Think Social and Compete
Erin Green | February 23, 2010
Social innovation competitions are hitting the big time around the globe as more and more companies and organisations recognise the need for new approaches to social problems and the impact open and crowd-sourced solutions can have.
From the big guns of Pepsi, Google and Dell to the Da Vinci Quest, Unlimited and The Young Foundation, competitions (or challenges, or ‘big breaks’) are sprouting up around the world.
In Australia we’re seeing this movement come to life through projects like The Australian Social Innovation Exchange (ASIX) Social Innovation Camp (with it’s web & tech-based criteria) and The Australian Centre for Social Innovation’s (TASCI’s) Bold Ideas, Better Lives Challenge.
Both of these programs ask the public to think about the big issues facing their communities and their world and come up with new approaches to dealing with those issues. March is a big month in Australia with the launch of Bold Ideas, Better Lives Challenge on March 1 and the Social Innovation Camp on March 5-7.
One of the most exciting things about projects like the ASIX Social Innovation Camp or The Australian Centre for Social Innovation’s Bold Ideas, Better Lives Challenge isn’t the projects themselves (although they can be pretty exciting too) but the focus on disruptive innovation. About taking issues which have been challenging the policy wonks and the community at large and turning them upside down and inside out. It’s the breath of creativity, the fresh wind that stirs the cobwebs from our minds and shakes us out of our usual approaches.
The projects that are put forward in these competitions may not have the best approaches to addressing an issue – indeed, part of the value of these kinds of social innovation competitions is to tease out issues around implementation and impact – but the flair, the out-of-left-field nature of the ideas these forums encourage is integral to the growth of social innovation and its social impact.
In their original form these projects may or may not be a viable answer to the issues they’re hoping to address, but what they will do is spark dialogue, fresh thinking and develop new combinations of partners across a range of sectors to think differently about how we can create positive change in our communities.
So while I’m excited (and often moved) by some of the issues and ideas that projects like the Social Innovation Camp and Bold Ideas, Better Lives Challenge are addressing, the inspiration for me is the restructuring of the thinking (and doing) approach – the opening up of the creative thinking space – and the user-centred approach to addressing social problems.
Social innovation competitions are delivering a new space for interaction, experimentation and idea-play so pull out the butchers paper, sharpen those pencils and take up the challenge!
Erin Green is Program Manager at The Australian Centre for Social Innovation. In previous roles Erin has worked with Austraining International/AusAID on the Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development Program, for Volunteering for International Development from Australia (VIDA), CARE Australia, Oxfam Australia and the Arts Council of Mongolia.
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