Rapid prototyping social change

“We have enough, and we can do better, so why is it so hard to cause social change? “

I believe it’s because we wade through bureaucracy and stifling processes that take forever to be signed off and implemented. It’s no coincidence that I became fascinated with rapid prototyping, a process I’ve witnessed at Hackathons where participants have 48 hours to identify and develop a prototype and pitch it to an audience. I have seen the outcomes which are astounding, like one of the apps that came out of GovHack created by teenagers called Disaster Master to mitigate risks and provide safety tips and advice on dangerous zones based on past data and predictive analytics. It made me wonder how can we get results like that in other paradigms.I believe that rapid prototyping should be applied to urgent social problems, to systems change and reform, to service design and delivery. Because in our business, people’s lives are at stake and the faster we come up with innovative, adaptable solutions, the better it is for our community and our society.

This journey into disruptive social innovation (the proposed topic of my PhD) has been amazing, I am looking at the areas of design, technology and start up to see if there are methods that can be re-purposed for innovating our responses to social disadvantage. I do this because whatever we are doing is just not cutting it, more and more people are falling through the cracks of suicide, poverty, homelessness, domestic and family violence, unemployment and mental health (Poverty in NSW,  Council of Social Services, 2014).

I recently trialled a Social Innovation Pitch event in Broken Hill where we got communities to pitch an idea to an audience of business, government and NGOs. The result was a strong desire to continue running the event including inviting more pitches and community stakeholders. Simply the event created the space for greater collaboration across sectors and connecting people from parallel paradigms.  The result, new partnerships and a great deal of good will to help people make things happen for the social good of the community.

Last week I ran an Innovation workshop for Partners in Recovery (complex mental health services) where we went through an immersive process to understand how to innovate and apply innovation in our work. Another way of looking at it is creating the space to unleash the maverick in a group of people who work tirelessly to improve the lives of people with severe and persistent mental illness and complex needs. They are often dealing with the most vulnerable people in the community who have high support needs that cross many agencies health, housing, mental health, and employment.  When do we afford ourselves the time to dream and create, to be unencumbered by process and to have a limited time to produce a result, to be bold and not fear failure?  I decided to try something – Could we rapid prototype solutions to create better,more innovative and cost effective responses to complex mental health?

So I started to look into rapid prototyping and found Google’s Tom Chi who rapid prototyped Google Glass in one day and Gavin Heaton in Australia who runs a number of innovation projects, hubs, hackathons and workshops.

“Rapid prototyping is a time limited process to develop and idea or solution to a problem, it based on finding the quickest path to a direct experience and on the basis that doing or action is better than  thinking.”

Tom Chi

An Australian innovator and disruptor – Gavin Heaton (@servantofchaos) has been doing this through his Disruptor’s Handbook a painless guide on how to “thrive through change”. In a parallel universe, to me Gavin has been delivering innovation to corporates, government and NGOs  who have the chutspa to be disrupted.  He has been looking at the worlds of business and start up and seeing how they can learn off each other and extending these methods to government and NGOs. He is one of the people behind the recent QantasHackathon and VibeWire (nurturing young change makers and entrepreneurs). Gavin is passionate about the potential of start up and tech to transform the way we think and work in a number of paradigms.

Tom Chi has been trying an experiment (Fast solutions for a brighter future) “to see if the concept of rapid prototyping could be used to reinvent entrepreneurship and possibly all of business.” He applied this  concept of “reduce the time to try” to generate new ideas,  to four businesses where they reinvented their business, and increased their profits in one day, in what would have been achieved in three months under normal processes (meetings, working groups, processes that take months).

Tom Chi’s experiment was also applied to an impoverished community in Mexico, he took students to run a similar process adapted to a community. The students, in collaboration with the community centre, helped find new sources of employment to subsidize their meagre income.  In three hours they developed new streams of business that would treble incomes and filled unmet need in the community. Just by connecting people and finding the opportunities through networks.

Testing the idea of rapid prototyping for mental health support solutions with Partners in Recovery was insightful. The workshop outlined the foundation of disruptive social innovation 1. Flip the problem – don’t try to improve what is, find the gaps in the system 2. User centred – think of the end user 3. Collaborate Widely – leverage the untapped resources and social capital in the community 4.Be bold – embrace failure as learning and improvement. Participants were also asked to think of the features of innovation as resourceful, reflective, creative, collaborative and disruptive. We often think innovation as costly, it doesn’t need to be if you leverage the time, talent and resources of your stakeholders and community.

