In the next article of the series, “The Network Revolution: Creating Value through Platforms, People and Technology,” authors Barry Libert, Megan Beck, Brian Komar and Josue Estrada debut the concept of Social Change as a Platform. Libert is a Wharton senior fellow and CEO of OpenMatters; Beck is the firm’s chief insights officer. Komar is vice president of community engagement for Salesforce.org, the nonprofit reseller of Salesforce.com Inc. Estrada is the senior vice president of strategy and operations at Salesforce.org.
As Charles Dickens so astutely observed about life during the French Revolution in “A Tale of Two Cities,” it was the best and worst of times. One could say the same thing today. The Fourth Industrial Revolution of technology networks and platforms could usher in an era of mass societal disruption — as well as unprecedented social cooperation. Whether the latter would prevail depends on the ability of nonprofit entities and the broader social sector to boost their collective impact by adopting the new business models that are disrupting the for-profit world. It would also depend on whether they can embrace what we call ‘Social Change as a Platform’ or SCaaP.
During the turbulent 1960s, Bob Dylan wrote the following powerful lyrics for “The Times They Are A-Changin’” that seems apropos for today. “Come gather ’round people, wherever you roam, and admit that the waters around you have grown. And accept it that soon, you’ll be drenched to the bone. If your time to you is worth savin’, then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone. For the times they are a-changin’.” At the time, anti-war protests ruled the day. A generational collide over the future of America was afoot. And all the images of a nation coming apart at its seams were emblazoned across a new communications medium — TV — that was coming of age.
And so is it today. The Fourth Industrial Revolution — what Klaus Schwab (founder of the World Economic Forum) defines as the fusion of technologies blurring the lines among the physical, digital and biological spheres — is upon us. Meanwhile, nationalism is colliding with globalism, machine learning and artificial intelligence advancing geometrically, and global warming is on a direct path to changing the very nature of our planet. Despite these many challenges, this revolution, like the many that have preceded it, also comes with a great promise of opportunity.
To be sure, there are reasons for great optimism. In just the past 30 years, the global poverty rate halved with many of the poorest people in the world becoming significantly less poor. These gains mirror dramatic improvements in health and education including advances in life expectancy, child mortality, health care provision, among other important areas. Moreover, most of these gains predate the effective integration of digital technologies into the cause. In short, it is reasonable to argue that the potential for social ‘changemakers’ armed with today’s digital platforms in partnership with large and growing virtual networks can dramatically improve the human condition.
“The potential for social ‘changemakers’ armed with today’s digital platforms in partnership with large and growing virtual networks can dramatically improve the human condition.”
Self-organization Powered by Technology
Civil society — the network of institutions that define us as actors in the civil sphere independent of governments — is supposed to serve as the leader in promoting pluralism and social benefit. As Klaus Schwab notes that “a renewed focus on the essential contribution of civil society to a resilient global system alongside government and business has emerged.” Unfortunately, nonprofit groups, academic institutions and philanthropic organizations engaged in social change are struggling to adapt to the new global, technological and virtual landscape.
Legacy modes of operation, governance and leadership competencies rooted in the age of physical realities continue to dominate the space. Further, organizations still operate in internal and external silos — far from crossing industry lines, which are blurring. And their ability to lead in a world that is changing at an exponential rate seems hampered by their mental models and therefore their business models of creating and sustaining value as well.
If civil society is not to get drenched and sink like a stone, it must start swimming in a new direction. This new direction starts with social organizations fundamentally rethinking the core assumptions driving their attitudes, behaviors and beliefs about creating long-term sustainable value for their constituencies in an exponentially networked world. Rather than using an organization-centric model, the nonprofit sector and related organizations need to adopt a mental model based on scaling relationships in a whole new way using today’s technologies — the SCaaP model.
