Some Random Social Innovation Thoughts

Just a few random thoughts on reading Seeds of Innovation.
1. Vertical integration - Companies try to control other companies that comprise supply, distribution, and sales channels for the company. Nonprofits really don’t absorb others but the basic concept seems useful - team up to coordinate efforts at all stages of addressing a social problem. The example of homelessness came to mind. The descent into homelessness sometimes get interrupted by social service nonprofits. Other nonprofits provide services to the homeless. Some nonprofits try to help people transition successfully from homelessness to a home and stable job. The nonprofits in question are all trying to do something about homelessness, just at different phases of the person’s experience.
2. Skunk works - Aerospace giant Lockheed (now Lockheed-Martin I think) developed a couple of spy planes in a dedicated research and development unit that existed apart from the organization’s normal structure. Maybe nonprofits - I’m thinking or really big organizations or networks here - could establish skunk works to develop revolutionary new programs or technologies.
3. Suggestion boxes - Generic suggestion programs are generally a waste of time and resources. Focus a suggestion program on a certain campaign or event and solicit ideas relevant to that target.
4. External collaboration - Nonprofits work together, but they might need to spend time working with “customers,” business owners, teachers, local officials, or other stakeholders. The point is to work with people who can help, hinder, or benefit from an innovation to get their input on what innovations would work.
Many of the concepts could be used in a nonprofit or an activist group. Seeds was written with business people in mind, but the language of profit, customers, and marketing that she uses should be easily translatable.

Ways to Make Small-Scale Activism Efforts More Effective

This is from a press release I wrote and sent out in anticipation of the World Social Forum on Januray 26.

This is the very-long season of selling candidates and ideas, including a candidate’s ideas, a party’s ideas, or a group’s ideas for policies and programs. The usual methods of creating and selling political ideas are well known to political activists, though some simple principles for creating and selling ideas may have been overlooked.
Analyze Challenges – Ask plenty of questions about the nature of the issue, the social environment, and the likely solutions. Michael Michalko’s book Thinkertoys contains some of the best questions.
Define Good Ideas – The social environment, the time frame involved, and your organization’s resources will help define what counts as a good idea.
Steal Ideas – Look for ideas in advertising, products, commercial services, magazines, novels, government programs, and other organization’s projects.
Think Creatively – Use brainstorming techniques or systematic idea generation methods get new ideas. Many good creative thinking books describe idea generation techniques that are both effective and easy to use.
Think Design – Ideas have to fit the culture, economy, and political climate of the community. Test ideas for their fit with the social environment
Think Marketing – Ideas generally need to be sold. You need to raise money, recruit program participants or get people to vote for something by selling them on your idea’s benefits. Books on social marketing and on copywriting principles can help.
Find Leverage – Look for an audience, geographic location, or specific action that will have the greatest impact for the time and money that you can devote to a change effort. Focus on the highest impact focal point that you can identify.

Being a Better Advocate for Yoru Cause

Activists want to sell ideas - conservative ideas, liberal ideas, environmental ideas, and many other types of ideas. Social change necessarily depends on getting ideas and selling them effectively. Promoting new beliefs, laws, lifestyle choices, policies, programs, regulations, and values could (One hopes!) be done more effectively with the right tools and techniques applied at each stage of the process. This post is about new tools and techniques that can be used at each stage of the advocacy process.
1. Defining the Problem - What problem are you addressing here? What, specifically, do you want to accomplish? Thinkertoys and Cracking Creativity (both by Michael Michalko) describe some easy techniques for exploring a problem, or challenge if you like to keep things positive. Using one or two should give you a much clearer idea of what you want to do or need to do.
(If you are getting into the advocacy game after the challenge and general approach have been defined you can still use the tools and techniques referenced in the following sections.)
2. Defining a Good Idea - Take a few minutes ahead of time and think about the criteria that define a good idea. You need to at least spend a few minutes considering your audience, your resources, the social environment, and the timeframe in question.
3. Generating Ideas - Traditional, informal brainstorming could come into play at this stage. You know how to do that sort of brainstorming. You may not know about the many, many techniques that exist for generating ideas. Thinkertoys and Cracking Creativity describe many brainstorming tools. Try two of them, one traditionally “creative” and one systematic.
4. Evaluating Ideas - An informal process of comparing your list of ideas to the criteria that define a good idea. Many ideas are rather weak in their original form. Don’t worry about that! Take promising ideas and reinforce them. Mindtools.com offers some guidance on strengthening your ideas.
5. Deciding What to Do - Taking time to formally study a decision is usually a good idea. Some decisions are simple enough to make without much research or analysis. For the other decisions that come at you, there is a need to develop a formal method for deciding what to do. The “Decision Making” menu option at mind tools.com summarizes many decision analysis techniques.
6. Doing Something - This is the obvious last step in any advocacy effort. This is also a subject for another post. I’ll describe some principles and practices that can lead to better results.
Remember, even a small improvement (however defined) in two or three parts of the process could really make a difference! Who wants to study these techniques and apply them to a real project? I do!

Brainstroming and Social Change, Again

Last time I wrote about brainstorming techniques that would help social innovators and activists to get better results. This post builds on that idea with some advice on what sorts of social innovation or activism tasks can be helped by using various brainstorming techniques. You’ll need to do a little homework after reading this post, and might need a reference source while you read. I suggest http://www.mindtools.com/ for information on the brainstorming techniques I’ll mention here.

Here is my brief guide to common tasks and a brainstorming technique to use with each:

1. Advocacy - random input for demonstration tactics and messages
2. Education - morphological analysis for alternatives to the usual component parts
3. Fundraising - random input for strategy and tactics; provocations
4. Policy - morphological analysis, SCAMPER
5. Program design - provocations, morphological analysis, SCAMPER
6. Social marketing - random input, morphological analysis

Provocations and random input are described in Edward De Bono’s book Serious Creativity. Random input, SCAMPER, and morphological analysis are covered in Thinkertoys by Michael Michalko.