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Don't Stop Social Silicon Valleys: What Social Innovation Is, Why It Matters and How It Can Be Accelerated Geoff Mulgan

This document discusses social innovation and proposes the development of "Social Silicon Valleys" to accelerate social innovation through increased investment and new institutions. Some key points: 1) Social innovation creates new solutions to pressing social needs through ideas like distance learning, patient-led healthcare, and fair trade. 2) Successful social innovations often start small and gradually spread to wider use, facing resistance initially. 3) Social innovation requires a combination of public and private funding and partnerships between small, entrepreneurial organizations and larger groups able to scale ideas.

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83 views

Don't Stop Social Silicon Valleys: What Social Innovation Is, Why It Matters and How It Can Be Accelerated Geoff Mulgan

This document discusses social innovation and proposes the development of "Social Silicon Valleys" to accelerate social innovation through increased investment and new institutions. Some key points: 1) Social innovation creates new solutions to pressing social needs through ideas like distance learning, patient-led healthcare, and fair trade. 2) Successful social innovations often start small and gradually spread to wider use, facing resistance initially. 3) Social innovation requires a combination of public and private funding and partnerships between small, entrepreneurial organizations and larger groups able to scale ideas.

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Don’t Stop

Social silicon valleys: what social innovation is, why it matters and how it can be
accelerated

Geoff Mulgan

Summary

1. Social innovation – new ideas that work to meet pressing unmet needs - is all
around us. Examples include distance learning, patient-led healthcare, fair trade
and restorative justice. Many social innovations were successfully promoted in
the past by Michael Young and the Young Foundation in its previous incarnations
(such as the Open University, extended schools and phone-based health services).

2. In the last two centuries, innumerable social innovations, from kindergartens to


Wikipedia, have moved from the margins to the mainstream. As Schopenhauer
put it ‘every truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is
violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.’

3. These processes of change are sometimes understood as resulting from the work
of heroic individuals (such as Robert Owen or Muhammad Yunnus); sometimes
they are understood as resulting from much broader movements of change (such
as feminism and environmentalism). Many innovations progress through a
similar series of stages: from the generation of ideas through prototyping and
piloting, to scaling up and learning. Some of the same patterns can be seen as in
other fields of innovation: the importance of imagination and play; the value of
trying to design for the most difficult users; new methods for involving users in
every part of the design process; the importance of hybrids and combinations of
apparently distinct elements.

4. In some cases innovation starts by doing things – and then adapting and adjusting
in the light of experience. In all cases innovation involves some struggle against
vested interests; the ‘contagious courage’ that persuades others to change; and the
pragmatic persistence that takes promising ideas into real institutions.

5. Social innovation is not unique to the non-profit sector. It can be driven by


politics and government (for example, new models of public health), markets (for
example, open source software or organic food), movements (for example, fair
trade), social organisations (for example, microcredit) and academia (for example,
pedagogical models of childcare). Many of the most successful innovators have
learned to operate across the boundaries between these sectors. In the economy
about half of most nations’ investment in R&D comes from government (and
public funding was decisive for innovations like the microchip and the World
Wide Web). Successful social innovation is also likely to depend on a
combination of concerted public investment, independent finance and widespread
entrepreneurialism, and past experience suggests that it thrives best when there
are effective alliances between small organisations and entrepreneurs (the ‘bees’
who are mobile, fast, and cross-pollinate) and big organisations (the ‘trees’ with
roots, resilience and scale) which can grow ideas.

6. Nobel prize-winning economist Robert Solow estimated that some 80% of added
value in the economy comes from innovation and new knowledge. There is no
reason to believe that society is any different. Innovations in different fields
complement each other. The spread of new technologies like the car, electricity or
the Internet, and advances in healthcare, depended as much on social innovation
as they did on innovation in technology or business. But there are signs that
social innovation is becoming increasingly important for economic growth: some
of the key barriers to lasting growth (such as climate change, or ageing
populations) can only be solved with social innovation, and increasingly the
public is demanding qualitative growth as well as material growth.

7. We believe that all societies now need to direct energies towards social innovation
that are comparable to the huge investments made in business and technological
innovation. All societies face acute challenges that are not amenable to traditional
solutions: these include ageing, climate change, rising incidence of chronic
disease, and conflict. That is why we advocate the development of what we call
‘Social Silicon Valleys’ – places and institutions that mobilise resources and
energies to tackle social problems that are comparable to the investments made in
the world’s first silicon valley and its equivalents around the world.

8. This is likely to require major changes amongst governments, foundations, NGOs


and business, including:

• New sources of finance focused specifically on innovation, including public and


philanthropic investment in high risk R&D, targeted at the areas of greatest need
and greatest potential

• New kinds of incubator for promising models, along the lines of the Young
Foundation’s Launchpad programme (which is developing new business models
in fields such as health, schooling, neighbourhood governance and the law), and
what we call ‘accelerators’ to advance innovation in particular areas sectors such
as chronic disease or the cultivation of non-cognitive skills

• New institutions to help orchestrate systemic change in fields like climate change
or welfare – linking small scale social enterprises and projects to big institutions,
laws and regulations

• New approaches to innovation for individual nations, cities and regions that cut
across public, private and non-profit boundaries, including cross-national pools to
develop and test new approaches to issues like prison reform or childcare
• New institutions focused on mining new technologies for their social potential –
such as artificial intelligence, grid computing or GPS

• New ways of cultivating the innovators themselves – drawing on experiences


from organisations like the School for Social Entrepreneurs.

9. Over the next year the Young Foundation is helping to bring together a global
network of organizations working in this field – linking research and action,
linking businesses, governments and communities, and helping to accelerate
social innovation primarily through our direct work in designing, launching and
scaling up new enterprises and new models. Under Michael Young, the
Foundation was unique in combining ideas and enterprise in this way. We believe
that there is a greater need than ever before to fill this gap between public policy,
social entrepreneurship and innovation.

For more information – and the full text of ‘Social Silicon Valleys’ see
www.youngfoundation.org

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