SOCIAL INNOVATOR SERIES: WAYS TO DESIGN, DEVELOP AND GROW SOCIAL INNOVATION THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION Robin Murray Julie Caulier-Grice Geoff Mulgan 2 TITLE FOREWORD This volume – part of a series of methods and issues in social innovation – describes the hundreds of methods and tools for innovation being used across the world, as a first step to developing a knowledge base. It is the result of a major collaboration between NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) and the Young Foundation – two organisations that are committed to the role that social innovation can play in addressing some of the most pressing issues of our time. The Open Book presents a varied, vibrant picture of social innovation in practice and demonstrates the vitality of this rapidly emerging economy. It is fantastically rich, and demonstrates the diversity of initiatives being led by entrepreneurs and campaigners, organisations and movements worldwide. Together with the other volumes in this Series, we hope that this work provides a stronger foundation for social innovation based on the different experiences and insights of its pioneers. Like the social ventures it describes, we want this work to grow and develop. Your comments, thoughts and stories are welcome at the project website: www.socialinnovator.info Dr Michael Harris, NESTA Published March 2010 CONTENTS 1 CONTENTS Introduction 2 Section 1 The process of social innovation 11 1. Prompts, inspirations and diagnoses 14 2. Proposals and ideas 30 3. Prototyping and pilots 50 4. Sustaining 58 5. Scaling and diffusion 82 6. Systemic change 107 Section 2 Connecting people, ideas and resources 124 Section 3 Ways of supporting social innovation 141 1. Support in the public sector 146 2. Support in the grant economy 167 3. Support in the market economy 180 4. Support in the informal or household economy 195 Bibliography 209 Index 211 Acknowledgements 220 2 THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION INTRODUCTION Hands, courtesy of Old Ford School, Room 13. This book is about the many ways in which people are creating new and more effective answers to the biggest challenges of our times: how to cut our carbon footprint; how to keep people healthy; and how to end poverty. It describes the methods and tools for innovation being used across the world and across different sectors – the public and private sectors, civil society and the household – in the overlapping fields of the social economy, social entrepreneurship and social enterprise. It draws on inputs from hundreds of organisations to document the many methods currently being used around the world. The materials we’ve gathered here are intended to support all those involved in social innovation: policymakers who can help to create the right conditions; foundations and philanthropists who can fund and support; social organisations trying to meet social needs more effectively; and social entrepreneurs and innovators themselves. In other fields, methods for innovation are well understood. In medicine, science, and to a lesser degree in business, there are widely accepted ideas, tools and approaches. There are strong institutions and many people whose job requires them to be good at taking ideas from inception to impact. There is little comparable in the social field, despite the richness and vitality of social innovation. Most people trying to innovate are aware of only a fraction of the methods they could be using. INTRODUCTION 3 This book, and the series of which it is a part, attempt to fill this gap. In this volume, we map out the hundreds of methods for social innovation as a first step to developing a knowledge base. In the other volume of the Social Innovator series, we look at specific methods in greater depth, exploring ways of developing workable ideas and setting up a social venture in a way that ensures its financial sustainability; and that its structures of accountability, governance and ownership resonate with its social mission.1 We have also launched an accompanying website, www.socialinnovator.info, to gather comments, case studies and new methods. We’re also very conscious of what’s not in here. This is very much a first cut: there are many methods we haven’t covered; many parts of the world that aren’t well represented (including Africa and the Middle East); and many which we’ve only been able to describe in a very summary form. The field we cover is broad. Social innovation doesn’t have fixed boundaries: it happens in all sectors, public, non-profit and private. Indeed, much of the most creative action is happening at the boundaries between sectors, in fields as diverse as fair trade, distance learning, hospices, urban farming, waste reduction and restorative justice. Nevertheless, definitions have their place. Our interest is in innovations that are social both in their ends and in their means. Specifically, we define social innovations as new ideas (products, services and models) that simultaneously meet social needs and create new social relationships or collaborations. In other words, they are innovations that are both good for society and enhance society’s capacity to act.2 The context for social innovation Why has social innovation moved centre stage over the last decade? The main reason is that existing structures and policies have found it impossible to crack some of the most pressing issues of our times – such as climate change, the worldwide epidemic of chronic disease, and widening inequality. Intractable social problems The classic tools of government policy on the one hand, and market solutions on the other, have proved grossly inadequate. The market, by itself, lacks the incentives and appropriate models to solve many of these issues. Where there are market failures (due to non-competitive markets, externalities or public 4 THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION goods), these tasks have fallen either to the state or civil society. However, current policies and structures of government have tended to reinforce old rather than new models. The silos of government departments are poorly suited to tackling complex problems which cut across sectors and nation states. Civil society lacks the capital, skills and resources to take promising ideas to scale. Rising costs The prospective cost of dealing with these issues threatens to swamp public budgets, and in the case of climate change, or healthcare in the US, private budgets as well. To take only one instance, if radical policies cannot stem the increase in chronic diseases, the cost of healthcare is forecast to rise from 9 per cent to 12.5 per cent of GDP in the UK in 15 years and, according to the US Congressional Budget Office, from 16 per cent of GDP in 2007 to 25 per cent in 2025, rising to 37 per cent in 2050. As in climate change, pollution control, waste reduction, poverty and welfare programmes, and other fields such as criminal justice or traffic congestion, the most effective policies are preventative. But effective prevention has been notoriously difficult to introduce, in spite of its apparent economic and social benefits. Old paradigms As during earlier technological and social transformations, there is a disjunction between existing structures and institutions and what’s needed now. This is as true for the private as for the social economy. New paradigms tend to flourish in areas where the institutions are most open to them, and where the forces of the old are weak. So, for example, there is more innovation around self-management of diseases and public health than around hospitals; more innovation around recycling and energy efficiency than around large scale energy production; more innovation around public participation than in parliaments and assemblies; and more innovation around active ageing than around pension provision. An emerging social economy Much of this innovation is pointing towards a new kind of economy. It combines some old elements and many new ones. We describe it as a ‘social economy’ because it melds features which are very different from economies based on the production and consumption of commodities. Its key features include: • The intensive use of distributed networks to sustain and manage INTRODUCTION 5 relationships, helped by broadband, mobile and other means of communication. • Blurred boundaries between production and consumption. • An emphasis on collaboration and on repeated interactions, care and maintenance rather than one-off consumption. • A strong role for values and missions. Two themes – sometimes clashing, sometimes coinciding – give it its distinctive character. One comes from technology: the spread of networks; creation of global infrastructures for information; and social networking tools. The other comes from culture and values: the growing emphasis on the human dimension; on putting people first; giving democratic voice; and starting with the individual and relationships rather than systems and structures. Much of this economy is formed around distributed systems, rather than centralised structures. It handles complexity not by standardisation and simplification imposed from the centre, but by distributing complexity to the margins – to the local managers and workers on the shop floor, as well as to the consumers themselves. As a result, the role of the consumer changes from a passive to an active player: to a producer in their own right. Retail purchases that have been cast as the end point of the linear process of mass production are redefined as part of a circular process of household production and reproduction. The so- called consumer doubles as a domestic producer – a cook, a mother, a carer, a shopper, a driver, a nurse, a gardener, a teacher or student – entailing so much of what makes us human. This domestic sphere has previously been seen as outside the economy, as too complex and ungovernable, but has now come to be recognised as economically critical, with all the needs for support, tools, skills and advice that being a producer entails.