The+Power+of+Social+Innovation

__ THE POWER OF SOCIAL INNOVATION __ By: Stephen Goldsmith With Gigi Georges and Tim Glynn Burke WIKI Page by: Mark Allen, Krystal Anton, Shelby Barker, Ciara Oehring, and Angela Whipple toc

__ About the Author, Foreword, and Preface: __
“Stephen Goldsmith is the Daniel Paul Professor of Government and the director of the Innovations in American Government Program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government…Goldsmith served two terms as mayor of Indianapolis, America’s twelfth-largest city, where he earned a reputation as on of the country’s mot innovative public officials.” (Goldsmith, xi)

Michael R. Bloomberg offers the book’s foreword, stating of Goldsmith’s work, “As Steve Goldsmith articulates so well in this book, America still has the resources, the ideas, and the collective will to put innovation to work solving the toughest problems facing our communities… Goldsmith is a firm believer in the power of everyday citizens to create change and in the important role that public-private partnerships can play in turning dreams into reality…In this book, Goldsmith challenges us to do that by bringing together the voices of hundreds of leading civic entrepreneurs, government officials, business and nonprofit leaders, philanthropists, community activists, innovation experts, and everyday citizens from around the country…Goldsmith ends by painting a picture of a society in which the best ideas are free to take flight and thrive…And just reading this book is a big step in the right direction.” (Goldsmith, xiii-xvi)

Goldsmith’s 25+ year career as a public official, prosecutor, activist, and social entrepreneur are shared in his book, //The Power Of Social Innovation// as he offers his insight into igniting social change through innovation and entrepreneurship.

=__ Chapter 1: IGNITING CIVIC PROGRESS __= Civic progress requires that public and philanthropic efforts create the best possible social result, and as Goldsmith describes, “Transformative social progress today is held back more by precedent and existing structures and processes than by resource limitations or a lack of the public’s interest” (Goldsmith, 3). Civic progress, Goldsmith suggests, requires systemic change within public service, brought by innovative ideas and passionate individuals who challenge existing assumptions and paradigms in order to create new space for success.

Goldsmith uses chapter 1 to outline current challenges, define concepts, and pronounce the ability of civic entrepreneurship to catalyze civic progress.

// Civic Entrepreneurship: // The spirit of Change meets the spirit of Community. Civic Entrepreneurship helps “communities develop and organize their economic assets and build productive, resilient relationships across the public, private, and civil sectors… The term combines two important American traditions: entrepreneurship-the spirit of enterprise, and civic virtue- the spirit of community… This definition incorporates, but is not limited to, the traditional understanding of social entrepreneurship as nonprofit or for-profit endeavors with a social mission. It also includes those who enable and champion progress by providing the necessary fodder for innovation and change” (Goldsmith, 5-6). *Goldsmith’s definition includes comments from Doug Henton.

-To Goldsmith, successful civic entrepreneurship causes the rest of a complex network to respond because of its power in either policy or delivery, and in its leadership that creates space for change and the challenging of ideas.

// Challenges: // Goldsmith offers five reasons why “we are often stuck with entrenched underperforming social safety net systems of providers, government and philanthropic funders, advocates, and interest groups” (Goldsmith, 6). Entrepreneurs must navigate these challenges and obstacles in order to be successful and force systemic change.

1. Irrational Capital Markets: “Since the clients for social delivery systems rarely have a choice of where to receive help, politics and bureaucracy play a large part in determining who receives public funding… The civic entrepreneur inevitably discovers that incumbent interests have their protectors…Champions of a particular solution, convinced-whether correctly or not- of the value they produce, will eventually fight changes that jeopardize their funding” (Goldsmith, 7).

2. Poor Metrics and Casual Confusion: “With so many interlocking responses to similar issues, communities find it difficult to hold any one organization responsible for results. No one owns failure. Obviously, impact must be measured and accountability imposed, but the //how// is difficult- and always more appropriate for the other guy” (Goldsmith, 8).

3. Vertical Solutions to Horizontal Problems: “Governments ability to collaborate has not kept pace with the growing complexity of these social service production systems. Despite good intentions, many attempts to reform these social problem-solving networks results in an incrementally better solution to a problem, but no the integrated, transformative approach that true civic entrepreneurship promises… As a result, government reforms will continue to fail if they are aimed simply at improving the same old activities” (Goldsmith, 8-9).

