The Young Foundation, founded by renowned social entrepreneur Michael Young (also the founder of Open University), is dedicated to pursuing social innovation through research into unmet social needs, and the establishment of initiatives and enterprises to meet those needs in areas such as health, education, housing, and cities.
They recently released a comprehensive report called Social Silicon Valleys ("a manifesto for social innovation: what it is, why it matters, how it can be accelerated"), which compares the vast resources invested into scientific research each year with the meager amounts alloted toward the pursuit of social innovation.
The world today faces a serious innovation gap. In fields ranging from chronic disease to climate change, we badly need more effective models and solutions...This manifesto examines how social innovation happens in NGOs, the public sector, movements and markets...It makes the case for much more systematic initiatives to tap the ubiquitous intelligence that exists in every society and to increase the chances of social innovations succeeding.
In this manifesto we advocate a much more concerted approach to social innovation, and have coined the phrase Social Silicon Valleys to describe the future places and institutions that will mobilise resources and energies to tackle social problems in ways that are comparable to thinvestments in technology made in the first silicon valley and its equivalents around the world.
The report introduces social innovation and the past work of the Young Foundation in depth, followed by profiles of innovative individuals, organizations and movements. It lays out the building blocks of successful innovation, from prototyping and piloting ideas to executing them and scaling them up, through anticipating and preventing failure. Finally, it describes an agenda for action, calls out key allies, points toward tools, and affirms that this is merely a preliminary step - that a global network is necessary, and will be the engine that speeds up social innovation.
The authors included their top "10 world-changing social innovations" (coincidence?), which are:
1. The Open University and the many models of distance learning that have opened up education across the world and are continuing to do so.
2. Fair trade pioneered in the UK and USA in the 1940s-80s and now growing globally.
3. Greenpeace and the many movements of ecological direct action which drew on much older Quaker ideas and which have transformed how citizens can engage directly in social change.
4. Grameen alongside BRAC and others whose new models of village and community based microcredit have been emulated worldwide.
5. Amnesty International and the growth of human rights.
6. Oxfam (originally the Oxford Committee for Relief of Famine) and the spread of humanitarian relief.
7. The Womens Institute (founded in Canada in the 1890s) and the innumerable womens organisations and innovations which have made feminism mainstream.
8. Linux software - and other open source methods such as Wikipedia and Ohmynews that are transforming many fields.
9. NHS Direct and the many organisations, ranging from Doctor Robert to the Expert Patients Programme, which have opened up access to health and knowledge about health to ordinary people.
10. Participatory budgeting models of the kind pioneered in Porto Alegre and now being emulated, alongside a broad range of democratic innovations, all over the world.
Clearly, these are issues we've been thinking of and discussing since the beginning. It's a great affirmation to see so many worldchanging ideas presented here, and in a context that illuminates achievements, successes and advancements, calls for more of them, and makes suggestions for practical ways to move forward.
What would be your list of the Top 10 most worldchanging social innovations? Let us know in the comments!
Thanks, Geoff.
