunting tasks of social innovation with the same level of rigour.
We need to invent a social innovation system that makes it easier for innovators and entrepreneurs in the social space to have the kind of impact in this space that scientists, investors and inventors can have on our economic and science goals. ASIX is both a part of that emerging system and is keen to play a role, with many others, in helping to invent the system itself.
Similarly, we were spurred by the realisation that in Australia our problem often isn’t a dearth of ideas or passion. There are plenty of people and organisations out there who have plenty of both and a fair helping of commitment too.
The gap is knowing how to connect to others who have the skills, assets and energy that can turn an idea into action. ASIX can help to fill that gap and avoid the risk of good ideas going to waste for want of some early connection and modest investment.
And we’re driven too by a sense that innovators and entrepreneurs don’t have enough impact on our national conversations about the big social dilemmas and opportunities we face – climate change, new ways to learn and acquire skills, making our cities sustainable, redesigning our public and social services, for example. Too often they are fringe players in the mainstream debates about better ways to tackle the social dimension of our lives and our communities.
ASIX is part of a rising instinct for new thinking and action around these ideas. Working with a bunch of existing and new players, like, many of Australia’s successful nonprofit organisations and new ones like, the Australian Centre for Social Innovation and the School for Social Entrepreneurs, we think we can be part of the process.
First published at www.asix.org.au
In his consulting work over the past 18 years, Martin Stewart-Weeks has specialised in strategy, policy analysis, facilitation and market and social research. At Cisco, as Director for IBSG’s public sector practice in Asia-Pacific, he works at the senior executive and political level to help shape Internet business solutions and online strategies at both an agency and whole-of-government level. Martin has been a key member of the global team developing a new e-government framework, the ‘connected republic, for Cisco’s public sector work. Martin Chairs the Australian Social Innovation Exchange (ASIX).
foggy
August 31, 2010 at 4:56 pm
Spaces and places
It seems so exciting everything seems to be buzzing around Spatial.just thinking about the constancy of the original innovative idea! "help people to be more successful faster than they might otherwise be on their own" this is so true.it is the unwritten big network of feelings regarding the innovative ideas not getting anywhere.this is practically the same old story all round the globe,
but the thing is inorder to become practically viable the Bright idea like the novella adapted for a film story has to make certain sacrifices will the innovator be ready to accept this? and the coveted space which you offer him as sharing and connecting work starts growing around his idea,well will his space grow smaller.i feel he would be given a cell all to himself so that he can withdraw into it once in a while and er…take stock of the situation as regards his original idea and the sacrificed shavings from its top shape.looking forward to middle and late and ever successes in this great support venture.