Embracing social change as a platform is more than a theory of change, it is a theory of being — one that places a virtual network or individuals seeking social change at the center of everything and leverages today’s digital platforms (such as social media, mobile, big data and machine learning) to facilitate stakeholders (contributors and consumers) to connect, collaborate, and interact with each other to exchange value among each other to effectuate exponential social change and impact.
SCaaP builds on the government as a platform movement (Gov 2.0) launched by technologist Tim O’Reilly and many others. Just as Gov 2.0 was not about a new kind of government but rather, as O’Reilly notes, “government stripped down to its core, rediscovered and reimagined as if for the first time,” so it is with social change as a platform. Civil society is the primary location for collective action and SCaaP helps to rebuild the kind of participatory community celebrated by 19th century French historian Alexis de Tocqueville when he observed that Americans’ propensity for civic association is central to making our democratic experiment work. “Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition,” he noted, “are forever forming associations.”
But SCaaP represents a fundamental shift in how civil society operates. It is grounded in exploiting new digital technologies, but extends well beyond them to focus on how organizations think about advancing their core mission — do they go at it alone or do they collaborate as part of a network? SCaaP requires thinking and operating, in all things, as a network. It requires updating the core DNA that runs through social change organizations to put relationships in service of a cause at the center, not the institution. When implemented correctly, SCaaP will impact everything — from the way an organization allocates resources to how value is captured and measured to helping individuals achieve their full potential.
SCaaP “requires updating the core DNA that runs through social change organizations to put relationships in service of a cause at the center, not the institution.”
Digital Platforms Empower Social Change at Scale
To be sure, early adopters are already using technology to effectuate change at a pace and scale not previously available in the physical and digitally disconnected world. The marginal cost of delivery remains too high. But with today’s technologies, with support from the board and management to make it happen, social change at scale is possible. Here are some organizations that are on the way to implementing SCaaP.
- DonorsChoose.org: Every one of their 1.5 million donors can create engagement paths for each potential recipient of a classroom project, matching their specific giving preferences and history — something previously available only to large donors. It is the only nonprofit to be named to Fast Company’s list of the 50 Most Innovative Companies in the world.
- Health Leads: It is a healthcare organization that connects low-income patients with the basic resources they need to be healthy, as part of their regular doctor’s visits. As Forbes noted, “Community health workers, case managers and/or student volunteers screen patients for unmet needs and help them access any of the 50 basic resource needs relevant for their circumstances, such as food assistance, childcare vouchers, enrollment in a GED program — even negotiating with the utilities company to get their heat turned back on.”
- College for America: Southern New Hampshire University went from a small, relatively unremarkable New England institution to one of the biggest nonprofit online educators in the country. According to Campus Technology magazine, “SNHU has succeeded in the online space by leveraging technology and providing well-constructed courses and Amazon-like customer service to mostly older students at a cost they can afford.”
- Salesforce.org’s Power of Us Hub: Among the most successful online communities built on Salesforce technology, the Power of Us Hub facilitates peer-to-peer collaboration around the effective use of technology for more than 30,000 social change organizations. More than 98% of the questions asked get answered by the community, a real shared benefit model in action.
Just as Apple chose a platform approach when launching their App Store, these organizations are enabling their partners and contributors to share and co-create in the value chain they co-inhabit. Each has moved beyond allowing supporters to donate and promote, toward sharing real value through stakeholders’ talents and assets.
Tomorrow’s SCaaP
We are at the dawn of the SCaaP era. The future of social change as a platform is a world of connected platforms working to solve society’s most pressing challenges more effectively as fast as possible. These platforms will supersede and encompass existing social change organizations. Those organizations that embrace social change as a platform will lead the way in helping to usher in this new era of connected social change platforms.
The core assets needed today to advance social change — ideas, individuals and institutions — continue to be the primary ingredients. What is changing and will continue to change, however, is the way these assets are assembled to deliver maximum social impact. Organizations can achieve SCAAP to the extent that those with a shared cause can gradually maximize shared capability (platforms) and minimize organization products. This represents a radical shift in approach.
