The many faces of social innovation
Social innovation is an instinct which shows little respect for distinctions of status or sector.
The debate about social innovation has reached an interesting point. In any ways, it has been a something of a "poor cousin" in many of the big debates about how we should tackle difficult social challenges that impact our life in common.
That’s not to say that people have not recognised and often welcomed the input to these debates from the non-profit sector or from those ventures supported in various forms of charity, corporate philanthropy or the more contemporary corporate social responsibility movement. But while those contributions have been encouraged, they have often remained peripheral to the main game of big public policy decisions and spending. At worst, the real significance of these contributions has been rendered invisible through a mixture of ignorance and misunderstanding.
In recent years, fuelled by frustration, anger and even despair, individuals and organisations have been driven to try something new in their response to the social need they witnessed or, in many cases, directly experienced. And often, these new ventures thrived in the space and places that fell between many of the larger and more traditional players – big government programs, corporate philanthropy or social responsibility and the usually thankless and tireless work of the voluntary community sector.
In many cases, these new responses, labelled with a variety of titles including social entrepreneurship, social enterprise and social innovation, deliberately set out to create responses that combined compassion and social action with hard-headed plans to put a business model in place that would take these initiatives from charity to sustainable venture. When you think about it, that’s how Grameen started or the Open University in the UK.
Right now, social innovation is becoming a more important, but still contested idea that is impatiently prospecting its role at the heart of public policy, motivated by the promise that its successful practice can have a growing impact on the ability to achieve social inclusion, better public services and economic resilience. Public policy needs social innovation (always has, of course). But now the search is more urgent and in some cases dramatic. Older people need new ways to engage in their communities and stay healthy and connected. Schools are failing too often and the demanding rhythms of lifelong learning are unsettling pretty much all of the inherited traditions and instincts of education. Cities are trying to square the sustainability triangle, investing in new services for economic growth, social inclusion and environmental sustainability. People with disabilities continue to face social, personal and economic barriers to their full participation in work, learning and employment, persistent shortcomings that impoverish the communities in which they live. And so on.
We have to up the ante on the social innovation instinct to think through these dilemmas to find some new ways of tackling them. Social innovation is an instinct which shows little respect for distinctions of status or sector. It doesn’t just belong to the nonprofit sector or to government. And it doesn’t belong to the universities or to the corporate world either. The impulse and insight on which successful social innovation relies can come from anywhere. But the success with which that spark ignites a larger fire of social change is likely to depend on new kinds of interaction between people, assets, knowledge and capabilities in the intersection of other sectors. That’s when it starts to get fun.
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)