4. The Curse of Professionalism: “Social problems are increasingly complex and interlocking; the idea that a few smart program officers can design a solution and then issue a series of contracts governed by a set of rules misses entirely the point of civic engagement and community problem solving… We need to open these social production systems to the community and engage it in real and substantive ways that involve a higher percentage of the community’s assets and social networks in driving change” (Goldsmith, 9). No one person or organization can have all the answers.

5. Not Invented Here: “The nationally ambitious entrepreneur aspiring to take a tested success into a new community faces another barrier. Government procurement rules or practices often give preference to local providers” (Goldsmith, 10). In excluding an outside solution or program, the ‘Not Invented Here’ attitude also excludes the tacit knowledge, that which is not easily recognized or transferable, which made it successful. Communities must be willing to accept successful programs, and such programs must be able to adapt and recognize, by including local leadership, the unique needs of the community.

// Key Concepts: // Goldsmith’s key ideas are implicitly outlined in the first chapter, woven through the entire text, and can be summarized as follows:

// Drive Systemic Change: // Social innovations must be executed across entire systems, and create an environment to enable continual innovation while demanding real impact and performance. Social entrepreneurship efforts must be inclusive of many players in order to be successful and scalable, as well as remain competitive, dynamic, and responsive.

// Animate and Trust the Citizen: // Public service programs and efforts must cooperate with clients, include their interests and abilities, trust them to take action, and empower them to be the catalyst for change in their own life and community.

// Engage Government with Caution //// : // Though the government must be included in order to make systemic change possible, social entrepreneurs must remain cautious toward government participation. Often, accountability measures and success metrics can enslave social programs to government resources and cumbersome processes, creating stagnant programs that serve their own interests to be sustained, rather than dynamic programs that nimbly adapt to serve the public and secure new resources. “Since today’s good idea could become part of tomorrow’s oligopoly, we need a process that consistently promotes innovation… Government can either be a powerful ally or the primary obstacle in efforts to bring about large-scale change” (Goldsmith, 20-21).

// Innovate: // Simply, success in public service is a moving target, as social problems change within subtle social, political, and economic markets. Risk Taking innovation is required to responsively serve changing needs within the community. Often, innovations are challenged by requests for empirical evidence of their effect, which Goldsmith suggests is necessary. However, Goldsmith also urges social entrepreneurs to charge ahead with ambitions to try new solutions, test the results, adapt and try again. Ultimately, old solutions cannot meet new needs; innovation is necessary.

// Vortex of Social Change: // Goldsmith also highlights the processes and systems involved in providing ‘Social Good’. This Vortex of Social Change model serves entrepreneurs by illustrating the relationship of both players and efforts in the creation of social good.

Goldsmith presents the role of Market Makers and Service providers, both local and national, in driving social good, suggesting their ability to catalyze change, focus on results, activate and engage citizens, share risk and reward, and open source innovation. Different players use combinations of programmatic and policy advocacy, funding, rule setting, and more in order to create change.

([]) Goldsmith suggests, “We consider both market makers and service providers to be potential entrepreneurs and note that the levers of change they utilize are sometimes the same and sometimes quite different… The lessons that guide these champions of innovation include a mobilization of public will and political capital to demand results and change, a willingness to assume risk, and a delivery model that increases expectations of individual potential and responsibility” (Goldsmith, 20).

Throughout the entirety of the book, Goldsmith uses cases of entrepreneurial success to exemplify this model, and to demonstrate the ability of social innovation to bring meaningful change.

=__ Chapter 2: INNOVATION AS A CATALYTIC INGREDIENT __= Civic entrepreneurship requires the identification and application of catalyzing ingredients which can fight the inertia present in ineffective public systems, drive change, and provide momentum for success. Social change requires innovation that inspires other actions and warrants resources within social production.

In chapter 2, Goldsmith outlines strategies and areas of focus for entrepreneurs hoping to understand the assets of their community, guiding them to determine the ingredient that can catalyze the necessary changes.