The teams collaborated for under 2 hours to produce four innovative projects that could change the face of mental health support. They then presented their ideas in the form of a pitch 1. What problem I am trying to solve 2. The solution that will fill that need 3. Ask for what is needed to kick start the project. All pitches were refreshing and innovative, as in any pitch event there could only be one winner and that was J.O.B an employment project that focuses on repackaging skills, ability and aspirations of people with mental health and enrolls employers to support mentoring, career and employment opportunities for people with complex mental health. The project will leverage other community, government, NGO and private sector partnerships in order to provide holistic services to support placements. The project will also leverage the ideas in the other pitches (the veterans and ex-soldiers as trainers) to further develop the prototype.

Rapid prototyping innovation in mental health

The feedback was very promising, participants loved the process and found it inspiring, the teams had a skip in their step in realising their capacity to cause social change in such a short time frame. You see their have the expertise and the knowledge, they just needed the opportunity to innovate.

This is proves the power of collaboration and rapid prototyping – the same machine that drives hackathons. When you think about it hackers try to solve a problem through rapid brainstorming, prototyping, testing, refining in 48 hours.

The idea of rapid prototyping and pitching for social change really excites me, these methods work and given the state of emergency on disadvantage in this country, they are desperately needed to transform the way government and NGOs design and deliver services. Let’s rapid prototype for DV, unemployment, inclusion, housing affordability, homelessness and any other social issue that we need responsive, reflective and innovative solutions.

Follow my journey on Twitter @ChiefDisrupter

Anne-Marie is a consultant in innovation for social change, Honorary Associate of the Design Innovation Research Centre and the Centre for Local Government at UTS.

Sparking social change

Don’t you just love a crazy idea? It takes a lot of courage to try something new, especially something that you don’t know will work, yet entrepreneurs and start ups pursue crazy ideas every day and thank heavens they do. How else would the likes of Apple, Uber or AirBnB come about? I love and admire the hunger of start ups, the pure unadulterated desire to make shit happen, because their life depends on it. Their belief in an idea that overrides all the set backs and even failures that pummel them, their ability to experience this yet keep their eye on the outcome enables them to adapt and do whatever it takes to make it happen.

I have worked in the field of social disadvantage for three decades – I started at the age of 16 as youth advocate, every job I have had was about finding a place to make a difference – journalism, policy, ministerial, state and federal government and NGO. While every one of those roles have a realm of influence to do good, I was always left wanting and believing that bureaucracy kills innovation and that we can do better.

I learnt long ago that in our ‘business’ , peoples lives are at stake and that means we’ve got to get moving to do all we can to innovate solutions to social disadvantage. I feel a sense of urgency with the state of social disadvantage in Australia, things a re getting worse not better and it seems despite the hundreds of billions of dollars and efforts we are not winning any ‘battles” against drugs, family and domestic violence, recidivism, suicide, child protection, poverty, homelessness and on and on. According to the Australian Council of Social Services “Poverty is on the rise in Australia, with more than 2.5 million people – and one in six children – struggling to fulfil their daily basic needs…” ACOSS, Poverty in Australia, 2014

I’ve seen it first hand in the state of NSW where remote communities are living in abject poverty, I’ve seen it in Sydney where thousands of passers by walk past a central park dotted with tents and a community of homeless, the people that have fallen through the cracks of a system that has failed its duty of care.

So rather than dwell on the system failures or limitations I want to give my heart and soul to finding solutions and showing government and NGOs a new way of working, empowering communities to collaborate for social change. For the past few years I have been developing a new way of working and I’m calling it Disruptive Social Innovation, a blend of social innovation, rapid prototyping and digital disruption. The status quo is unacceptable and I believe cross sector and discipline collaboration is the only way we can really make a difference to peoples lives.

“A social innovation is a novel solution to a social problem that is more effective, efficient, sustainable, or just than present solutions and for which the value created accrues primarily to society as a whole rather than private individuals.” (source Stanford, Centre for Social Innovation.) 

On the 7th of July 2015 in Broken Hill NSW we tested a new way of working with social disadvantage, Kathryn Greiner AO facilitated and chaired the first Social Innovation Pitch Event.

The event was shift in usual practice of forums and consultations that repeat a status quo approach of talking about the problems leaving little room for solutions. The concept drawn from start up pitch events where new business ideas are generated and pitched to venture capital and angel investors. The format of these pitches are simple and clear – they start with a problem, and idea that is a solution and a clear ask of resources.

