SHOULD WE BE UNITED IN OURPRACTICE (The Journey) PURPOSE (The Destination)

The field of social innovationSocial in our means...?

The context for our workSocial in our ends...?

200610 YEARS IN REVIEW OF THE FIELD

10 YEARS IN REVIEW OF THE WORLD

BEIJING: A new network for social innovation is founded

• News sources of finance focused specifically on innovation

• More open markets for social solutions

• New kinds of incubators for promising models

• ‘Accelerators’ to advance innovation

• New tools, incentives etc. to empower users to drive innovation themselves

• New institutions to help orchestrate more systemic change

• New institutions focused on adapting new technologies for their social potential

• More extensive, rigorous, imaginative and historically aware research on how social innovation happens and how it can be helped.

2006

2007• Apple releases

the iPhone• The Saffron Revolution

rocks Burma

• US elects its first black president• Kosovo declares independence

• Stock markets around the world crash

2008

• The Green Revolution takes place in Iran

2009 • US Operation Iraqi Freedom ends

• 100,000s killed in an earthquake in Haiti

• Arab Spring begins• Labour loses its first UK election in 18 years

2011• Uprising sweeps Libyan Col Gaddafi’s

government from power

• South Sudan gains independence from the Republic of Sudan

• Syrian civil uprising turns to civil war

2012

• Maine, Maryland and Washington in the US became the first states to legalize gay marriage via popular vote

2013 • Edward Snowden leaks classified NSA information

• The gang rape of a 23-year old woman on a moving bus places India under global scrutiny for its ‘rape epidemic’

• Typhoon Haiyan strikes the Philippines

• Rana Plaza building collapses in Bangladesh, creating intense scrutiny of global supply chains

2 14• Oil prices crash

• Ebola strikes West Africa• ISIS Declares an Islamic Caliphate

2015• Global refugee crisis escalates as the death toll of refugees rises

• The Paris Agreement on Climate Change • Pope Francis publishes the encyclical letter ‘On care for our common

home’ linking social and ecological justice

2016• Britain leaves the EU

• Colombia strikes peace deal • Donald Trump is elected the US President

2017

Global gathering leads to the creation of SIX, the Social Innovation Exchange, and a rough roadmap towards mainstreaming social innovation, recommending:

Over the next 10 years (2006-2016) the field of social innovation grows and matures:

PEOPLE• Rise of citizenship activism and DIY democracy

• Social innovation skills become more widely accessible

• New social movements pioneer social innovation in fields like disability, refugee rights and the environment

• Incubators, accelerators, and transnational networks of social incubators flourish

SOCIAL INNOVATION HAS COME A LONG WAY, BUT STILL HAS MANY BARRIERSIN PLACE

STATE OF THE FIELD: PROCESS STATE OF THE FIELD: PURPOSE

Social innovation is still on the margins and far from achieving lasting transformation. Are we deluding ourselves to thinking that our experiments are working?

‘We need to challenge our biases and assumptions to take on the fault lines, failed states and civil strife, racism and radicalisation, and places near and far falling into despair. We went from the Arab spring to despair in only 5 years. Solutions are needed, but even more, we must deal with major fractures in societies.

We need to rethink our assumptions around how social innovation adds value in a fragmented, uncertain world’ (Tarik Yousef, Brookings Centre Doha).

There is still work to be done:

“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree”

MARTIN LUTHER

LONDON 2017: SIX WAYFINDERTHE NEXT 10 YEARS OF SOCIAL INNOVATION

A CONVERSATION, NOT A CONFERENCE

There is still work to be done:

“If markets could have solved the world’s problems, they would have done

so by now”

KRISS DEIGLMEIER, TIDES

VALUES COMPASS: WHAT GUIDES THIS WORK?

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE TRENDS CURRENTLY SHAPING THE FIELD:

PROMPT: What guides your work? What values are sacred to you?

TOP 10 SETS OF VALUES BY FREQUENCY

PROVOCATION: Are there core principles to social innovation?

