An attempt to innovate – do something new to produce value — is always fraught with risk and a high likelihood that things won’t go as planned, which can leave people jaded toward future efforts. Whether that metaphor of jade is one of a rock (static) or a plant (growth) makes all the difference. Innovation is hot. …
Jaded: Whether You Are a Plant or a Stone Makes All the Difference Read More »
Doing new things to create social value means going into the great unknown, yet our fear of being lost need not prevent us from innovating, wisely and sustainably. Instead of being lost alone, we can be lost together. I’ve heard it all so many times before It’s all a dream to me now A dream to …
Look around and one will notice a lot of talk about social enterprise and social impact. Look closer and you’ll find a lot more of the former and far less of the latter. There’s a Buddhist-inspired phrase that I find myself reflecting on often when traveling in the social innovation/entrepreneurship/enterprise/impact sphere: Do not confuse the …
Change-making is the process of transformation and not to be confused with the transformed outcome that results from such a process. We confuse the two at our peril. “We are changing the world” is a rallying cry from many individuals and organizations working in social innovation and entrepreneurship which is both a truth and untruth at the …
Would we invest in something if we had little hard data to suggest what we could expect to gain from that investment? This is often the case with social programs, yet its a domain that has resisted the kind of data-driven approaches to investment that we’ve seen in other sectors and one theory is that we …
Collective impact is based largely on the concept that we can do more together than apart, which holds true under the assumption that we can coordinate, organize and execute as a unit. This assumption doesn’t always hold true and the implications for getting it wrong require serious attention. Anyone interested in social change knows that …
Collective action, impact, intelligence & stupidity Read More »
When we seek change the temptation is looking for ‘the key’ component of a problem or situation that, if changed, is expected to lead to profound transformation. Too frequently these type of solutions fail not because the change to the component is poor, but that the thinking is not aligned to the system that contributes …
Although Innovation is about producing value through doing something new or different than before, the concept is far from simple when applied in practice by individuals and institutions. This second in a series of articles on innovation ecology looks at the way we speak of innovation and how what we talk about new ideas and …
Social innovation is about bringing new ideas, products and services out into society with others for social benefit and improving the lives of our communities. While not every innovation will benefit everyone, there is a need to examine more deeply the question of who benefits(?) when we consider social innovation and that means taking some …
Social innovations are judged by their impact, but in the quest to assess what it does we can miss the way it does it and that is where justice and the emotional connections that justice deals with come into play. Unless we consider social justice a part of social innovation we are likely to exclude …
Social innovation, social justice and the emotional link between them Read More »