// Discovering the Missing Ingredient: // The process of identifying what would trigger drastic improvements inside a social delivery system…could follow one or more of four methods” (Goldsmith, 30).

1. Civic Discovery: Identifies the institutional assets in the community, the talented individuals within, and the networks through which all are connected.
 * § These networks may include faith organizations, community groups, small businesses, etc.
 * § Allows for the utilization of local resources like nonprofit leaders and frontline city employees.
 * § This discovery process needs to be connected to personal aspirations.
 * § Relies on family, friends, and peers to identify networks
 * § Allows understanding to unlock civic participation and a citizen’s capacity to serve.

2. System Discovery: Explores the relationships among actors inside the system, including barriers to entry; examining three variables. Beyond program evaluation, system discovery assesses the room within a community for new cultural norms, and the ability to build new infrastructure and introduce new business models. This allows understanding to unlock civic participation and a citizen’s capacity to serve.
 * § Structure: How many participants are in the delivery system? Are they competitive, monopolistic, etc.? Do funding mechanisms allow true diversity, or force all providers into the same model?
 * § Degree to which Strategies Produce Success: Are outputs or outcomes used to measure success? How is this information collected and analyzed?
 * § Performance: How dynamic and steady are costs and prices? Is enough innovation happening as evidenced by steady productivity gains?

3. Personal Discovery: Discover an intervention through listening, close observation, and personal experience.
 * § Allows for personalization of services on the basis of individual talent. Helps change models in ways that often elude government parties.
 * § Allows for the design of highly nuanced responses.
 * § Allows for civic innovators to respond to individuals rather than a problem.

4. Predictive Discovery: Utilize decision-support and predictive-modeling systems to discern solution in data.
 * § Identifies trends within existing data sets. (i.e. expidentures and client outcomes)
 * § Identifies needs for new data

// Choosing the Right Catalyst: // “Having identified the missing ingredient, civic entrepreneurs must then design an innovation that catalyzes improvement in the performance of the system overall” (Goldsmith, 36). Choosing the right catalyst is the entrepreneur’s challenge; however, Goldsmith outlines four typologies to describe the purpose and application of catalytic ingredients in filling community needs.

1. Civic Realignment: Drives value through a delivery system by organizing the players and their relationships differently. Not all innovations are technical; civic realignment calls for new roles to be defined for existing players.
 * § Develop a coherent rationale for new roles, calling people together to address and issue.
 * § Capitalize on crisis or high-profile events to bring people to the table.
 * § Leveraging credibility to take on the status quo and create a culture of collaboration.
 * § Force realignment through focus on proven models and metrics.

1. Engage in systems discovery process. 2. Capitalize on crisis to build broad support 3. Develop and understand theory of change. 5. Engage other actors to serve as partners. 6. Incorporate proven models of innovation from others. 7. Use data to measure success.
 * Steps to Civic Realignment: **

2. Technological Glue: Civic entrepreneurs can also design technology that harnesses potential within the system and galvanize action.
 * § Identify the inflection point for infusing technology as a catalyst for change.
 * § Design technology to unleash latent potential within the system, working closely with users to integrate technology into daily routines.
 * § Seek feedback to refine the technology.

3. Filling the Management Gap: Technology and programming are useless without good management practices.
 * § Management oriented civic entrepreneurs can be the answer that turns around an existing organization.
 * § Management partners can share resources, knowledge, and talent.

4. New Pipelines for Community Engagement: Sometimes the immediate need in a delivery system is to recruit and mobilize more creative and compassionate people. Social progression often depends on small groups of volunteers. Civic entrepreneurs can choose the right catalyst to drive people toward engagement.
 * § Identify an unmet need and/or untapped goodwill.
 * § Unleash people’s energy with activities they find meaningful and productive.
 * § Bridge barriers as matchmaker, navigator, and/or informational guide.

=__ Chapter 3: OPEN SOURCING SOCIAL INNOVATION __= Allowing more social service providers into delivery systems, creating choices on the demand side, can create a competitive and results-drive marketplace ready for innovation. In order for open sourcing to occur, however, social opportunity must be provided to disrupt the existing provider and funder webs that may inhibit a system’s ability to foster successful innovations. “Open and competitive sourcing of service provision and innovation requires incentives from both the supply side and the demand side” (Goldsmith, 69). This includes changing models by which ‘demand’ consists of funders buying services for others rather than providing choices. Open sourcing can force providers to be responsive to real clients.