Every organization relies on its information, capabilities and assets to be effective, but their networks are largely untapped or underutilized. Creating more value and scaling social impact requires the organizations’ leaders to leverage their networks, tapping into new sources of value, both tangible and intangible.
Value in the social impact supply chain will continue to come from new sources, for those who allow that to happen. Existing stakeholders in social change organizations will add value in new ways and new stakeholders will interact in new ways with the community’s resources and assets via the platform. SCaaP will increasingly bring all those actors and sectors together.
Philanthropic institutions supporting similar causes will be working together out in the open, ensuring all their resources and those supported through their grant-making are at the disposal of the community working to advance social change — not any one individual or institution. These efforts will be focused on maximizing the way value is derived and how the agency is built, shared and advanced throughout the network.
“The future of social change as a platform is a world of connected platforms working to solve society’s most pressing challenges more effectively as fast as possible.”
Key SCaaP Advantages to Nonprofits
Social change organizations that leverage their stakeholder’s networks as well as their tangible (programs and services) and intangible (expertise and relationships) assets will gain these and other advantages from embracing the SCaaP business model.
- Decreases costs: Stakeholders willing to share their opinions, skills, relationships and even real assets for shared value to the cause, at a very low or near-zero cost, stretch an organization’s very scarce resources. Moreover, reinventing the wheel each time social change products and services are created lead to duplication and waste.
- Deepens community engagement: Enabling meaningful ways for stakeholders to add value increases engagement and deepens understanding and strengthens these relationships. SCaaP enables anyone with a good idea to build innovative services that connect citizens to the cause of their choice, allowing citizens to more directly participate.
- Increases organizational flexibility and decreases risk: Operating as a network increases an organization’s adaptability and speed. Work is more distributed and lends itself to self-organizing, which makes it highly responsive to changing needs. Allowing common functions to be implemented as shared utilities across social change organizations instead of replicating them in each silo also reduces risk.
- Enhances transparency and accountability: SCaaP fundamentally shifts the power dynamic within the social change community. Grant makers work with community stakeholders as peers, helping them achieve full potential as individuals and their organizations.
- Expands impact: Ultimately, scaling relationships lets an organization secure more value, which helps maximize social impact. As co-creating partners who have a vested interest in advancing a cause, stakeholders’ incentive to add value is clear. The platform’s success is their success.
To succeed, a clear and understandable pathway to adopting SCaaP is necessary for this large, untapped market.
Seven Steps to Embracing SCaaP Today
Social change as a platform is first and foremost a business strategy, a theory of change that needs to be integrated into every organization’s five-year strategic plan. That effort begins by identifying how and where an organization can accelerate the transition to a network-model across the entire organization. Specifically, organizations must assess their business model and inventory network assets, and start to reallocate resources and capital to networks as well as develop network key performance indicators (KPIs).
- Choose the right platform. Platforms that embrace intelligence, speed, productivity, mobility, and connectivity empower social change organizations to take advantage of the most significant transformations taking place in enterprise software.
- Select the relationships to scale. Identify all the key stakeholders for advancing your mission and indicate which relationships are the most important to scale. Be sure to include existing and potential relationships, including other partners and organizations that can add value.
- Connect programs and services. Plot the organization’s various offerings — programs and services offers to various stakeholders — and map how each contributes value to advance the relationships with different stakeholders.
- Convert the data into intelligence. A unified view of relationships and programs creates troves of data. Convert the data into useful, real-time intelligence integrated into the organization’s processes in real-time.
- Drive one-to-one engagement. Real-time intelligence lets organizations engage more effectively with all.
- Track what matters. It’s not just financial performance that matters, but also engagement, sentiment and co-creation. Create KPI’s for each of these items and add them to daily performance reviews.
- Keep platforms, networks and intelligence at the center. Products and services are helpful, but in the final reckoning, it is the breadth and depth of the network that will create the scale of social change desired.