The event replicated this and tested the method in community setting where people from three communities were invited to pitch to local stakeholders (business, NGOs and government). Those pitching were briefed on framing their pitch and stakeholders were asked to be generous in offering time, talent and resources to support the local projects. The key to the event was shared understanding of local needs and a desire to collaborate for social change.

Each pitch focused on improving communities, in particular employment opportunities and young people. Maari Ma focused on digital inclusion and education of children and young people. Menindee Central School focused on vocational and training opportunities for young people. Out back Astronomy focused on Astro tourism, Aboriginal cultural tourism development and social enterprise in arts and local produce.

The social innovation pitch event covered three footprints – Wilcannia, Menindee and Broken Hill. This initiative has set a new benchmark to support community aspirations and change the way we manage and address social disadvantage in the region

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The design of the social innovation pitch event is disrupting the way communities drive change, it disrupts funding cycles and the notion that government is the only answer. My hope is that we encourage this type of disruptive  social innovation because it innovates the way we create social change and it flips the top down to bottom up – so the community decides what to support as a whole and government can get on with providing the right conditions for people to help themselves.

PITCH 1: Maari Ma – Wings Youth Centre Wilcannia

Wings Youth Centre provides an important service for children and young people in Wilcannia, a safe haven and a hive of educational activity. The young people love using the computers but they are old and there aren’t enough. The Centre has a mix of primary and high school aged children and expressed a desire to get tablets for the older children for privacy. They need programs and apps that support nutrition, health, well being, cyber safety and sex education.

We designed the pitches in a way that only asked time, talent or resources to help achieve a goal. People are willing to give in kind, participants were surprised how easy it was to help a project get off the ground, assist with writing proposals or sourcing the right avenue. As always when you bring people from different areas together, new partnerships and alliances emerged  and even those pitching could help each other. For example Outback Astronomy is now going to take the kids from Menindee and Wilcannia on a tour, Family and Community Services will purchase the periscopes so the kids have them to use when on excursion; the PCYC has offered accommodation for the kids whilst in Broken Hill.

The pitch event was incredibly well received, initially with a healthy dose of skepticism, but with a determination to continue to the conversations with the whole community. The event brought a renewed sense of common purpose and collaboration and unlikely alliances and partnerships. It gave those pitching an opportunity to gain a wider audience and it gave the businesses, NGOs and government the opportunity to support community initiative. It expanded every person’s view of their community and the untapped social capital around them.

I love bringing together people from different paradigms – the Mayor, the chamber of commerce, all levels of government and NGOs, the corporate sector rarely get the opportunity to mix it up and exchange ideas – this is the alchemy of collaboration and it inspires innovation and it works when applied to social disadvantage.

I’d love to hear your feedback. I hope you will continue on this journey of disruptive social innovation, follow me on Twitter @ChiefDisrupter

The Alchemy of Collaboration

In the world of social care and social disadvantage we are losing badly, despite countless efforts and $250 billion dollars spent annually, disadvantage is growing and we are seeing increasing instances of domestic violence, child protection, mental health and homelessness. In fact in this ‘lucky country’ one in seven Australians live below the poverty line. Social sectors are  largely separated and siloed so no-one ever gets the full picture and our solutions are merely band-aid and reactive. Collaboration exists as a means to an end rather than embedded within the culture, in the core of our work practices. I think it is imperative that we do something differently because in the end, in our ‘business’, peoples lives are at stake.

 Collaboration : Cooperative arrangement in which two or more parties (which may or may not have any previous relationship) work jointly towards a common goal.

Many of the large tech companies have started embedding collaboration days in their calendar, such as Atlassian with their ShipIt day  where staff get 24 hours to work on any project that they are passionate about with a team. Google give their staff one day a week to pursue their passion and 3M give their staff 15% of their time to work on innovation – in all these cases staff are happier and they often work on something that saves the company money or innovates a product such as 3Ms post it notes. Howard Baldwin from ComputerWorld says the frequency of these innovation days range from weekly to quarterly. The reason being that innovation slips off the radar if we don’t create the space for it. I suspect the same goes with collaboration.

My fascination with design, start up and tech is the effortless collaboration and the focus on solutions. This is where innovation thrives, bringing together different minds and perspectives to see the problem differently and imagine possible solutions. People and teams that are thrown together for an event maintain ties,

When I found out about these methods I was inspired by the intensity and creativity, by the focus and action oriented nature of the events and the longevity beyond. This is the alchemy of collaboration that I want to reignite in breaking social disadvantage.   So I started running thought leadership groups where we invite cross sector innovators with and without vested interests to keep things real.

