The Global Ideas Blog

User-led (social) innovation?

A long, long time ago, I remember stumbling across Eric Von Hippel's "Democratizing Innovation" and having a light-bulb moment of connection with what the Global Ideas Bank is all about....user-led social innovation. The book outline is still in the drawer, but good to see others pushing this agenda. Most recently, NESTA, who are increasingly interested in this terrain, invited the erstwhile Mr Von Hippel over to discuss this very topic.

David Wilcox was there, and posted about the event (including a video interview with the man himself): "he confirmed for me that celebrating and encouraging bottom-up ways to improve products is one of the best hopes we have for the future"...and, one might add, non-product social inventions as well. Although that raises a whole different range of issues over IP etc.

NESTA themselves, in the form of Richard Halkett, posted about the event: "How do we build policy to support user-led innovation?", to which one might reasonably say "Surely the question should be 'how can we best support those users to lead innovation?' " Anyway, interesting stuff here as well: "if users are often innovators, it’s good for all of us if the state doesn’t prevent them from doing more of this in the future"...and amen to that.

Which type of innovator are you?

Global Ideas Bank was at the Skoll World Forum of Social Entrepreneurship the other week, under our alter ego. One of the themes was 'social innovation' which meant, in this context, discussing different routes to achieving social change (rather than just the route of the social entrepreneur). It was interesting stuff, with Geoff Mulgan of the Young Foundation giving his take on this, and then David Galenson, who I found pretty interesting.

Essentially, his research has shown him that there are two types of innovator: the conceptual, genius innovator (eg. Mozart) and the incremental, experiential innovator (eg. er....Clint Eastwood, Louise Bourgeois etc.). The Wikipedia link above has most of the detail, but it's an interesting reminder that innovation comes in different shapes and sizes, particularly as it tends to be viewed as conceptual most of the time, rather than incremental. Indeed, in some areas, it has almost come close to being viewed as novelty (see the initiative-itis of a lot of governments who are impatient and not prepared to incrementally tweak and refine).

There's also a neat article on Galenson in Wired, which puts him firmly in the 'experimental' camp....whether this idea merits two books, I can't say, but let me know if you've read either.

Cowbins: greening the land

Sometimes all it takes is one stroke of genius: a wind-up radio, an open university, a car that runs on electricity and.....painting bins to look like cows. That's right, in Lewisham they've trialled a project called Feed the Cows which painted  large recycling bins to look like cows. Or  as they put it:

"[the partners] have turned ordinary recycling bins into a look-alike herd of cows, set in a look-alike tranquil field, in the heart of the hustle and bustle of New Cross."

Or, as the mayor of Lewisham calls it in his quote, "Moo Cross". Bad puns and mockery aside, though, sometimes the most effective ideas are the simplest. According to this article, the project has increased recycling by 61% in just three months, and Hackney Council are ordering in 200 more....a veritable herd.

Unfortunately, my council prefers the stick to the carrot, and is putting cameras in baked bean tins to tackle persistent waste offenders. Complete madness, of course, but at least it led to the inspired headline in one paper this morning of "Beans Means Fines"....

[thanks to Jake for spotting the cows....]

Dumb crowds and innovation lessons

The Global Ideas Bank was lucky enough, when it started off as a website, to have the backing of a pretty amazing web guy: Flemming Funch, who set up and ran the New Civilization Network. Flemming now lives in the south of France, and blogs under the marvellous title of Ming the Mechanic. Always worth a read, particularly when Flemming gets on a (blog) roll, as he is at present.

So a couple of great articles via Ming the Mechanic:

- The Dumbness of Crowds is a great little piece about the difference between "collective intelligence" and "dumbness of crowds". Such as:

"Collective intelligence" is a pile of people writing Amazon book reviews.

"Dumbness of Crowds" is a pile of people collaborating on a wiki to collectively author a book...

For all those (such as myself) who got carried away by the wisdom of crowds....... (see sundry previous blog posts!)

- Ming also points to a great article on Innovation Tools (which I foolishly stopped taking the feed from) asking their readers what they learned about innovation in 2006; lots of good and interesting stuff here too.... such as:

"Passion is the linchpin to innovation. "Innovation" is a big fat generic concept in most corporations... like "God" or "life on other planets" or "empowerment." Unless the individuals within a given corporation have a genuine sense of urgency, personal ownership and passion for innovation, nothing significant will happen. Innovation begins within the mind of each person. Corporate initiatives that don't awaken the basic human instinct to innovate within each individual will be doomed" - Mitch Ditkoff

Making your idea stick

 

 

Guy Kawasaki has a great interview/discussion of a new book which should be on the bookshelf of all inventors/entrepreneurs in the coming year: Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (NB - not yet available in the UK, but coming soon...). It's clear that it has connotations/lessons for marketers and brand creators, but there is also no reason why much of this couldn't apply to social inventors, and other types of idea.