// Providing Social Opportunity: // With the support of, or over the objections of, professional associations, incumbents, and large-scale organizations, the following strategies can help ensure social opportunity:

1. Breaking Down Protectionist Barriers: Eliminate advantages to incumbent providers, and ease entry into market for new providers. Over-regulation and a tendency to maintain the status quo are enemies to innovation.
 * § Measure government’s important safety and quality standards against both their intended and unintended costs.
 * § Proceed cautiously when regulating inputs that narrow offerings; limiting competition can limit quality.
 * § Support informed consumers.

2. Opening Space for Innovation: Build the political and community will for innovation. “Invention requires imagination but also access to information and capital- financial and political. Networks themselves are another resource that can either inhibit or promote entrepreneurship” (Goldsmith, 73).
 * § Provide financial resources for “social R&D”
 * § Secure civic leadership to face opposition and overcome risk aversion.
 * § Identify and publicize barriers to strengthen the mandate for change.

3. Level the Playing Field:
 * § Eliminate unnecessary rules that prevent small providers from entering the system.
 * § Utilize intermediaries to reduce administrative burdens and barriers.
 * § Fund capacity building so that smaller providers can enter regular procurement streams.

4. Invite Exceptional Innovators: Successful open sourcing eventually requires the active solicitation of new ideas. Exceptional innovation often looks like “positive deviance” or uncommon but successful behavior. The willingness to challenge the existing paradigm within an issue, and be ‘deviant’, is what enables innovators to find better solutions than others.
 * § Identify and incubate local exceptional actors, individual or organizational (positive deviants).
 * § Import new expertise into the organization or community.
 * § Require performance bases accountability.

5. Force Cultural Change: Authority and policy can be used from the top-down to force a change in culture to open room for innovation.
 * § Go where the money is; identify gatekeeper agencies and departments.
 * § Use authority to ensure that all agencies and actors embrace innovation and encourage future cooperation.
 * § Reduce start-up costs in procurement and do not shift all risk onto providers.

Ultimately, leadership can use these strategies to provide social opportunity, allowing for more providers and choices to clients, bringing competition to social services. Greater competition accelerates the need for innovation within providers, requires them to generate and measure success clearly, and ultimately increases the quality of services available to clients.

=__ Chapter 4: TRADING GOOD DEEDS FOR MEASURABLE RESULTS __= As Goldsmith notes, good deeds do not necessarily produce great results. In chapter 4, Goldsmith addresses the processes by which public activities are deemed relevant, granted funding, and measured for success.

// Current Funding Limitations: // As funds imprudently flow toward needs rather than program successes, recipients of funding are often shackled by bureaucratic criteria; funding conditions are often risk-averse, erratic, overly political, and hold too many contingencies.

Funding decisions commonly reflect the following problematic traits.

1. Irrational: Unlike private capital investment, where funding is secured by success, philanthropic support is often irrational; seeking to leave once an organization is ‘successful’. Often times, programs and organizations lose funding after a predetermined time period, regardless of success or continued need.

2. Stove Piped: Cutting edge civic entrepreneurs spend over 70% of their time and energy chasing small fractions of the resources they need, because funding mechanisms are averse to new ideas. Investors need to value risk, the yet untried, and the potential of innovation.

3. Prescriptive: “Program, legislative, and regulatory professionals can inadvertently limit civic entrepreneurship by asserting a technical definition of ‘the Right Approach” (Goldsmith, 105). Discoveries that drive progress rely on a limited number of courageous funders and regulators to see a different way.

4. Conflicted: Active support for underperforming interventions undermines a tight performance-driven funding model. Improperly prioritizes community and peer support over results.

// Questions to Drive Funding Decisions: // Derived from interviews and inspiring examples, Goldsmith offers questions funder's interested in social change might ask in order to create a re-orientation toward the scaling of measurable success across a social production system.