In principle, social innovation is:

• People-powered• Challenge-focused • Values-based• Dialectic - focused on

exchange• Social in means and

ends• Asset-based• Critically self-reflective • An emergent and shared

learning journey• Informed by complexity

lens• About integrity (walk the

walk)• Inherently cross-

sectoral

• Focused on the roots of problems

• Committed to inclusion, equality and fairness

• Agile and rigorous • Diverse in approach and

method• Biased to action and

experimentation• Driven by passion for

a cause and a good purpose

• Humble • Better together

(collaborative) • Persistent and curious

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”

AFRICAN PROVERB

ONGOING TENSIONS IN ACTION

IN THE NEXT 10 YEARS, WILL SOCIAL INNOVATION BE

...a movement AND/OR

…a sustainable business model AND/OR

…a behaviour and a way of working with shared values and culture AND/OR

…broadened in scope throughout society AND/OR

…a backend operating system AND/OR

… a political alternative

...a human social conservation movement

WHERE PROCESS MEETS PURPOSE: Our practice for the next 10 years

CALLS TO ACTIONWith diverse, powerful ideas shared at the Wayfinder, each call to action is a synthesis of where there was strong convergence and uptake.

FOCUS ON DEMAND

There is a disparity of investment in the supply of social innovation - the ecosystem of support, intermediaries and skills accelerators - over people and communities desirous of social innovation. Do we understand the demand?

One opportunity is to mainstream social innovation as a mechanism for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. This means understanding demand in tension with perceived need.

Unleash the power of ordinary people by working with those who are different, people from other sides and sectors. This requires different approaches.

Human connection matters more than having a plan and a common vision when building social innovation amongst diverse groups.

What we want to accomplish is not just the alteration of a person’s material condition, but their social status and the relationships that they have with one another.

Politics is important because it’s associated with delivery of attitudes and conditions.

Our challenge now is to innovate society. How do we ensure that our pilot projects amount to something bigger?

We are all helping to reshape connections and reframe society. We need to surface and make visible the disconnections producing the prevailing economic, cultural and social structures that play out in the inequalities our innovation approaches seek to address.

Our greatest social problems are being managed by all three sectors;public, private and third; hence any solutions need toengage at all these levels.

We need to move beyond the charismatic CEO approach, so that everyone becomes a bridger and we have a leadership rich ecosystem.

Platform cooperativism and local action are helping to push digital into the realm of what matters - the basics and the things that people care about: food, health, care, etc, led by distributed data and the protection of the digital rights of people.

We cannot continue to chip around the edges of existing systems of resource flows and governance.

KNOWLEDGE POWERMONEY

TO ARRIVE IN 2027 WITH:RENEWED RELATIONALITY• A different sense of identity and place

rooted in a deep sense of localism & globalism

• Interdependence and decentralised power reflective of people’s lived experience

• Aligned public + private + social sectors

• Fluid, dynamic and changing systems reflective of care, diversity, inquiry and embracing and incentivizing failure

RENEWED SOCIAL CONTRACT• A mass, inclusive new social contract for

how we deal with each other

• All people realising their own potential

• People prepared for a life of purpose

• Better global solidarity

• AI as a core ethical discussion and practice

RENEWED AGENCY• Greater meaningful participation

• Gender equality as the norm

• Citizenship revalued to work at the local and at the global level

• Individuals able to pursue their own sense of purpose and potential underpinned by a greater sense of global interdependence

• More resilient, liveable, and sustainable cities via dedicated citymakers

SHARED KNOWLEDGE• Solutions as a norm

• Labs fully diffused culturally into institutions

• Supported global platforms for evidenced based information sharing

A NEW ECONOMY: • A values-based economy

• Regenerative capitalism

• Stakeholder capitalism/mutuality over shareholder primacy

• Peer-to-peer lending and shared value replacing high street banks

IMPROVED RESILIENCE• Food and income security - particularly

when work is being automated and outsourced

• Planetary sustainability and balance

WHAT CAN SOCIAL INNOVATION OFFER TO THE WORLD? A provocation by Charlie Leadbeater, as summarized by Allyson Hewitt

In a world that feels out of control people will want more …Escapism – from an out of control world they can no longer abhor

A different possibility is what we must offer A new form of Capitalism on the plate that we proffer

