What is social innovation?
A few weekends ago we had 9 stellar EWBers in Toronto from across the country in the second gathering of EWB’s inaugural Social Change Entrepreneurship Competition. As part of this working weekend, each social change entrepreneur has access to one-on-one mentoring from a remarkable group of social and business leaders in Toronto, including Edward Greenspon, Matt Strand, Ryan Merkley, Suzanne Stevens, Anil Patel, Dev Ajula, and Celia Cruz.
One theme certainly ran throughout the weekend, and that was this concept of social innovation. To provide some clarity around this theme, Tim Draimin, who is the executive director of Social Innovation Generation (http://sigeneration.ca/), spent a lunch with us talking about his experience in social change. I didn’t take diligent notes, but I did write down a few very interesting ideas:
What is social innovation?
At its core, a social innovation is an idea that substantially and sustainably changes the flow of authority in a social system. Social innovations get to the heart of our complex and seemingly intractable problems to create a new normal that is more resilient and has more justice.
When I think about this in the context of EWB, having the amazing network of student chapters and leaders across Canada is a social innovation. By virtue of their passion, ideas and level of activity, EWB student leaders at these chapters have changed the flow of authority in engineering faculties nationwide. Canadian engineering professors and administrators are more aware and actively engaged with global issues, whether it’s implicit in what they teach or how they approach engineering problems, or whether it’s through changing engineering curriculum.
Clearly social innovations are necessary for change, and so it’s interesting to keep what’s at their core in the back of our minds while working in the social change space.
Phases of social innovation
Tim had a really interesting observation from his experience: That social innovations generally happen at the margins and between the silos. For example, the great organization Roots of Empathy turned education on its head by making infants the “teachers”. The remarkable founder of this organization, Mary Gordon, brought early childhood development theory and practice into a traditional classroom, merging two previously siloed areas with excellent results.
Because social innovations are generative and often disruptive to existing structures, their acceptance by the “mainstream” is often a rocky ride. This is typical of any new ideas that force a new equilibrium in society − think about something as uncontroversial today as women’s suffrage:
First, the idea is ignored: The late 19th century saw the beginning of a movement in Ontario for women’s right to vote (by Dr. Emily Howard Stowe), which was eventually granted for municipal elections in 1884 (for widows and spinsters). But at this time the movement was under the radar and the issue was seen as a non-issue by society.
But then momentum built up in provincial capitals around the country, and with it opposition. There were dozens of women’s groups involved in the last decade of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th century, and dozens of motions were defeated in parliaments around the country. The order was being challenged by a new idea, and it was roundly opposed. There was attention to this issue, and even changes at the municipal level to allow women to vote that had been made previously, were being repealed amidst protest.
Slowly, small wins built up. More municipalities allowed widows and spinsters to vote, and even a few allowed unmarried women. Then in 1910 Alberta allowed widows and spinsters the right to vote, and this idea (that in the absence of an available male vote, a woman’s vote would be allowed) started to become more widely adopted through the country. The needle on this issue was moved ever so slowly along, with Manitoba the first province to allow all women to vote in 1916. Other provinces followed, and in 1919 the right to vote at the federal level was extended to all women.
With broad adoption, and elections happening in which women were voting (for over 2 decades), woman’s suffrage entered the final phase of social innovation and became a normalized idea that had set a new equilibrium in Canada (except of course for Quebec which shamefully and shockingly did not grant women the right to vote until 1940).
These are typical phases for many innovations, but particularly defined for social innovations which challenge at a core level some fundamental truths in society.
Brief final thoughts and questions:
I’m asking myself, what is the social innovation that EWB is trying to create, particularly in Canada? I believe there are at least two:
1) We’re trying to redefine the relationship that Canadians, our governments, our institutions and our companies have with Africa’s people, institutions and governments.
2) We’re hoping to shift engineers and the engineering profession to organize around the principle that their role is to serve a global society.
In my analysis, we’re now kind of in the “ignore” phase #1, and perhaps just entering the “opposition” phase of #2. I’m thinking a lot about what this means as we move our work forward.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by George Roter, spark club. spark club said: reading an excellent description on social innovation by @geroter of Engineers w/out Borders Canada http://bit.ly/3kQ14k [...]
Quite thought provoking. It lead me to the following rather lengthy and potentially disjointed set of thoughts.
I agree that social innovation is what EWB is all about, in Canada as well as in Africa.
I think the key is to be able to consistently point out the injustice that needs to be addressed. Social innovation that does not have a clear link to a recognizable injustice will not easily overcome the motivating force behind the continuing injustice.
