Hands on social innovation: tools for tackling urban deprivation

Hands-on
social
innovation
Tools for tackling urban
deprivation in Malmö &
Copenhagen
Workshops – May 12 & 13

Slide 1 The Young Foundation 2010

About the Young Foundation
• Named after Lord Michael Young, called “the world‟s
most successful entrepreneur of social enterprises”
and co-author of Labour‟s 1945 election manifesto.
• Our core work is researching social needs and
developing practical and innovative solutions to
address them. We have a 55-year track record in
innovation in areas including health, education,
ageing, communities, and families.
• Responsible for starting scores of successful ventures
and organisations including the Open University,
NHS Direct and Which? Magazine.


Outcomes
“We want you to leave
inspired, with a set of
practical tools and
methods to apply to the
social problems you are
tackling every day”


What are we doing today?
Session 1: What makes some places innovative?

Session 2: Inspiration
• Introducing case studies and practical tools and methods for social innovation

Session 3: Thinking differently
• Linking tools and methods to the social problems you are working on

Session 4: Action on social innovation
• Putting ideas into practice

Session 1:
What makes
places
innovative?


What is social innovation?
The development of new ideas (products, services or
models) to meet unmet social needs and create new social
relationships or collaborations.

Innovations that are both good for society and enhance
society‟s capacity to act.


Why does it matter?
• About the survival of places
- unlike organisations or businesses, places do not get wound up
- essential to survival, adaptation, making use of opportunities

• About the survival of organisations
- an explanation for the decline in local government power over last
30 years?

• Failure to innovate has real consequences
• Little is known, much is assumed
- about the importance of money, institutions, freedom versus constraints?

Existing models don‟t work –
too inflexible, unimaginative, fitted to past problems or
locked into powerful interests

UK case studies
Highlands: Children’s South Tyneside: Social
Services Exclusion
Highland Council has radically reorganised A number of innovative projects to address
the delivery of Children’s Services in the social exclusion
area (GIRFEC)
Council-led Neighbourhood Appraisal and
Created an effective joint working initiative Action Planning project
involving a number of key agencies.
Beacon-awarded financial inclusion
Highlands selected as a Pathfinder for the scheme
rest of Scotland

Tower Hamlets: Youth
Services
Knowsley: Secondary
Tower Hamlets was one of the first local
Education authorities in England to develop a
Secondary Transformation Scheme has commissioning model for youth services
put in place a number of radical changes Involved letting a series of local and
Development of seven new learning thematic contracts to voluntary and
centres, which will replace all of the community sector organisations
Borough’s secondary schools by 2010 Developed a Third Sector Strategy for the
entire Borough

Plus an experimental social network analysis - to explore networks and relationships

International case studies
Lille, France:
Pittsburgh, US:
Cultural Regeneration
Unemployment and
Suffered greatly from
workforce development
deindustrialisation
Identified as a hub of socially
Repositioned image
innovative activity
Major programme of
Strong foundation community
regeneration
and universities
Renowned social
entrepreneurs
Gouda, Netherlands:
Portland: Community cohesion
mini case study Ethnic tensions between
Moroccan and Dutch
Innovation in civic
communities
participation, urban planning
and development, transport, Grass roots projects and
environment municipality response

How places innovate
• Every place can innovate
although it‟s not easy
•Innovation comes from urgent
need
•Need clarity about when to
innovate; when to focus on
improvement
•Don‟t believe common myths
about need or obstacles
•Need to balance action &
response in three critical
dimensions

What we know
• Innovation isn‟t a mystery
• Innovation isn‟t about wacky out
of the box thinking
• It involves everyone – and
anyone‟s insights can be useful
• But it is best done with the right
methods, processes and skills –
from questions through ideas to
impact


Visualising a local innovation system


... but how?
•Start small – persuade
by example
•Don‟t wait for
permission or funding or
acceptance by big
“Innovation lies in the grey institutions just do it
space between agencies” •Always taking „no‟ as a
Audit Commission
question

An example from East
London
•London Borough of Barking &
Dagenham
•De-industrialisation, high
deprivation, resentment
•2006: far right (BNP) became 2nd
largest party, lost all seats in 2011
•Council, public sector, civil
society, media all played key role
•Council set up „community
communicators‟, staff asked to
start dialogue on busses etc