In a world that feels out of control people will want more …Resistance – to living unacceptable lives that feel like a chore

And we can offer the ability to create the right kind of relationshipsAll along, as our population shifts

People are waiting to live in truth, while in a system of lies To fight for and with them, the system they despise

In a world that feels out of control people will want more …Coping mechanisms – to do better than before

We fall into a cult of resilience and gritAnd slogans like “keep calm and carry on” are all that will fit

Our heroes like Merkel are “Copers in Chief”As we exist in a world of our own disbelief

In a world that feels out of control people will want more …Conservation - of human potential, we cannot ignore

We can create ideas around which others can organize Indifference to humanity we cannot normalize

In a world that feels out of control people will want more …Movements - that literally move people across the floorWith new leaders emerging from Zukerburg to the Pope

Our message of linked beating hearts will help us all cope

In a world that feels out of control people will want more …Opportunities - that are transformative and generative to explore

It is time to change the rules of the gameWith new flows of resources which are no longer the same

This is our time because people need ideas that are newWe are all searching for something concrete we can do

So as Lincoln declared we must rise to the occasionAnd to act anew is our proud declaration

WHAT CAN YOU DO NEXT?The world is in a wayfinding moment...what direction will you take?

Work with SIX to host more Wayfinders around the world

Encourage others to action by writing an open letter to your community

Anchor and apply social innovation to specific missions

WHAT WILL SIX DO NEXT?SIX will continue to host a platform to facilitate these important

and difficult conversations.

We will provide support for those brave enough to join us and take action over the next 10 years and communicate the results widely.

• SAN FRANCISCO: A new network for microblogging is founded (Twitter)

2010

MONEY• Social impact bonds develop

• New funding tools and platforms emerge, such as crowdfunding

• Social investment funds offer a new route to help innovations grow to scale

• New legal forms like community interest companies and benefit corporations develop

• Increase in social innovation prizes and support given

KNOWLEDGE• New social innovation media develop and scale

• Proliferation of university research centres and curricula

• INGOs see innovation as a way of responding to new technological opportunities and challenges

• Social innovation is seen as overlapping, but unique from social entrepreneurship, enterprise, creativity, or investment

POWER• Donors recognise the need for collaboration and collective

impact

• Municipal and community collective impact takes root from the ground up

• Spread of social innovation centres and labs within and beyond government

• National policy programmes are introduced in various countries

• Digital social innovation takes off

Social innovation faces a reality gap in terms of scale. The scale of our activity is small relative to the scale and urgency of need.

We must tackle difficult questions:

• How do we overcome the fragmentation between public, private and civil society?

• Are we scaling too fast? Or not fast enough?

• How do we prevent the perception of long-standing, evidence-based models, such as co-operatives, of losing out to novelty?

• How do we break the perception that sustainable and values-driven is not a powerful capital investment?

• Are we festishising the language of innovation? We risk prioritising innovation as an end in itself rather than a means to other ends.

• How do we bring humility to this process?

• How do we reframe the question so it’s about scaling impact, not innovations?

ACTIVITY v NEED“So less about social innovation as stand alone and more about ‘missions’ of change to which

we need to apply the discipline?...We systematically misunderstand and

miscommunicate what we are all about”

MARTIN STEWART-WEEKS, PwC

DIGITAL

“Technology is changing our world dramatically, we cannot afford to leave shaping this future to big companies”

FRANCESCA BRIA, Barcelona City Council

The growth of open technologies and large-scale participation

Growing awareness of open data and the ownership of data

Concentration of power and monopolies

Job losses with the increase in automation

PHILANTHROPY

“Social innovation is not just about new things. It can bring the past into the present in new ways to help solve social problems”

STEPHEN HUDDART, The J.W, McConnell Family Foundation

Funders are helping fill the gaps of investment

Funders collaborating, pooling funds and leveraging funding to drive collective impact and shared learning

Too many small-scale/individual projects, not leading to systemic change

Power imbalance between foundations, civil society and communities

SCHOOLS & SKILLS

“...empower students with the creativity to design and develop their own jobs for an uncertain future “

ADA WONG, Make a Difference Institute

Multiplicity of grassroots experiments (MOOCs for example)