The vote for women was indeed a difficult battle to win because men did not wish to give up their control. However, it was difficult for the men to defend their efforts to deny the women the right to vote.
EWB can make steps forward by explaining how a business can benefit from dealing more fairly with the less fortunate in areas where they operate (social responsibility). Training and enabling the less fortunate to be more self-sufficient can produce tangible benefits for a business. However, that will only provide a portion of the required change – and perhaps the only achievable amount of change.
Maximizing the ability of Africans, and other less fortunate people, to become self-sufficient will require the fortunate to give up some of their advantage.
Though some economists will claim that economic growth is a game where all will win, that only holds true if no one tries to gain advantage over others. Competition changes the idealism of “all will win” into “all have a chance to win – but many will lose – and the winners get to set the rules to their further advantage”. Also, economic growth that results in the growth of environmental impacts is unsustainable.
The real change would involve people understanding the benefits of cooperating for everyone’s mutual interest (acting with consideration for others and with sustainable environmental impacts), rather than competing to gain maximum benefit over others. This will be difficult because the competitive among us already have significant power and will try to maintain their advantage. They will believe they have done better because they did better than those they gained advantage over. But they will not understand that they may have ended up doing more poorly than they and all the others would have if they had cooperated fairly. They will not likely be willing to “give it a try”.
The real challenge is to try to change the attitudes of those who see the world and life as a competition to maximize personal benefit rather than a cooperative effort to benefit all including future generations. Though some will claim that competition is a basic human characteristic research has shown that altruism and competition are both inherent human characteristics. The dominance of one characteristic over the other is probably the result of upbringing and circumstance. Many societies place a high value on competition. Many of these societies became more powerful and wealthy than others. How the world would have developed if the cooperative people ruled and effectively limited the impacts of those who tried to gain personal advantage (the competitive people), cannot be proven because competition has generally ruled the societies of our recorded history (including communist and socialist societies). The only exceptions are the Kalahari Bushmen and other isolated groups that had no benefit to be gained by taking advantage of others, or needing to compete for resources.
Creating the social innovation of a cooperative and considerate population powerful enough to overcome the resistance of the competitive and the greedy is worth striving for, but will be quite a challenge.
There are many other organizations striving globally for this same goal. Together, they might be able to make this desired social innovation a reality.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by geroter: What is Social Innovation? Some thoughts from my newest blog post: http://bit.ly/VnxKY…
Updated thoughts in my earlier post:
My comments regarding competition need more explanation. A person who strives to be the best they can be, fairly and competitively, is not the problem. The ones who will use any method or opportunity to gain advantage are the problem.
The following is an update of part of my previous post attempting to incorporate this thought.
… Though some economists will claim that economic growth is a game where all will win, that only holds true if no one tries to gain advantage over others. Those who will use any method or opportunity to gain advantage change the idealism of “all will win” into “all have a chance to win – but many will lose – and the winners get to set the rules to their further advantage”. Also, economic growth that results in the growth of environmental impacts is unsustainable.
The real change would involve people understanding the benefits of competing fairly and cooperating for everyone’s mutual interest (acting with consideration for others and with sustainable environmental impacts), rather than competing to gain maximum benefit over others. This will be difficult because the greedy and devious among us already have significant power and will try to maintain their advantage. They will believe they have done better because they did better than those they gained advantage over. But they will not understand that they may have ended up doing more poorly than they and all the others would have if they had been fair. They will not likely be willing to “give it a try”.
The real challenge is to try to change the attitudes of those who see the world and life as a competition to maximize personal benefit rather than a cooperative effort to benefit all including future generations. Though some will claim that competition is a basic human characteristic research has shown that altruism and competition are both inherent human characteristics. The dominance of one characteristic over the other is probably the result of upbringing and circumstance. Many societies place a high value on competition but have inadequate methods of limiting the action of cheaters. Many of these societies became more powerful and wealthy than others. How the world would have developed if the fair and cooperative people ruled and effectively limited the impacts of those who used any means to gain personal advantage, cannot be proven because such competition has generally ruled the societies of our recorded history (including communist and socialist societies). The only exceptions are the Kalahari Bushmen and other isolated groups that had no benefit to be gained by taking advantage of others, or needing to compete for resources.
Creating the social innovation of a cooperative, considerate and fairly competing population powerful enough to overcome the resistance of those who try to win any way that they can is worth striving for, but will be quite a challenge…