1. What Public Value Are We Purchasing?
 * § Avoid incentivizing the behavior your are addressing, taking preventative action instead when possible.
 * § What is the market failure that we need government or philanthropic participation to correct?
 * § Put clients first; empower them with skills and education.
 * § Repurpose dollars, creating a new market for better services.

2. Are the Funded Activities Still the Most Relevant?
 * § Old programs are not necessarily irrelevant or ineffective programs.
 * § Sometimes, activities need refocusing to target the location, and specific needs of those they can help.
 * § Rethink the environment in which you are operating.
 * § Use all assets, including credibility, to influence others, making impact disproportionate to size.
 * § Identify what the community wants, and which assets can be mobilized.

3. Are We Funding a Project or Sustainable System Change?
 * § Direct resources to what works, evaluating both the person and the business model.
 * § Seek entrepreneurs with the potential to transform lives and transform systems.
 * § Form a close, transparent relationship between funder and provider, agreeing on a growth strategy and metrics.

4. What Will We Measure? Ultimately, Goldsmith suggests that institutionalizing innovation- as a basic philosophy, organizational structure, and willingness to incur risk and invest in new methods- can itself drive measurable success.
 * § Refocus evaluation on inputs and out//comes//, rather than out//puts//. Measure social or community effects.
 * § Do not the perfect be the enemy of the good.
 * § Ask the client and the community to evaluate service providers.
 * § Do not let a provider blame its poor results on someone else.
 * § Use competition to drive continuing innovation.

=__ Chapter 5: ANIMATING AND TRUSTING THE CITIZEN __= “Chapter 5 explore the power of the individual to make social progress, highlighting various ways that citizens, whether serving or being served, cause true change” (Goldsmith, xxvi). Unfortunately, government funding is a political process and philanthropic funding is often based on relationships and/or established practices. Change comes only when only when the public as clients, taxpayers, or concerned community members expect better results and act on those expectations. The citizen uses his/her voice and begins to participate, not as victims, but as engaged contributors in improving themselves and their communities. Citizen engagement includes mobilizing public demand for better outcomes, engaging neighbors in active problem solving, and concerned individuals demanding political and civic attention to serious issues in need of innovation and effective solutions. Citizens as “clients” should be trusted to make more of their own decisions in a complex world in which bureaucrats are ill positioned to make decisions for others.

// Engaging the Citizen: // Successful civic entrepreneurs engage the citizens they serve at a higher level, expecting and receiving more from them as part of the solution. They use the following strategies, each with their own internal characteristics, good or bad, and components:

1. Balancing the Professional with the Public: Results should matter more than credential or prescribed approaches. However, the curse of professionalism, or the misconception that one professional can have all the necessary answers to solve a problem, can affect anyone in the system. Often, and with mistake, workers want to help, and consider any possible form of assistance //except// from the person they are trying to help. I mentioned this charity before, but they are doing what charities don't trust to do with their money. They give it directly, without strings, and no repayment. For the most part they find that people know what they need, and are willing to spend the money to improve their life in a way that has continuous outcomes.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/08/23/214210692/the-charity-that-just-gives-money-to-poor-people
The curse underlies three other characteristics that often plague social service production systems: Misdirection – Effective solutions require information and feedback from clients. Example: Meeting with youths whose behavior you want to change might yield different assumptions of how a designed program is interpreted by them than what your assumptions of their perceptions might be. Growth Stunting – Inability to grow an innovation on the basis of whether the people actually want it. A firm succeeds if its products attract customers, but the social or civic sector has no analogous incentive or disciplinary mechanism. Entrenchment – Political success, not social success drives social service delivery systems. Even failed programs often have their vocal and strong constituencies. A program in a delivery system not based on market choice can creatively construct a new opportunity, but not easily get rid of the old program. Social innovations most often layer themselves on top of older programs of dubious value.

2. Building a Public: Civic progress requires that those who advocate for new interventions build a community of engaged citizens with the power to demand change in a social-political system. Civic entrepreneurs enter the social realm to make a difference to perform and their passion and talent are often distinct from the legitimacy enjoyed by incumbent providers or the political support enjoyed by the well connected. The collective voice of many engaged citizens is required to build credibility behind a civic entrepreneur. Amplifying the voice of the underserved can be highly effective in making underperformance politically untenable. Social movements originate from broad changes in people’s values, including perspectives on their own rights and responsibilities. These same values can and should elevate citizens’ expectations of themselves and their communities, and precipitate a social movement to activate change. Social movements develop in 4 stages, and require a different style of civic entrepreneurship and leadership in each.