Sadly Government and NGOs rarely get the opportunity to collaborate more widely than usual suspects, and are entrapped by the internal the vortex of meetings and workshops with the same people over and over again. Even the occasional exciting conference and forum ends there and we go back to our status quo ways and habits to talking to the same people but expecting a different result.

So I think Atlassian, Google and 3M are on to something that can shift the way we currently manage social disadvantage and takes to a new place of collaborative alchemy. The idea of ‘rapid prototyping’ solutions to social disadvantage is exciting and worth doing, it is happening anyway in parallel universes and its mobilising end users, tech’s, designers, policy makers and coders to co-create solutions that disrupt the status quo.

While we are dwelling on the problems and narrow casting solutions we are limiting our ability to be brilliant. Collaboration is the harmonic convergence of ideas from stakeholders and disruptors that share a purpose. Start ups, design and tech provide a structure to vision and rapid prototype solutions. It seems these methods are being adopted more across sectors. Coming up in August – SW/TCH a festival of collaboration to solve big business problems.  Founded by Mark Zawacki and Catherine Stace This is collaborative innovation on steroids with a range of cross sector and discipline disruptors and leaders. I wish that social problems were on the agenda as well. Imagine those great business minds applying their time and talents to solve some of our deepest intractable societal problems? We desperately need that cross pollination of disruptors and business leaders to think about improving the ROI (return on investment) on social disadvantage.

I am heartened to see that people are embracing the merits of disruptive innovation for social good. In the US San Quentin prison is running a tech incubator for prisoners to reduce the recidivist rate. A splendid idea given that recidivism is a product of failed rehabilitation and re-education in prison. Recently the Australian Government and People against Violent Extremism sponsored  CVE Hackabout to identify social impact solutions to extremism. The competition replicated a hackathon and sought collaborative projects that  could be deployed and iterated. Similarly Random Hacks of Kindness brought together techs with NGOs to help them design tech solutions, the winner BenJam – an app that a dad designed for his non-verbal son to communicate with the world.

In July I am trialing a social innovation pitch event in a remote town in NSW. A pitch event for community action where community pitch ideas to solve a local project. The aim is to identify project teams that will meet up beyond the event to develop and implement the project. The idea is to seek re calibration of existing efforts and funds to support community driven initiatives and to support the community to help themselves.  I am also excited to be on the organising committee for GovHack Sydney where we have been encouraging government and NGOs to participate. Rapid prototyping and Hackathons have collaboration in their DNA, they create the space for collaborative alchemy and new solutions.

The challenge with any collaboration is sustainability so ideally any event for social impact would be billed as a platform for ongoing engagement and collaboration. With the work in remote areas distance and lack of connectivity remains a concern. Establishing a blend of face to face and virtual communities of collaboration is important to sustain the excitement and practice. I was recently introduced to the world of google groups and google hangout free collaboration platforms and know these can be leveraged better by communities. I see a lot of opportunity for disadvantaged communities to benefit from cross sector collaboration and cast a wider net to stakeholders, innovators and disruptors that can facilitate their aspirations.

Stay tuned on my innovation for social change journey, follow me on Twitter @ChiefDisrupter

A Social Innovation Experiment

Twitter is a wondrous place, I believe it is more equal than Facebook and LinkedIn and it seems anyone can get traction on an issue with a little help from clever hashtags and virtual friends. I recently thought I would try a social innovation experiment, I tweeted “Who wants to help me organise a  Hackathon for disadvantaged youth in Wagga Wagga. In a matter of hours, with a little help from two new twitter friends – Dez Blanchfield @dez_blanchfield and Dev Mukherjee @mdevraj we started #WaggaWaggaHackathon and a google document, in a week we had eleven people including the Dean of Science at Charles Sturt University – Tim Wess, Wagga Wagga Mayor – Rod Kendall, and representatives from NICTA, Telstra, Google, NSW Government, CodeClubAu, and others. The list of stakeholders is growing and we now have the start of a roadmap to get young people, NGOs and community prepared to participate in a Hackathon in Wagga Wagga in October this year. The Hackathon is not the end game, rather it is the platform for new partnerships and collaboration and a demonstration of how technology can support innovation in solving social problems. It presents an incredible opportunity to empower communities to co-design solutions. The journey to the October Hackathon starts in July with a launch meet-up to explain the process of a Hackathon. Communities have to prepare to identify and pitch their “problem” , monthly meet-ups around the problem will identify the data needs and the types of project teams needed. We want to include a range of experts to support community ideas which could range from starting a social enterprise to developing and APP. I call this a Social Innovation Hackathon because its focus is beyond technology. The amazing experience for me and my colleague Donna Argus @Dargus is that people care, they want to help and are incredibly generous of their time, talent and resources to make things happen. Each stakeholder has a different skillset and without the likes of Dez Blanchfield, Tim Wess and Dev Mukherjee we would have found it difficult to progress the technical logistics of such an ambitious event. While we are definitely agile in our thinking there are stakeholders to manage – community, government and private sector who also have their needs and this prototype will help us show stakeholders the magical possibilities that come from cross sector collaboration for social good. Those that know me know how passionate I am- but this experience has blown me away, I am humbled beyond words at the generosity and willingness of people in tech to help those disadvantaged communities – especially in regional areas. As far as I am concerned this is just the beginning of limitless opportunities of a prototype for social innovation and ultimately social change. It is bringing together unlikely partners and collaborators that are willing to give this idea a go. Frankly I have no idea what this will look like but what I can say is that the journey is opening the hearts and minds of so many people to overcome usual constraints and barriers and to work together to improve the lives of disadvantaged young people in a regional area. If you want to get involved, connect with me on Twitter @ChiefDisrupter or follow our hashtag on twitter #WaggaWaggaHackathon

