Wicked Problems, Hybrid Solutions, and the Rhetoric of Civic

Article Journal of Business and Technical Communication 2017, Vol. 31(3) 290-318 When Is a Solution ª The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Not a Solution? DOI: 10.1177/1050651917695538 Wicked Problems, journals.sagepub.com/home/jbt Hybrid Solutions, and the Rhetoric of Civic Entrepreneurship Jeffrey M. Gerding1 and Kyle P. Vealey2 Abstract This article examines the ongoing development of +POOL, a recreational pool, filtration system, and floating laboratory, to better understand the rhetorical work involved in civic entrepreneurship. The authors consider how the overall development of +POOL as an entrepreneurial venture might help expand the inventive possibilities for civic entrepreneurs coming to grips with wicked problems today. The study offers a look into the rhetorical work of civic entrepreneurship by examining the way +POOL develops a hybrid solution, which recognizes and foregrounds the notion that wicked problems, such as the pollution of the East River, can never be fully understood or known at any one moment. Hybrid solutions, then, offer stable outcomes for civic entrepreneurial ventures that are dynamic enough 1Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA 2West Chester University, West Chester, PA, USA Corresponding Author: Kyle P. Vealey, West Chester University, 720 S. High Street, West Chester, PA 19383, USA. E-mail: [email protected] Gerding and Vealey 291 to continually adapt to the shifting and evolving contours of a wicked problem. Keywords civic entrepreneurship, wicked problems, rhetoric, technical communication The studying of New York’s 6th borough—the rivers—is half the journey to swimming in it. ( POOL, n.d.b) þ For 6 months in 2014, Float Lab—a small platform installed in New York City’s Hudson River—collected water quality readings and posted them online in real time. Positioned adjacent to Pier 40 in Hudson River Park, this unassuming blue dock contained two large rectangular slots for water filtration systems as well as submerged sensors used to test the river water. During that 6-month period, sensors provided a live streaming of current river conditions and collected a range of data, including salinity, turbidity, chlorophyll and dissolved oxygen levels, rainfall, wind direction, wind temperature, and water temperature. Samples from the two filtration systems were also tested for enterococcus, a bacterium largely found in the human digestive tract. This last detail is particularly important because the primary contaminant of both the Hudson and East River is not industrial pollution, but human waste (Castle,2014).NewYorkCity,likemany municipalities, uses a Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) system, which collects sewage, rainwater, and other wastewater and redirects all of it to water treatment facilities. During heavy rainstorms, “the capacity of the sewer system may be exceeded and the excess water will be discharged directly to a water body (rivers, streams, estuaries, and coastal waters)” (CSO, n.d., para. 2). As a result, on particularly rainy days, the level of harmful enterococcus bacteria in the water spikes significantly as untreated wastewater is pumped directly into the river. Float Lab is a key part of POOL, a civic entrepreneurial venture involving the collaboration of architects,þ designers, engineers, artists, and researchers. Over the course of the past few years, the creators of POOL—Dong-Ping Wong, Oana Stanescu, Archie Lee Coates IV, and Jeffreyþ Franklin—have publicly campaigned to develop the world’s first floating structure that would simultaneously serve as a community recreational pool, a large-scale water filtration system, and an independent laboratory for the collection of real-time data on water pollutants (see Figure 1). In 292 Journal of Business and Technical Communication 31(3) Figure 1. Google Map showing the location of +POOL’s Float Lab. its current form, POOL offers a highly sophisticated approach to better understanding and,þ ultimately, developing a sustainable solution to the increasingly high levels of harmful bacteria and pollution in the East River. POOL’s development of Float Lab was not intended to provide definitive answersþ about the sources of pollution, nor was it meant to be a catchall solution for eradicating water pollutants. Rather it was intended to provide a way of understanding pollution in the East River as what Rittel and Webber (1973) called a wicked problem. Rittel and Webber developed their notion of wicked problems by first differentiating them from tame problems, which comprise “definable, Gerding and Vealey 293 understandable, and consensual” situations that can be remedied (p. 156). The moniker wicked,bycontrast,designatesproblemsthatareexceedingly complex, ill-defined, and rife with uncertainty. With such blurry boundaries, wicked problems cannot be definitively explained or defined, and thus resist being pinned down and ultimately solved. In attempting to grapple with the wicked problem of water pollution in the East River, the developers of POOL undoubtedly faced a deeply rhetorical dilemma: How do you persuadeþ or motivate people to be financially and socially invested in a problem that, by definition, cannot be solved? In this article, we examine the ongoing development of POOL to better understand the rhetorical work involved in civic entrepreneurship.