Four stages of in the development of social movements: · Stage 1 – Restlessness and unease, needs an agitator · Stage 2 – popular excitement and unrest, requires a prophet or reformer · Stage 3 – mobilizing, needs someone to employ tactics and discipline · Stage 4 - fixed organization, calls for an “administrator”

Tapping Into Shared Identity ­ - People are complex and have multiple identities, not just a single well defined identity. Focus on a common interest identified by the community itself. Communities are animated by word of mouth.

Gaining Trust and Commitment - Respond to citizens’ request for better services; the earned trust and commitment from community residents are the building blocks of success.
 * § Activate citizens by tapping into a shared goal or interest.
 * § Meet people where they are, such as church or school, to tap into existing identity.
 * § Mobilize families around the notion that something is wrong by showing them something right.
 * § Solidify a reputation for reliability
 * § Furnish the activated group with tools and directions to build broader public support
 * § Hold elected officials accountable

Animating the Face of Change -Once you have activated a group, give its members the tools and direction to build broader public support by amplifying their voices and shining a light on the realities of poorly performing actors and systems. This group becomes the face of change – turning it into something more tangible and familiar that citizens can mobilize around. Include leadership training and mentoring for community members. Focus on how to mobilize statewide grassroots campaigns to hold incumbent officials accountable and help elect officials with friendly agendas. Avoid more partisan and divisive issues, at least until there is the gathered strength and size to take on both statewide and local campaigns. Data, too, helps to mobilize public support for change. Understand that politicians and policymakers convert a public expectation for results to actual change inside of social service delivery systems. Get the demand side pulling for these innovations. Think about how a program can scale up through grassroots action.
 * § Build broader public support by capturing the voice of those most affected.
 * § Amplify that voice by demonstrating something tangible around which citizens will mobilize.
 * § Shine a light on poor performance and ineffective processes.
 * § Understand both your audience and your opposition.

Growing a Movement -Understand your audience and opposition well enough to know how best to engage them in a broader movement of diverse constituencies. The secret is to have no opposition in an issue campaign. In other words, make it difficult for the opposition by having to argue against something that is obviously good. Mobilize the public around issues by combining listening to people with appealing to their interests. “Calling the public into existence” is necessary not only to shake up entrenched incumbent providers, but also to drive new resources towards an unmet need.

Leveraging Social Media for Change -Social media not only changes how advocacy efforts occur but also fundamentally democratizes newsgathering and reporting, following a trend of devolving control over information from authoritative experts to citizens. Pressure comes, for example, when community based reporters or bloggers comb government data, make sense of it, and then broadcast that information to force change. Creates wholesale social change. Most online efforts fail due to lack of participation, so investing heavily in outreach and recruitment will pay off. Information fragmentation can work to your benefit to gather broad networks of support from varying areas.
 * § Provide new attention grabbing ways for individuals to mobilize fellow citizens.
 * § Devolve access to information from “experts” to citizens.
 * § Gain access to the and post providers’ performance and financial data.

Client Choice -Individuals advocate for what is in their best interest. Trust citizens and give them the responsibility of where to choose to get help. With the right encouragement and expectations, individuals will act responsibly and become productive members of society. Transformative power of personal responsibility can lead to a cultural shift toward higher expectations among individuals and within a community. Success breeds success. A competitive system will correct itself more quickly than a system without choice. Professionals and bureaucrats are should be confident and willing to accept that these individuals do not require decisions to be made for them, and that, unfortunately, some people will just make bad decisions. Confidence in the majority of individuals to meet expectation and make good decisions for themselves helps close the expectation gap.
 * § Allow choice to promote greater personal responsibility and engagement.
 * § Promote competition to incentivize and enforce quality.
 * § Address the challenges of choice programs, especially in education.