Creative social design tools
^ inversion (peasants become bankers, patients become doctors)
t translation (airport management for hospitals, business planning for families)
x extension (extended schools, outreach)
+ addition (getting GPs to do a new test, libraries running speech therapy)
- subtraction (no frills, cutting targets, decluttering)
∫ integration (personal advisers, one stop shops, portals)
∂ differentiation (segmenting services by groups)
r random inputs (eg dictionaries, Yellow Pages)

Most successful innovations need a combination of these

Your task
• Identify a problem or issue you are working on that is
proving difficult to solve

•Working in groups, use the language of ideation as a tool
for thinking differently about how to approach


Session 2:
Inspiration


The starting point is to ask the right
questions, to diagnose and
understand problems and
possibilities ....

user feedback
rights to time
political mandates for ideas
failure demand new technology
data and evidence
crisis surveys and sousveys
needs mapping diagnosis ethnography

1. prompts and triggers
cost escalation
new paradigms
critical walking
reviewing extremes, positive deviance

petitions visits

campaigns complaints choirs

The methods we find most
useful include
• Ethnography – seeing things through
people‟s eyes
• Observation – seeing how do people
use things, solve problems; what‟s out
there in the field
• Systems diagnosis – what the
underlying causes of problems
• Tools such as 12 economies, WARM
• Mapping contradictions and tensions:
the biggest gaps between aspiration
and achievement, between what
services claim to do and what they do


Chaotic families, Wiltshire
Problem: Working with chaotic
families costs too much and is only
supported by public services

Method: Ethnography to gain new
insights about family life in chaotic
households to generate new ideas and
approaches.
Also ran „Taskforce‟, carried out estate
survey, ran service design sessions with
locally based staff


Chaotic families: 5 big ideas
1. Target additional support in areas with poor levels of
wellbeing and resilience
2. Develop opportunities for mutual aid within
communities, promoting self help groups and
community solutions
3. Reconfigure support services into area based working
teams
4. Work with whole family not just individuals
5. Better differentiate the needs of chaotic families, to
improve service offerings

We then move onto creative
methods to multiply the options for
potential piloting....

Competitions & prizes

Hybridisation, recombination creative meeting methods

collaborative networks
SI Camps

incubation inspiration Idea marketplaces

2. proposals and ideas
User led design Living Labs
Design tools
crowdsourcing Skunkworks
Artists in residence
Creativity methods
A teams
reflection
brainstorms
TRIZ
Staged prizes

The End of
Regeneration?
A new approach to
tackling entrenched
deprivation on small
housing estates

The three
estates


Focus on life transitions
•Stories and anecdotes
about life on the estates
•Focus on important life
transitions
•Unstructured conversations
with residents
•Semi-structured interviews
with agencies
•Informal group discussions

Social regeneration?
The importance of
social and
emotional support
for regeneration


We then try to turn a shortlist of
options into viable prototypes that
can be tested in the real world ....

pilots
pathfinders
proof of concept
rapid prototyping simulations

trials beta testing

3. prototypes and tests
open testing
Randomised control trials

test marketing
experimental zones
trailblazers

The methods we find most
useful include
• Ideation events
• User journey mapping, critical
walking
• SIX events and telepresences
• Task Forces, YouCan Kingston
• SI Camps
• ..... all drawing on existing
evidence where it exists


•Problem:
•Growing number of families in crsis in South
Australia
•Need to identify new preventative models instead of costly
interventions at crisis point

•Solution:
•TACSI/InWithFor - Radical Redesign Team
•7 step redesign process including ethnography, service
design & prototyping to develop


Resilience for gang members
•Commissioned by
police
•Worked with NGOs,
local authority youth
services
•Building on our work
using CBT based
methods in schools

The Young Foundation 2010

When pilots and prototypes succeed
– often with further adaptation –
we then turn to how they can be
sustained, either as a public
programme or as a venture ....