Innovation is key to shift social disadvantage

Last year(2014) a friend whom I call the goddess of Start up – Nicole Williamson – introduced me to the parallel universe of tech and start up – I was mesmerized by the innovation and the hunger for creation. I’m so grateful to Nicole for introducing me to her world and being so generous to take me along to the numerous events occurring in Sydney that foster, inspire and nurture innovation. It got me thinking how amazing it would be to apply these worlds and their methods to solve wicked social problems?

Id spent many years (almost 30)  in the vortex of policy, government, NGO and social disadvantage – getting frustrated at the seeming futility of hundreds of billions of dollars being plowed into disadvantage with little result – even worse I started to see that the return on investment (ROI) really sucked! Even worse – people’s lives are at stake and disadvantage is growing exponentially despite the investment of money, programs and attention.

Innovation is key – really, there is no other way because we have enough and we definitely can do better to protect the most vulnerable people. Solutions are really not that hard, they just require new thinking, thought leadership from across sectors and disciplines to apply their minds to these messy problems like domestic and family violence, recidivism, homelessness, disability and unemployment. Our current approaches are failing, even if some would argue that there has been some progress, its too slow and too many people are falling through the cracks.

This week, April 2015,  NSW Premier Mike Baird announced a new Ministry, most exciting for the startup and tech communities was the re-appointment of the Hon. Dominic Perrottet as Minister for Finance and Services and the new appointment of the Hon. Victor Dominello as Minister for Innovation.

Its not enough to get NSW moving without some bold moves including the lease of poles and wires to fund long overdue infrastructure and the commitment by the Premier, Brendan Lyon, CEO of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, Tracy Howe, CEO of NCOSS and the Minister for Family and Community Services to contribute $1b to social housing. Its exciting to think of the opportunities that lie in exchange of ideas across sectors as to how we could turn that $1b into ten times more to create new solutions to social housing, shelter and homelessness

“Innovation is a hard, messy process with no shortcuts. It starts with making something that you’d like to use and that might make people’s lives better.”  Guy Kawasaki

The fact that innovation is messy makes it hard for risk averse public servants to embrace its tenets – risk, failure, courage, disruption. However there seems to be a growing appetite for innovation in the public sector like the Premiers Innovation Initiative (NSW), Transport for NSW Customer Central innovation hub Andrew Kendall showed me, the endless open data, open government initiatives by NSW Minister for Finance and Services Dominic Perrottet’s Finance and Services and  Apps4NSW and Federal Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s GovHack,

I believe having a Minister for Innovation brings all this together – its an opportunity for Minister Victor Dominello to identify and implement innovation across public sector agencies. It demonstrates a desire and necessity to innovate our responses to big problems, including wicked social problems. It will be great to have an innovation lens applied across portfolios, can you imagine the possibilities of new thinking? I can – I have been inspired by so many individuals and companies out there applying their talent to help people.

I recently met UTS Professor Hung Nguyen who is inventing amazing enabling tools such as the aviator smart wheelchair ( see Youtube Clip here), his contribution is leveraging design and technology to innovate solutions to social care including falls prevention, diabetes and more! In March 2015, Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., Fujitsu Ireland Ltd., and Fujitsu Limited announced they have “developed a technology that uses sensors, embedded in smart houses and worn by patients, for the early detection of abnormalities in motor functions that might otherwise go unnoticed.”