Curing the Expectation Gap -Individuals and neighborhoods respond to new norms and tipping points. Lower expectations become the broken window of social service, leading providers to accept lower performance and greater dependence. Curing expectation gap involves values, both personal and civic. Effective innovations must be both adequately generous, and sufficiently tied to desirable behavior to be effective.
 * § Raise expectations for individuals and the communities in which they live.
 * § Leverage the power of personal social networks.

A “needs” based approach distrusts citizens and restricts their progress. In a traditional service model the more one hurts or the greater the need, the more resources are dedicated to them, actually reinforcing the negative. Many existing social service providers find themselves frozen in the status quo by their own frame of reference. They assume their clients cannot live without them. This becomes a self- fulfilling prophesy as those who need help look increasingly like problems to be managed rather than people with unrealized potential. Rewarding positive behaviors is a powerful way of raising people’s sense of responsibility, self-efficacy, and their expectations for what is possible. Establish a system based on citizen choice, personal responsibility, natural relationships and positive incentives. Powerful social innovation engages citizens, and empowers them to be their own advocate.

=__ Chapter 6: TURNING RISK INTO REWARD __= Innovation requires risk. “Civic entrepreneurs take on risk in a way that makes the work of other actors inside a social delivery system more effective” (Goldsmith, xxvi). Risks for actors in these systems are both economic and political. Successful civic entrepreneurs, and motivated actors within the system, use knowledge to manage risks, producing financial returns, political credit, and improved communities.

// Managing Risk: // Risk can be understood and underwritten, and public value unlocked in the following ways:

1. Seeing Opportunity Where Others See Liability:
 * § Mitigate risk by helping clients become better informed or better trained.
 * § View clients not as passive consumers but as potential producers.
 * § Open markets to excluded or underserved citizens by recalculating potential rewards and risk.

2. Taking First Action: Often, the entrepreneur must assume a larger role, and bridge a gap in the market with a unique service or product considered by others to be overpriced. With deep knowledge of the people to be served, the risk taking entrepreneur recognize potential benefit, and borrows the necessary financial or political capital, or use their own, to accomplish the transaction.
 * § Use deep knowledge of a community to understand barriers to the market.
 * § Invest financial or political capital to underwrite risk.
 * § Overcome specific barriers by providing extensive supports yet insisting on quality and strict accountability.

3. Fully Calculating Cascading Return on Investment: Benefits are often multilayered- economic and social. “Understanding and calculating the benefits helps lay the foundation for government and philanthropic early stage investment” (Goldsmith, 183). Deeply analyzing all the potential benefits can illuminate the value of investment, and outweigh a sense of risk.
 * § Share the rewards, whether financial, political, or reputational.
 * § Recognize when investment success can lead to ancillary benefits.
 * § Build broad-based goodwill and momentum for further growth and success.

4. Leverage Political Risk and Reward: For most government official- elected, appointed, or civil servants- typically the benefits of linking one’s reputation to a new idea do not outweigh the risks. Creative public officials create space for risk by setting aside resources for experimentation. They share the political or reputational capital with elected and other public officials.

By accepting behavioral, financial, or reputational risks, civic entrepreneurs help individuals succeed; transforming citizens in need from passive recipients of services, to productive members of society.

=__ Chapter 7: THE FERTILE COMMUNITY __= In the final chapter, Goldsmith again illustrates the need for systemic change, brought by efforts from many and diverse actors at a community level. Because no one organization has the resources, access, or reach to substantially transform a social delivery system, collaboration is necessary. A fertile community is one that, through collective efforts, “is ripe for civic entrepreneurship to innovate and transform the ways it addresses social problems” (Goldsmith, xxvii). It is important to have civic entrepreneurs on all levels, and of all types, including: government, philanthropic, social, and private. These entrepreneurs must activate transformative community change with:
 * § Dramatic ideas
 * § Leadership
 * § Data
 * § Accountability

// Principles of the Fertile Community: //
 * § Strong Public Leadership- Strong leadership can challenge social service actors to refocus effort and money toward public //value// rather than //activities.//
 * § Nonprofit Leadership That Incubates Local Innovation- Share knowledge and create space for local innovation to be designed and tested.
 * § Discretionary Venture Capital- Leverage ideas and resources from government agencies and philanthropists to invest in innovative ideas.
 * § Willingness to Rethink the Mission- Adaptive and nimble organizations can retarget their efforts to meet dynamic community needs, staying relevant and effective.
 * § Data Driven Performance- Data and statistics provide a way to hold officials and nonprofits accountable and allows for them to be compared to one another on an even scale.
 * § Trusting the Citizen- Make the citizen more responsible, enable them with choice and education, and hold high expectations. Positive behaviors will be reinforced, and self-efficacy will be built.