The biggest hurdle to SCaaP is changing the mental models and core competencies of the leadership team and board of directors. However, nonprofit organizations and academic institutions are better positioned to embrace SCaaP because they are more accustomed to imagining their community as active participants, instead of passive recipients. But it is critical that leaders significantly change how they embrace today’s technologies.
With SCaaP, the nonprofit world will have the potential to enact social change on a scale previously unimagined. It is time to take up the mantle because doing so can unlock the future potential of every human being. People are worth it.
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2 Comments So Far
Anumakonda Jagadeesh
Great. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the article as subject matter is dear to my heart.
The Challenge today is to harness science to the chariot wheels of progress and to press science as a deliberate tool to serve the basic needs of the common man and contribute to the economic, social, and cultural transformation of the country.
If the benefits of science and technology are to reach the vast majority of our people who live in country side, some serious thinking is called for to develop science to serve the needs of these people. Science must be relevant and percolate to reach these people and involve the people in the process of development. This calls for organisation and management of science and developing science to suit the development of these people.
Innovative Technology
The new awareness – culminating in quest for Innovative Technology has three components : the realization that man’s inner needs are as great as, if not greater than, his outer requirements ; the appreciation of the inadequacy of our institutions for rethinking and the acceptance of the fact that the world is evolving not towards a plurality of civilizations.
The Innovative Technology arises from the new awareness. A prior commitment to enlightened cosmologies is a necessary pre-condition for the development of the Innovative Technology. As such, the Innovative Technology :
• integrates values with knowledge
• replaces linear thinking of old science by the multi-dimensional systems approach ;
• is multi-cultural, that is, it carries different hopes and aspirations for different groups of people ; and
• gives rise to alternative Innovative Technologies.
The Innovative Technology is based on a new concept and is intended for the well-being of men and his habitat. It encourages direct innovation with human needs and environmental imperatives in view. It is unique to people and their culture, it is their technology and will meet only their needs and their requirements.
Three essential ingredients to evolve such Innovative Technology are :
• Mass scientific network: This is basically an extension network covering agriculture and related activities, public health and industry.
• Local problem-solving capability: Formalized groups within rural industries and other production units:
(a) to articulate its demand for additional inputs ;
(b) to establish outward linkages into the national S&T system ; and
© to extend inward linkages into the extension network serving the locality.
Content and Scope of Innovative Technologies
In this field several terms have sprung up and have been indiscriminately used like (a) Intermediate technology or low technology, (b) appropriate technology, and © Innovative Technologies.
(a) Intermediate or Low Technology
Intermediate technology has meant many things to many people as a type of technology which lies in between the primitive technology and sophisticated technology. The concept of intermediate technology comes very near the one propagated by Mahatma Gandhi the Father of our Nation – but this would hardly satisfy our scientists in these countries, who, by training and temperament, are keen on undertaking internationally fashion oriented sophisticated research. Development of intermediate technologies, by and large, has thus remained a programme to be worked at technician’s level.
(b) Appropriate Technology
Appropriate technology is a priori a normative concept which implies that its delimitation can take place only after the norms are decided. These norms change with every shift in time and place. At the advent of Industrial Revolution, technological innovations aimed at diversifying product design and cheapening the production cost for meeting the needs of rapidly expanding consumer market. Appropriateness of technology was considered in terms of profit, with or without a concern for social goals.
© Innovative Technologies
Innovative Technology is defined as development of technologies or production systems, which are not only appropriate to a social situation at a particular point of time, but also is free from the deleterious effects such as alienation or environmental imbalances. It considers the possible social and environmental changes, and this has built-in flexibility to adjust changing needs. Since such technologies would have to be essentially based on the integrated development of the total region, the concept becomes more wide in its economic, social and political perspective. At the scientific level it poses new challenges for the scientists to devise new technologies that are not available anywhere. It compels the scientists to come out to the people and try to understand them, their needs, their environment, their traditional technologies and skills, understand the science behind such skills based on experience and observation, and then evolve new techniques of production to suit their resources and native genius and meet their needs.