“Innovation is the central issue in economic prosperity.” Michael Porter

Traditional thinking has only taken us so far in being able to reduce social exclusion, marginalization and increase opportunity for disadvantaged people. Globally we are seeing a number of innovative solutions such as the rise of social entrepreneurship, of cooperatives and mutuals and of greater emphasis on collaboration. My hero – Ben Hecht CEO of Living Cities is a constant inspiration in his vision to connect opportunity to disadvantage that is transforming lives in some of the most vulnerable people in the USA.

“We take risks, catalyze fresh thinking in order to test new approaches in order to creatively disrupt the status quo.” Living Cities

We can learn a great deal about how to emulate this to extend the $1billion anticipated for social housing in NSW and address the valid concerns of the homelessness and housing affordability sectors to ensure that we can really do something that will meet growing challenges!

So I hope that this trend continues and that we as a society continue to look outward, that we collaborate and innovate out of any problem!

Disruption4Good

disruption: dis|rup¦tion

Pronunciation: /dɪsˈrʌpʃn/

According to Oxford Dictionaries, the Definition of disruption in English:

noun Disturbance or problems which interrupt an event, activity, or process

My relationship with disruption started early – in primary school my parents received report cards with comments like “Anne-Marie is disruptive in class.” Luckily I never really took this in a bad way, you see I was disruptive because I wasn’t a sheep, I had a very different learning style which was more collaborative and learning from others than from learning by rote!

In fact if the teachers bothered to look behind the ‘disruption” they would have been able to harness this “disruptive behaviour” for good, yet they didn’t and I guess they thought this little girl would be put back in her box – that of a dutiful, compliant primary school student. They were wrong!

Although my subsequent years were spent playing the game of compliance, I never really fit in, so it came as a surprise to even me,  that some 40 years later I would own that word and claim it as a title – my twitter handle is @ChiefDisrupter and my blog disrupter4change. So my journey of disruption began with that seed in the mid to late1970s, a seed that struggled to thrive in the face of limited teachers, and limited structures but somehow this little seed decided that it would learn to thrive in these conditions. I went from “surviving” the term to living it and “thriving”.

You see in my 30 odd years of advocacy and work in disadvantage I can promise you the status quo absolutely and passionately has to be disrupted, we as individuals can no longer be complacent and wait for some miracle to happen – it won’t! My life mission, my vocation now is to spread the gospel of disrupting the status quo and innovating our responses to wicked social issues through cross sector and discipline collaboration. My mantra is collaborate or perish, disrupt or see more of the same.

So why does the word disruption have such a negative connotation? I believe the meaning has in fact evolved to be something at times necessary and positive to move forward and to innovate!

The Christensen institute explains the positive side of disruption: “The theory of disruptive innovation was first coined by Harvard professor Clayton M. Christensen…The theory explains the phenomenon by which an innovation transforms an existing market or sector by introducing simplicity, convenience, accessibility, and affordability where complication and high cost are the status quo. Initially, a disruptive innovation is formed in a niche market that may appear unattractive or inconsequential to industry incumbents, but eventually the new product or idea completely redefines the industry.”

A friend recently tagged me in post of an article in BBC News “Can Soup change the world” which highlighted a movement, in Detroit USA, generated by people to solve social dilemmas (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31594513), a dragon’s den style where people pitch solutions to social problems – music to my ears. You see these folks aren’t waiting for government coffers to stump up the cash for good ideas, they are collectivising efforts and getting the community to sponsor the ideas – innovation is born because as you would guess it’s not the usual suspects coming up with the same old solutions.

Check out the story on BBC Can Soup Change the World 

Detroit Soup is an innovative crowd-funding dinner which is bringing people together to raise thousands of dollars for community projects in Motor City. Since it launched five years ago, it has helped launch a range of start-ups working in areas such as urban agriculture, social justice and education – projects funded by and for the people. But could this model work in other cities? For the BBC’s A Richer World season, the BBC takes Detroit Soup founder Amy Kaherl to Nepal, to start a new crowd-funding culture Kathmandu-style.

Let me know your views on Disruption anne-marie.elias@uts.edu.au or on twitter @ChiefDisrupter

Time for a new way of working

I find it incongruous we have so much wealth yet more people are falling through the cracks. For some there’s an abundance of food and water and others don’t have enough.

Would you be shocked to know we have children in Sydney going to school without food, families going hungry?