A fertile community is not a culmination of efforts toward problem solving in social services, rather, it is a sustained culture that values and supports innovation, and continually renews its ambitions and tools to provide the social good. Goldsmith draws near the end of his book by cautioning civic entrepreneurs to maintain their values, even under the pressure of political, bureaucratic, or social forces. Finally, Goldsmith asks civic entrepreneurs to look toward the future and appreciate the social good brought by innovative service to the communities they serve.

//__ 12 STEPS TO COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS (Pg. 210) __//
1. Respect individuals by insisting on higher expectations and good decisions for them.

2. Reach government and philanthropic agreement about the big vision and the definition of public value.

3. Agree on important outcomes and measure them.

4. Require a “sunset” or automatic review of a quarter of existing social programs each year, forcing organizations to justify their contributions. Re-purpose money freed up by disbanding unproductive service providers.

5. Solicit and pay attention to the voices of clients in evaluating the importance of services and the effectiveness of their providers.

6. Create philanthropic and governmental venture capital.

7. Give clients a choice about where they get help.

8. Keep government respectful of civil society and help spark more individual acts of service and philanthropy.

9. Seek out, study, and incorporate the best national civic entrepreneurs or their ideas. Use a respected intermediary to accelerate deployment.

10. Create mechanisms that mitigate risk by removing the financial, attitudinal, and behavioral obstacles that prevent the market and its opportunities from working well with marginalized citizens.

11. Offer a dose of competition and transparency through performance funding, creative RFPs and data accessibility.

12. Support organizations that promise improved performance, civic engagement, and citizen-to-citizen interaction.

= Value of “The Power of Social Innovation” for the Reader: Team Response = From our group discussions:

Our group recognized this book as an outline of some ‘big picture’ concepts involved with civic entrepreneurship. Offering supporting anecdotes and evidence, the author reinforces for the reader a few key ideas within social innovation; it is the grand ideas, and not the details that proved valuable for us as readers.

We rallied behind a few simple ideas from the book. The book reinforced in our minds that social innovation is a wholly collaborative, adaptive, and continual process. The social good must constantly be reinterpreted and reinvented by entrepreneurial players who both engage each other and especially the citizen. The book proves a helpful reminder and call to be inclusive in the decision making process, though it may be uncomfortable and often contrary. The results of a truly collaborative effort are more likely to force whole system change.

Despite this, we felt as though the book makes assumptions regarding the presence of public input, or the ability of the public to articulate their needs. Additionally, it should be made clear that “The Power of Social Innovation” does not offer foolproof instructions for achieving or repeating successful social entrepreneurship. Goldsmith would even suggest that outlining a designated strategy for social innovation would be self-defeating. Instead, Goldsmith offers only some recognized patterns and qualities of successful social entrepreneurship. The collection of ideas can be considered simply good-advice.

Mostly, “The Power of Social Innovation” offers value to the reader by being a compelling reminder to collaborate, adapt, and innovate constantly within social services. Additionally, the book serves some examples, that when tied to the key concepts, demonstrate the ability of social entrepreneurs to provide social good. Reading this book inspired us, though it did not give us instructions nor make the responsibilities of social innovation sound easy.


 * This book has a pretty good road map to capacity building within an organization, explaining the interacting components and how they play off of each other. The emphasis being social capacity, networking capacity and organizational capacity and touching on the resource and programmatic capacities.**

Give examples that might make your discussion more meaningful to someone who has never read the book.
One of the repeated points of the book, is to keep your organization flexible and able to respond to changes both in what is expected from you, but also how you receive your funding. Don't become too dependent on one source of funding, as they often change the metrics for awarding it, or the funding was temporary.

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