Incremental improvement

formal validation grants for growth

policy commitment programme funding

Refining business models
Commissioner
embedding commitment

4. sustaining
Organisational forms loans, equity, quasi-equity
(CICs etc)

Public share issues Professional development
Crowd-funding

formation

We use many tools at this
stage, including:
Examples
• measurement tools to assess
whether projects really do work

• Tools for designing business plans

• Intensive business support


UpRising
•Youth leadership
programme, 19-25 year olds
from diverse backgrounds
•East London and
Birmingham
•Offers skill, knowledge,
networks, confidence
through training sessions,
mentoring, visits, running
local campaigns

Maslaha
•Increasing understanding of
Islam and helping Muslims
navigate the dilhemmas of a
secular society
•Producing health advice
(diabetes, caring for your
heart) , educational resources,
publicising resources by
Islamic scholars


federations
franchises
licensing
policy and programme funding
investment for growth – loans, equity, quasi-equity

diffusion commissioning

5. scaling and growth
Brands Strategies for diffusion and adoption
consumer advocacy

growth through people takeover
professional networks

National policy directives

Then, to scale an idea we use a
range of methods. These focus in
particular on ....

And tools for thinking about
appropriate organisational models
(franchises, licenses, federations,
organisational growth, takeover &c)
and what these require in terms of
governance, finance and culture

Finally we have developed methods
for thinking about genuinely
systemic change, which links the
diagnoses and prompts to
understanding of how many
different kinds of change can be
brought together ...

coalitions for change
law

regulation
changed power relationships

changed scripts whole system demonstrators

new mentalities
6. systemic change
recalibrated markets new metrics finance for
outcomes
technical diffusion through supply chains

fast colleges

Studio Schools
•New model of state school for 14-
19 year olds
•Bold new approach to learning
involving enterprises
•Employability and enterprise
skills, personalised curriculum,
practical learning, real work,
students of all abilities, all small
schools
•31 studio schools in development


Session 3:
Thinking
differently


Data/studies on
social need Learn from success of
environmental
External inspiration, social design sustainability programmes
principles, co-design solutions
with participants Consensus about need for
new approach
1 Prompts
Disengaged communities,
poor education, high
2 Proposals levels of disadvantage

6 Systemic
3 Prototypes change
4 Sustaining
Developing
5 Scaling
Malmö‟s
innovation
story

Are we asking the right
questions?
1. What is the problem?
2. Do we understand the
critical causes and
drivers?


Predictable mistakes
•Improvement not innovation

•Adoption not adaption

•Policy not leadership and action

•Isolation not collaboration


What is your role?
Innovation comes from
connecting:
bees: small groups, individuals,
social entrepreneurs with insight
and ideas

trees: big organisations -
governments, companies,
foundations with power and
money

Useful questions
•What is the problem I am working to address?

•What are the underlying drivers and causes of the
problem?

•What do I know about the people involved?

•What tools and approaches should I be using?

•Who can I collaborate with to share ideas/resources?

•What are the constraints and how can I overcome them?

Your task
•Review your challenge from the morning session. Do you
want to change groups or continue with the same
conversation?

•Working in groups, use your social innovation toolkit to
think about new approaches & practical steps to addressing
your problem

•What is the one practical action you will take away from
the workshop?

Session 4:
Action on
social
innovation


Action on social innovation
•What is the one practical action you will
take away from the workshop?

•Who will you/do you need to collaborate
with?


Useful
resources for
social
innovators


The Global Innovation Academy Vision
A radically new model of learning to serve a Objective: To build the skills and capacity needed for fast
global field of practitioners, needing constant and effective innovation to meet social needs.
real-time learning, held together by a shared
knowledge platform gathering together tools,
case studies and models.
1. Connecting learners
• The fully mature version of the Academy
would be:
teachers
– active across the globe,
– working with thousands of social
innovators every year,
– connecting a burgeoning alumni
network
– making available a wealth of materials
documenting social innovation methods
and examples
– sharing the most effective and cutting
edge developments in sustainable social
innovation. The Global Academy will be at the
heart of the movement to make
• This is a new approach to learning will social innovation as well-
help government, the social sector and supported, funded, and grounded
industry learn more quickly from one in evidence as scientific, medical
another to solve social challenges. and commercial innovation.

For further information please contact:

nicola.bacon@youngfoundation.org
saffron.woodcraft@youngfoundation.org

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