The quest for Innovative Technology means many things to many people and they are summarised as below:
To people it may mean
– gainful employment ;
– self-help, and competence to utilize their skills and other resources;
– inculcation of scientific temper : with the association of cultural change, they may turn for help to science rather than to quackery;
– acceleration of development with multiplier effects ; and
– a feeling of adventure and pride in achievement
To the Planners and Policy Makers, it may mean
– a different approach to grass-root planning
– science is used deliberately as a tool for growth and selective changes;
– better utilisation of resources (including wastes);
– more and better distributed employment opportunities with less movement of people ;
– an integrated approach with flexibility of adjustment as per available resources ; and
– maintenance of ecological balances.
Human Resources – Traditional Knowledge and Methods – Great Assets to Developing Countries
Ideas float around in bewildering numbers, and scores of designs, ranging from windmills to the spinning wheel, are available ; papers are circulated stating the wonders of intermediate (not innovative) technology what could be done, why it should be done, what must be done, and how the rural countryside can be changed if intermediate technology is implemented. Experts are called from abroad to tell people this.
In all this talk, there seems to be no place for the ideas generated by farmers, rural artisans. A stand seems to have been taken that this transfer of technology for the socio-economic regeneration of the rural areas is a novelty for country-folk. But rural communities have survived for generations without any help in ideas and materials from outside. They have developed a low-cost technology of their own, suited to their own particular areas. It would be foolish to overlook and take for granted methods used by farmers and artisans. When a ploughshare develops trouble on the field, when a bullock cart breaks down on the road to market, when a house collapses in a storm, the villager uses materials available in the immediate vicinity to solve his problem. It is the scientist who must see these problems as challenges that must be met if there is to be development in rural areas. It is clear that the villagers and scientists will see the problems of the villages quite differently, and it will not always be true that the projects proposed by the scientists will be meaningful to the villages. If projects are imposed on the villagers, they are likely to be skeptical and may well resist rather than co-operate with the programme. Rural Development Schemes, in the broadest sense, requires first a good sociological approach, and as much psychology as scientific knowledge. After all ‘country means people and not soil’.
Problems – People – Solutions
Research, Development and Demonstration projects in developing countries have generated a variety of devices and systems for exploitation – for example, solar cookers, wind battery charges etc. In Innovation theory, this is a classic case of technology push, that is, technical solutions looking for a social application. Technology push innovations might of course be adopted if they happen to satisfy a real demand, or are heavily promoted. Success is much more likely, however if the needs, priorities and demands are studied before attempting to introduce a new technology or system. This is the demand pull approach to innovation.
Often identifying the right problem is difficult rather than finding a possible solution. People are better judges to identify the problems and since they benefit most by the solutions, they can contribute for finding the best solutions.
A novel and innovative scheme is suggested to achieve the above goal.
In developing countries the Government can advertise in the media seeking problems from the people in different disciplines like education, health, energy, industry etc. The problems received can be screened, studied and short-listed by a committee comprising government officials, experts, representatives from N.G.O’s etc. The short-listed problems can be re-advertised seeking solutions from people. The solutions received can be studied in detail and the best solutions given awards. To catch a fish the bait should be attractive enough. As such there should be sizeable incentive so that people can devote their talent and energies for finding solutions. As the saying goes ‘Anything can be done for a Dollar’. In this way the creative potential of the people can be tapped to the full and a thought process will be set in motion in the country. In India a general knowledge programme conducted by a Super Star on TV is a roaring success and children, youth and old-all alike have become addicted to get equipped with general knowledge so that they can try their luck for winning fabulous cash prizes.