There is gap between the curriculum & the future skills needed

LEGAL FORMS

“Learn from heliotrophy -’ from helios ‘sun’ + trepein ‘to turn. Turn towards the sun”

CHARMIAN LOVE, B Lab UK

Growth and acceptance of benefit corporations around the US and globally

Accounting for a wider range of stakeholders, not just shareholders

Lack of public awareness and understanding of the laws

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

“Without a strategy to influence government, social entrepreneurship will not reach large scale sustained change ” FLORIAN RUTSCH, Ashoka

Move towards systematic rather than strategic impact

Decoupling the size of impact from the size of the organisation

Young people not empowered or trained in changemaking

Lack of strategy to influence government, limiting the full potential scale of impact

POLICY

“The best impact we (as policy labs) can have is when we empower our fellow public servants/services to unleash their social intrapreneur” ALEX RYAN, The Alberta CoLab

Growth of public social innovation labs, teams, nudge units, and hubs around the world

Mayors are increasingly defined by their commitment to social innovation

Too often like-minded tribes of self-serving belief systems

Lack of impact of mainstreaming innovation within institutions

SOCIAL INVESTMENT

“Who decides what good is? ” CLIFF PRIOR, Big Society Capital

Leverage capital for development

Growing opportunities for collaboration

Alignment around SDGs

Impact hijacked by major institutions at ‘full commercial return’

DEVELOPMENT

“Mapping is public and private, making the invisible become visible” CELINA AGATONMap the Philippines

Donors becoming more humble and working more cooperatively with local partners

Prioritization of the power of values that underpin development

Donor driven/agenda setting

Cluster only during the ideation process instead of execution

BUSINESS

“Through business, we make impact that can be more long-term and sustainable than a charity” LISEN WIREN, Inter Ikea

Purposeful business - drive more towards positive social impact

From CSR to integrated business practice

Companies starting to take whole value chain approach.

Private decisions for public good - who are they to decide? Lack of democratic legitimacy

COOPERATIVES

“Those who opt to make history and change the course of events themselves have an advantage over those who decide to wait passively for the results of change” IBON ZUGASTI quotes Father José María Arizmendiarrieta Madariaga, founder of the Mondragon cooperative movement

Global alliances aligned to values

Participatory in nature and growth from the ground up on a local scale

Negative perceptions of ‘co-operative’

Perception that sustainable and values driven is slow and less access to capital

SYSTEMS CHANGE

“Changing systems starts with changing ourselves, assumptions and perspectives” ELLA SALTMARSHE, the Comms Lab

Better understanding of choice and control for people marginalized by the system

Deeper respect for complexity and the seriousness of domains for change

Assumptions within policy that impact the lives of many

Lack of understanding of where or how to start or how to measure change

CITIES

“Social innovation is not a luxury, it’s a necessity” AMALIA ZEPOU

Emergence of active citizens that enhance liveability, create communities and are united in their mission to make the city more liveable, green, resilient.

Platforms are developing to promote the Commons and connect city officials to innovators

The administration and operation of the city blocks innovation

Lack of visibility and funding for citymakers

MEASUREMENT

“The shift from risk mitigation to opportunity is the reason for optimism” SAM BAKER, Monitor Deloitte

There’s a shift from risk mitigation to opportunity

There’s a shift from case studies to data

Are we losing the qualitative input?

“We are in a moment of time that’s historical. What is happening in Europe and around the world reminds me

of the period between the 1st and 2nd World Wars in Europe, and it’s really scary. However, thanks to SIX for making a platform to help make us connect and to think

about what guides you? What guides us?”

UFFE ELBAEK, DANISH MP

“We’re forgetting the real language - the people, humanity, the love that actually guides this work. The

personal journey.”

CHARLIE LEADERBEATER

“If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution (citing Emma Goldman).”

UFFE ELBAEK, DANISH MP

EMPATHY

CURIOSITYHUMILITY

CREATIVERESPECTINTEGRITY

FREEDOMLOVEPOSITIVE

COMPASSIONINCLUSIVENESS

FUNLEARNINGPLAY

COLLABORATION

COURAGEHONESTY

EQUALITYKINDOPENNESS

VALUE v VALUES

Corporations are increasingly thinking about their social impact, but often face the paradox of contributing to the problems they now seek to help solve. Embedding social impact into the core of business models requires significant internal transformation to align values and value.