Would it shock you that we have communities living in shanty towns in the state of NSW?

Would it make any difference to know that while we waste water in some parts of the country – there are Australian communities that don’t have access to clean drinking water?

Personally I think at some stage we lost our way from being community centred to government and NGO centred. Somehow we believed that anyone outside community was the key and we saw bigger government and bigger NGOs often dislocated from the heart of the matter – community.

We stopped listening to the very people we are here to serve and only spoke to each other, we set up structures to distance community with layers of community leaders, advisers and committees between those that make decisions and the people ultimately affected by these decisions.

I think we can agree that on their own government and NGOs are not the answer  – despite enormous efforts and   investments across sectors (business, philanthropy, government, fundraising) to support vulnerable people and communities – estimated at $250 billion per year (Centre for Social Impact 2014), disadvantage is growing with 1 in 7 Australians living below the poverty line (ACOSS, 2014).

I believe 2015 will be the year of community, we need to re-engage with the people in communities – not just the leaders, we have to get over our need to have processes and structures that don’t work and move closer to understanding and collaborating with affected communities. We have to stop giving out fish and start giving out fishing lines, so communities can be the change so desperately needed.

My dream is to pull decision makers together and talk more sense than platitudes – why can’t we move the water from here to there? Why can’t we ensure that no child or family goes hungry by more effectively redistributing the food that is often thrown away? Food Bank and Oz Harvest are brilliant redistribution services but somehow they are not reaching all those that need, how do we create market gardens so people have access to fresh vegetables? How do we give families a chicken so they may have fresh eggs?  How do we facilitate these initiatives, which by the way are happening in some communities but not others?

I believe we do this by disrupting the status quo – stop whatever we are doing that isn’t working and start collaborating across sectors – if we are dead serious about social change – we have to work differently, with community at the centre and we have to start owning our failures (1 in 7 Australians below the poverty line) and start listening to the very people we are here to serve.

Anne-Marie Elias is @ChiefDisripter

of The Collective NSW a social impact model which brings together business, community, NGOs and government to collaborate on social disadvantage. To see our stories, visit The Collective NSW YouTube Channel.

A Year of Transformation

As we embark on a new year, refreshed from a break now is a good time to really think about how we want this year to pan out.

I’m putting it out there that 2015 will be a transformational year.

I have much respect for Ben Hecht CEO and President of Living Cities which was established in 1991 to improve the economic well being of low income people. They did so by pulling together the resources and skills of 22 of the world’s largest foundations and financial institutions to drive solutions and growth in low income communities. Living Cities combines impact investing, open source social change, cross sector partnerships and capital investment.

Ben wrote an article in January 2013 in the Harvard Business Review titled “Collaboration is the new competition” which offered this insight: ” While collaboration is certainly not a foreign concept, what we’re seeing around the country is the coming together of non-traditional partners, and a willingness to embrace new ways of working together. And, this movement is yielding promising results.”

We are seeing the same movement in Australia.

Many new organisations and movements are emerging as a result of the incessant failures of governments and NGOs to solve some of the most wicked problems of our society.

Some of these organisations emerged two or more decades ago – David Liddiard Group, David Pescud’s Sailors with disAbilities, Rabbi Mendel Kastel’s Jewish House and Rev Bill Crews Exodus Foundation – all incredibly innovative services that support those who would otherwise fall through the cracks.

In late 2014 Brian Smith from the Local Community Services Association brought Rich Harwood of the Harwood Institute for public innovation in the USA, out to Australia. They trained leaders across government and NGO sectors to turn outward and remember to always connect with community.

Recent initiatives such as Mary Freer’s ChangeDay, the Thomas Kelly Youth Foundation and The Collective NSW demonstrate the deep desire for collaboration to create social change across the community.

Social Ventures Australia, Social Traders, the Business Council of Co-ops and Mutuals, Impact Investing Australia, Philanthropy Australia, Social Enterprise Finance Australia, Sydney Community Foundation and the various crowd funding platforms like Chuffed and Pozible are all forging new social investment and social enterprise opportunities.

In a parallel universe there are the start ups, the social entrepreneurs and the collaborative work spaces such as Hub Sydney, Fishburners and Your Desk emerging everywhere. The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Design Innovation Research Centre is doing game changing work in developing public and private sector capacity for re-framing and innovation.

In 2014 the University of Western Sydney, Google, Cisco Systems, the New South Wales Government and PwC piloted Open Innovation – a new approach to public innovation and problem solving.

The NSW Premiers Innovation Initiative while in early stages is crowd sourcing innovative ideas for tipping point problems such as  congestion and social housing assets.