þ We consider how the overall development of POOL—as a recreational pool, filtration system, and floating laboratory—mightþ help us expand the inventive possibilities for civic entrepreneurs coming to grips with wicked problems today. Traditional understandings of civic entrepreneurship often depict civic entrepreneurs as highly skilled in cultivating what Waddock and Post (1991) described as “the necessary vision, drive, and resources to galvanize the efforts of a large, complex network of individuals and organizational actors toward resolution of a complex problem [emphasis added]” (p. 394). In other words, as reflected in both scholarly and popular depictions, the work of civic entrepreneurs involves identifying complex social problems, reframing them as opportunities for intervention, and directly implementing a solution that provides closure to a particular matter of concern. Our study offers an alternative account of civic entrepreneurship by examining the way POOL develops what we call a hybrid solution,which recognizes andþ foregrounds the notion that wicked problems, such as the pollution of the East River, can never be fully understood or known at any one moment. Such problems, as Rittel and Webber (1973) suggested, cannot be definitively formulated because their boundaries are always shifting and evolving. As a result, the creators of POOL sought to design a hybrid solution that offers a stable outcome forþ the civic entrepreneurial venture (i.e., the construction of a self-filtering community pool in the East River) that is also dynamic enough to continually adapt to the shifting and evolving contours of a wicked problem (i.e., through the ongoing collection of water pollutant data for scientific research). Ultimately, we argue that civic entrepreneurship involves the deeply rhetorical work of designing hybrid solutions that may not necessarily resolve or provide closure to complex social problems but that instead continually adapt and evolve to keep pace with them. Our rhetorical analysis of POOL is not meant to be generalizable across all entrepreneurial ventures;þ rather, we situate crowdfunding as an 294 Journal of Business and Technical Communication 31(3) exemplary model of civic entrepreneurship, one that foregrounds the deeply rhetorical work involved in developing and soliciting financial and social support for a hybrid solution. That is, like others (Bracken Scott, 2016; Dorpenyo, 2015; Kedrowicz & Taylor, 2016; Rice, 2016; Salvo, Pflug- felder, & Prenosil, 2010), we ground our discussion in POOL as a rhetorical artifact, specifically examining how POOL providesþ a generative way of understanding the role that rhetoricþ plays in the day-to-day work of civic entrepreneurship. Moreover, by bringing to light the vast array of rhetorical activities involved in POOL, we further demonstrate the vital role that rhetoric and technical communicationþ play in civic entrepreneurship—beyond that of delivering a persuasive pitch to investors or a proposal to stakeholders. Ultimately, we suggest that the work of rhetoric and technical communication can be seen throughout the entire development of POOL as a hybrid solution, from the initial construction of water pollution asþ a wicked problem and the iterative process of testing filters to the design of public campaigns for raising financial and social support via crowdfunding and the development of relationships with members of the community, local government agencies, and environmental advocacy groups. First, we situate our analysis at the intersection of technical communication and entrepreneurial scholarship, focusing in particular on the core characteristics of social and civic models of entrepreneurship. Second, we examine POOL as an ongoing civic entrepreneurial venture to demonstrate howþ hybrid solutions function within large civic crowdfunding campaigns. We then unpack the notion of hybrid solutions and argue that they comprise both stable and dynamic components that help establish the cred- ibility of a civic entrepreneurial venture while also allowing it to continually adapt to the ever-shifting contours of wicked problems. Third, we

Load more