What is the Point of Social Innovation

I have made a few amendments to Martin's article (with additions in bold and deletions in italics below) to convey the dstinctions needed to make this piece a more accurate representation both of Charlie's presentation, and of the exchange which followed it to which Martin refers. Hopefully, these amendments will help illuminate the points of diifference - there are only four - I agree with the bulk of the article but there are some crucial points at which an elucidation of understandings may be helpful.

 Vern

What’s the point of social innovation?

//  UK innovation writer, thinker and practitioner Charlie Leadbeater was recently back in Australia.  Among his engagements he contributed to another in the series of Social Innovator Dialogues, co-hosted by CSI, the Australian Social Innovation Exchange (ASIX) and the Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI).  I didn’t get to the Adelaide and Melbourne sessions but I did help to design and host the session in Sydney where Charlie was joined by Matthew Landauer from Open Australian, Chris Quigley from digital democracy outfit Delib.co.uk and Tom Bentley, PM Gillard’s Deputy Chief of Staff.

If you didn’t catch the sessions, there are some video summaries of the main presentations and you can access them here.  In some of the presentations the audio is a little quiet but they will all repay time and attention. 

Subsequently, and largely as an exchange with Vern Hughes on the ASIX blog, there has been an interesting conversation about what constitutes social innovation, where it comes from and whether or not the title of the Dialogues – “Dancing with disruption: social innovation in government” – was something of an oxymoron.

This is not the place to rehearse the discussion in those exchanges, largely centred on Charlie’s framework of a Social Innovation Life World that is independent of the world of Public Services Management, with varying forms of interaction and relationship between them. Vern’s contention is that Charlie’s framework is poorly understood in Australia and largely absent from the discussion about social innovation here. Charlie’s examples of social innovation were drawn from the  “life world” of parents, neighbours and volunteers rather than from the initiatives of managers and consultants, and therefore present a different face and character from what usually is referred to as social innovation in Australia. to witness the true spirit of social innovation and not expect to see too much of it from the constrained, stultifying world of formal institutions and narrow managerialism.

But the discussion and the Dialogues have got me thinking (and that’s a good thing!). What is social innovation and where do you expect to find it? What good does it do and why are we so bothered about its direction and future?  What, exactly, is the point of social innovation?

These are some brief reflections which capture at least part of my reaction to the last couple of weeks…

1    The Social Innovation Life World is the primary source of initiatives that we might call Social Innovation. We can’t rely on formal institutions and organisations as a primary or consistent source of innovation (given that they are largely designed to keep things stable and predictable). What we can do is try to orient formal institutions to encourage and support – rather than stifle – initiatives that come from the Social Innovation Life World. but nor can we expect social innovation to be effective without them.

2    We have to find better ways to connect institutions and organizations with the largely self-organized networks and communities that surround them.  If it’s true that much mould-breaking innovation is going to emerge from the edge of large systems (often driven by the needs of customers, citizens and carers) the question is – how can we find and nurture those edges? How do we then spread their clever ideas so that their impact grows to match the scale of the problems and opportunities to which they might be an effective answer?

3    For some inside formal structures and institutions, including the public service, becoming more open to social innovation seems to risk some of the traditional benefits and conditions under which they work. 

Are we spending enough time thinking about the industrial and work change implications of a more porous “public purpose” sector that mixes and blends ideas, resources and expertise from across and between the different sectors?  Can we turn that thinking into some new propositions for those working in these blended, mixed-model structures and ventures?  What exactly are the new rules of these hybrid models and are we investing enough time and effort in their evolution so they can start infecting new practice?

4    I sometimes worry that for those inside government and the corporate sector, the social innovation “discourse’ (horrid word!) is something of a smokescreen for a rebadged discussion about the not-for-profit sector.  Do you think that’s unfair?  But if it’s even partially true, isn’t it likely that the challenge of finding new ways to work across old boundaries between government and non-government players will fail?

The not-for-profit sector is also guilty of equating Social Innovation with any activity that happens in the not-for-sector, and has an interest in disseminating this 'smokescreen'. Some social innovation initiatives are generated within this sector, but much of what the sector does is simply process management of program funding from government.

This is not just about looking for new models of consultation and collaboration.  There is a level of genuine co-working implied in the new conversation about social innovation that goes further.  The question is – in exactly what practical ways should it change the way public servants and those outside government engage and work together? This is particularly important in conceptualizing  the place and scope for citizens and users of services in the design and implementation of innovative solutions to pressing social issues. The not-for-profit sector does not necessarily have a central place in shaping this place and scope - the more citizen-centric not-for-profits will tend to participate in this innovation, while the more provider-centric service delivery organizations will tend to align themselves with the established order of things.

5    One of the most disruptive ideas implicit in the social innovation approach is the way we ask questions about the problems we’re trying to solve and the way we define possible solutions has to change. 

The assumption increasingly should be that ideas for better ways to do things will spark from the edge, not the centre.  Users and front line staff in the public and nonprofit sectors have to be commissioned, in a sense, to be innovators and disruptors.  But that means the centre has not only to tolerate the behaviour that goes with that approach but to positively encourage it.  And the centre needs to provision the information and communication systems that allow the quick and open exchange of ideas and knowledge back and from the edge to the centre.

The underlying need is for a new “settlement” that determines the relationship between government and the surrounding social innovation communities.  Working out that new settlement – culture, tools and platforms, regulation and rules – isn’t going to be easy.  Some of the implacable rhythms of the process of governing and of the political process, which tend to privilege predictability and control, are not going to easily yield their influence in the face of more open and connected ways of working.  Nor are they going to be comfortable with the inevitable dispersion of control and authority that a more porous or blended model of public work implies.

In their small way, the Dialogues suggest to me that the commitment to moving in this direction is growing.  So the question is how we maintain the momentum and ensure it is manifest in some practical changes to the way we think, work and act together.