Can social innovation forcefully disrupt power structures in business and government, not just hack around them?

PEOPLE v POWER

Social innovation is restricted by a shrinking civil space around the world: how do we reach out and ensure that we’re creating room for more people? Is the social innovation field inclusive enough?

Can social innovation happen without democratic innovation? How do we bring the conversation back to people and less about us?

NORTH v SOUTH

How do we increase the diversity of this movement? Many of the innovations celebrated from the South are actually expats from the North. Only 33% of social entrepreneurship awards in Africa are for Africans. How do we ensure that those in the South are being empowered to innovate and are investment ready?

RESEARCH v PRACTICE

Research and practice need to be integrated as one. We need practice to practice sharing and learning. We need to bring together dispersed literature and knowledge not through papers, but conversations.

‘We focus too much on some stars more than others, on the fact that some shine brighter than others and instead we need to look at the constellations’

RHETORIC v ACTION

We need to ensure that innovation is not just an add-on, but integrated and diffused throughout organisations. To get to action and impact, we need to make sure that we’re focused on getting past the rhetoric, making our activities time-bound, encouraging free play, developing credibility and focusing on the individual. Understanding failure is as important as understanding what works.

“We overestimate what we can achieve in 3 years and underestimate what we can do in 10.

We need to be ready.”

CLIFF PRIOR, Big Society Capital

FOCUS ON PEOPLE

GET OFF THE SIDELINES AND INTOTHE GAME - OF POLITICS

REFRAME RELATIONSHIPS

We need to apply social innovation to critical emergent demand.

We need to create citizens, not clients; the right relationships in society, between humans, not better products and services.

We need to embrace the political dimension of this work and create a political strategy. We need to connect the hearts of those in the community who are

looking for change.

GET TRULY MULTI SECTOR

We need to activate the radical middle. We need to break through silos and bubbles, to work differently. Institutions need to be more human, inclusive, responsible and responsive.

TAKE UPDIGITAL

We need to direct our extraordinary technological power to serve our values and our needs.

REDIRECT RESOURCES

We need to purse a fundamental shift in the rules and assumptions guiding how resources and power are accessed, distributed and held accountable….

• Support corporates move towards tackling social problems

• Make everyone an impact investor

• Create a common language for impact measurement

• Add social innovation clauses in contracts

• Enable everyone access to a basic standard of living and human rights at a global scale

• Experiment with universal basic income

RETHINK THE ECONOMY• Shift from monologue to constructive

dialogue• Create spaces to speak with people we

disagree with • Train institutions to exist in a space

of not knowing and hold tensions/ambiguity

• Advance new forms of shared leadership and horizontal partnership

TRANSITION INSTITUTIONS

PRIORITIZE PEOPLE AND PLANET• Create belonging and open access for all (flip &

reverse Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) • Focus on co-design rather than participatory

design• Celebrate and embed interdependence

• Encourage active citizenship as a way of mainstreaming innovation in public/private/civil society

• Embed data sovereignty in people as a collective• Education is designed around active citizenship and ethics• Young people establish their role as change agents through

rights-distributed platforms• Change political systems: all political debates are informed

by people’s lives • Social innovation is integrated into the political narrative

REVOLUTIONISE CITIZENSHIP

PEOPLE

• Achieve equality in access to technology

• Implement data transparency regulation

• Democratize data as social good

• Universalize AI literacy

EMBED VALUES IN DIGITAL

FRAMEWORKS

“What is it that social innovators can offer people to shape those reflexes in ways that privilege

human potential, our obligations to and for each other and an ability to stand against prevailing

conditions in favour of enduring values.”

MARTIN STEWART-WEEKS, PwC

DEEP RELATIONSHIPSDIGNITYDIVERSITY

This infographic is a culmination of voices, ideas, insights and experiences contributed before, during or immediately after the SIX Wayfinder 2017. Quotes are paraphrased.

Infographic designed by Elizabeth Elcoate