The Author has developed Novel solutions and sustainable technologies for the benefits of bottoms billions like Everybody’s Solar Water Heater, Simple Solar Drier, Safe Drinking Water from Solar Disinfection,Energy Conserbvation in Irrigation pumpsets,Hand operated Battery charger,Savoniusorotor with concentrator for Battery Charging, Multiple Uses of Gas Stove,Pedal operated Washing machine etc.,
Conclusions
Innovation, Invention and creativity are the pillars of progress of any Society / Nation. The greater the participation of people in the developmental activities, the quicker will be the progress. A new approach “Innovative Technology (IT)” deliberately involving people from all walks of life is the need of the hour in identifying the felt needs in the developing countries and finding solutions. Such a technology will contribute to Integrated Development (ID).
Modernise the Traditional – Traditionalise the Modern
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
Michael Elling
There is a common thread missing from this article and all the others in the series, as well as others on the K@W site, such as connected cars and upgrading america to tech 2.0 and saving journalism, namely that the underlying protocol stack and settlement system makes sharing of costs and value north-south (between app and infrastructure) and east-west (between actors or networks) in the informational stack impossible.
We need to address this fundamental issue before ANY of these models and approaches can scale. In the past 30 years we’ve gotten away from the issues that plagued networks 100 years ago, namely interconnection and settlements to ensure social benefit maximization in competitive markets; aka Universal Service. That hasn’t happened with the “free internet”. If anything, just the opposite. True marginal cost has come down a lot, but relative divides have and are growing and risk is rising everywhere.
The good news is that we are on the cusp of achieving this by accepting 3 simple changes: 1) embrace interconnection as far down and out to the edge as possible; 2) accepting 2-sided settlement models and exchanges which balance risk, and 3) understand that a “larger actor” paying a slightly disproportionate terminating settlement to a smaller actor will result in significantly greater network effects and therefore improved opportunities and lowered costs for all actors.
Networks are not well understood. The first WP on network effects was written just over 40 years ago at Bell Labs. But networks have not only been with us and driving us for all of our history, they drive all of nature. Our bodies are an internetworked system of 80 networks! Without (price) signals that provide incentives and disincentives what would regulate, control and coordinate? The same holds for all our socio-economic and political institutions, but most importantly for the underlying physical networks upon which all the bits ride.
One thing to understand about all networks is that value grows geometrically based on the number of participants and is captured mostly at the core and top of the network’s informational stack. Inter-networking networks (with the right form or level of settlements) results in exponential growth. At the same time, costs in a network grow mostly linearly and uniformly (at the margin, though there can be huge differences). Hence why networks have become to be understood as so wildly profitable.
To “equilibrate” the value capture at the core (social benefit derived by one or a few actors) with the shared costs at the edge (private cost borne by all) we need these north-south and east-west settlement structures and exchanges. And not just within networks, but between networks. This means that existing business models will be disrupted, but incumbents will benefit from significantly larger markets than we can imagine today. Think a scale of 1000:1 vs the last 30 years. Change is good.
Today’s protocol stacks are one-sided with respect to risk. They came out of 1 or 1.5-way store and forward trusted, semi-public institutional markets, not real-time public service provisioning models that were regulated to achieve universal service. The result as we see today is greater silo-ization and balkanization and growing wealth and digital divides. The opposite of what was intended.
To get to the enormously scaled digital ecosystems that are sustainable and generative (remember supply is depreciating in seconds/minutes/days and demand is infinite and infinitely complex) that all these articles talk about, we need to rethink our protocol stacks and settlement systems. I refer to these as market driven Universal Service Settlement Systems (USSS). They will balance risk and give control back to the receiver and/or end-user. But they will also empower the “core buyer” who can achieve significant horizontal and vertical economies of scale to subsidize or make access free. They clear marginal demand and supply best. They can be implemented at relatively small scale and virally infect the internet because of their efficiency. So making the leap and embracing the above 3 steps should not be that difficult.