 

 

Apparently, there are six key principles to an idea becoming 'sticky'; as the authors put it:

"For example, JFK’s idea to “put a man on the moon in a decade” had all six of them:

1. Simple A single, clear mission.

2. Unexpected A man on the moon? It seemed like science fiction at the time.

3. Concrete Success was defined so clearly—no one could quibble about man, moon, or decade.

4. Credible This was the President of the U.S. talking.

5. Emotional It appealed to the aspirations and pioneering instincts of an entire nation.

6. Story An astronaut overcomes great obstacles to achieve an amazing goal."

So there you go: SUCCES (sic) will come nice and easy....I have to say I respect the authors for not simply adding a seventh principle beginning with an S....
There are some other interesting points as well. A few quotes to chew on:

"Bottom line, there’s less evangelism than there probably should be."

"People in their 40s have MySpace pages. That can’t be good and it might leave room for a hipper niche player."

"No one teaches engineers or entrepreneurs or chemistry professors how to make their ideas stick"

"Our book was written for a type of problem, not a type of person. The problem is this: When you have an important idea, how do you communicate it in a way that has impact? How do you construct a great idea?"

All good stuff: and worth trying Guy K's 'stickiness aptitude test' as well. What score will you get in your SAT?

Your Name on Toast

What better way to start the New Year than with an utterly ridiculous/brilliant piece of web goofery/charity work. As the name suggests, Your Name on Toast takes the Million Dollar Home Page idea of 'paying for creative advertising on a site that will get lots of traffic' and does this through writing your name....on toast. It is also promising to donate all its profits to charity which makes it a socially-beneficial idea. I can feel the spin-offs/copycats coming already.....

Global Warming Student Speakout

Erstwhile GIB collaborator Greg Wright brings the following to my attention, the Global Warming Student Speakout, from Google Education and Global School Net. Basically, it's a big brainstorm to be held in classrooms across the US (though i guess it could go wider?) to come up with "strategies for fighting global warming -- and have their ideas published in a full-page ad in the Washington Post" (the top 50).

As part of the page, they also have a link to a Google Doc of brainstorming resources, which may be of interest...

Springwise

It's been a while, and much to catch up on, but wanted to start with a new addition to my "blogs to watch"....which is Springwise, a site of new business ideas for entrepreneurial minds. I signed up for the Non-profit / Social cause feed, and instantly received posts about 10 great projects....including:

- the Playpump
- low cost flat-pack coffins for emergency situations
- Mobile schools (from Belgium...)
- Mobile libraries (in Brazil)

and so on....what a great find. Ironically, Springwise is an offshoot of Trendwatching, which I suppose goes to show that I wasn't really....

Hard-wired to creativity

Couple of interesting pieces that have got me thinking about creativity and ideas, and their relationship to new technology, appeared in Wired magazine over the last few days.

The first, The Problem with Brainstorming, is something of an anti-brainstorming rant, but also, intriguingly, shows how the anonymity of the internet can help remove some of those barriers....I like the idea of masks and self-mediation helping promote our ability to invent and 'ideate' (is that a word?) or to remove obstacles to us being able to do so....do idea authors on the GIB feel freer to range widely if they use a pseudonym than if their name were put to it? Is the internet key to the liberation?

The second, Brain Teasers, is related to something we've covered in the past: using games to train the brain. [See this piece on using video games to treat attention deficit disorder] Now Nintendo are bringing out a game aiming to do exactly that: train your brain with puzzles and IQ-like exercises....

Social Silicon Valleys: the worlds of social innovation

A brief post to note that the Young Foundation have put up a draft of their social innovation overview / manifesto, Social Silicon Valleys. [please note: it's'a big pdf.....]. It's a very interesting, coherent approach to starting to methodically think about how, why, and where social innovation occurs (and in what ways...). It rightly identifies a lack of research in this specific field (though futurist studies, 'general' innovation research and social entrepreneurship studies inevitably crossover into / form part of that world) as something that needs to be addressed....which the YF will, of course, aim to do.

It also looks at and details various models and approaches: the heroic individual (aka social entrepreneur / social inventor), the political effect (laws etc.), non-profit organisations, and broader movements (feminism, civil rights). Looking with a view to create the types of environment and structure and approach that can allow/enable social innovation to flourish.

Anyway, I'm not going to go through all 60+ pages now: take a look yourself, and suggest any additions/amendments to the paper's authors. Relevant to anyone interested in how social change happens, and how innovation occurs.

Other than that, GIB is massively busy with social inventions itself, and I've been busy reading Malcolm Gladwell's new blog.....don't blink or you'll miss it.