The NSW Government has the Smart Work Hub pilot across greater Sydney in areas of large commuter populations which offers commuters local work spaces.

Apps4NSW and the Open Data Summit are creating opportunities for government to engage more with technology and open data.

“Mans mind once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimension” Oliver Wendell Holmes

All this activity towards collaborative practice, social finance and open sourcing is happening across sectors and creating a new way of working.

I am convinced more opportunities for social innovation and collaboration across sectors will emerge because this is the future and the movement is growing.

Twitter: @ChiefDisrupter

Tis the season of reflection

2014 has been a year of contrasts of human triumph and human tragedy. In Australia the last few weeks have seen incomprehensible sadness at the senseless Sydney Siege and loss of two very courageous people – Tori and Katrina, In Cairns eight innocent children lost their lives at the hands of a mother and aunt, in Pakistan 140 innocent school children lost their lives to extremism. Last year a beautiful boy Jordan Filioa passed away the day before his 18th birthday- his life is being honored through his mum and his friends supporting the wonderful Bill Crews Exodus Foundation. This year Tom Ricketson passed away in a nightclub fire in Cambodia – his memory lives through his mum and sisters efforts to build housing for poor families in Cambodia through Tabitha foundation http://www.tabitha.org.au/cms/in-memory-of-tom

Phil Hughes passing rocked the world – another young life gone, he will not be forgotten. The list of senseless loss of kind and caring human beings goes on, foundations are being established in honor of these angels determined that their loss will not be in vain.

The end of the year is a time for reflection, to breath and get back to what is important to us as human beings – love, friendship, family. I know for me I am thinking of all those that have no-one, those that have lost a loved one and the ripple effect of this on entire communities. I am proud to be an Australian, our outpouring of love and care has moved and reassured me we are a nation that pulls together when the going gets tough, we will not be broken. I just wish this outpouring of empathy was more constant, re-creating a sense of community well being where people are more connected.

I’m a firm believer in people’s desire to help and to contribute something, my life purpose is to bring people, government, corporates, academia and NGOs together to collaborate to solve wicked problems I had the privilege this year to speak about this at TEDXUltimo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbjzXNXM6Q8

So as we close the chapter on 2014 I wish you and yours a safe and joyful festive season.

In memory of Jordan Filoia, Tom Ricketson,  Phil Hughes, Tori and Katrina, Joe Cocker, Robin Williams…. the world is indeed a lesser place but your memory lives on and on.

Collectvise or perish

I’m an optimist, my view is that its not that hard to get people together to work on something important like better supporting the most vulnerable. I also don’t think its that hard to come up with new, innovative, flexible solutions.I believe that people from various disciplines and sectors want to contribute to designing new ways of addressing wicked problems. They just dont have the opportunity to come together, until now.

The Collective is a new initiative that brings together the parallel universes of corporate, community, NGO and government sectors together to collectivise our efforts and break the cycle of disadvantage. Its humble beginning were two public servants who dared to dream, who dared to disrupt the status quo and create the space for a new way of working.

The Collective supports community driven initiatives by connecting stakeholders from across sectors and disciplines, we innovate the way we respond to a problem by working with UTS Design Innovation Research Centre and apply Harwood Institute tools and methods to support authentic connection to community. Harwood Institutes talks of NGOs and government needing to turn outward. UTS Design Innovation applies reframing and futurecasting to focus on aspirations.

The status quo isn’t working and peoples lives are at stake. The Collective is about talking to new stakeholders, and working with community to identify priorities. Collaborating through sharing time, talent and resources because no one can solve wicked problems alone or in silos – this has to be a whole of community effort to disrupt the cycle of disadvantage.

This makes great economic sense because it doesn’t rely on government funding, but rather it leverages the social capital in the community. We have enough, there is so much money invested by three levels of government, the private sector, philanthropy, and the community to support disadvantaged people, yet disadvantage is growing.I believe that by collectivising our efforts and re-calibrating existing resources to support community priorities, we are leveraging the social capital in the community

The Collective, like a start, up is prepared to fail to find the right way to deliver the outcomes. It is changing the narrative of how government expands its orbit to create opportunities for cross sector and community collaboration. Instead of pilots or trials, The Collective builds prototypes of new models and solutions of solving wicked problems.

Check out The Collective YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjEQpbg7Swo join us on Twitter @CICNSW

The Collective NSW on Facebook and LinkedIn

TheCollectiveNSW@facs.nsw,gov,au