DailyJim: Who innovates to solve public problems?

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. Today is Thursday, October 3rd, 2024. Today I want to talk about the question, who innovates to solve public problems?

So, I started thinking recently about the work that I've been doing more as innovation.

And i started to wonder okay a lot of times when i worked in innovation consulting the idea at first the first innovation consulting firm was to help typically large chemical companies figure out what types of chemicals should i make or how could their chemicals help in various markets so help their customers customers customer so a lot of times it was trying to figure out what needs exist in society, and how can we help solve them? I think it can sometimes even then be a tricky question of, are we trying to solve public needs or public problems or private problems? And there's no pure, I don't know if there's a pure public good or a pure private good. I think everything can be somewhat in the middle and can have a different perspective based on where the person is, but regardless. So maybe there, for example, we did a project looking at touchscreens. And so yes, it would help the users of touchscreens, which is most of us nowadays with smartphones, but maybe the direct help was to manufacturers of the glass or the smart screens or the touchscreens. And so maybe it was more private and this is a product we wanted to sell directly to them. The challenge I sometimes have is I can see how it can be a public good in almost any way. Anyways, so after working with that, then I worked at another consulting firm that focused more on helping. I mean, the two projects I worked on was one project with the government of Michigan, governor's office looking at, I think it was governor's office of urban and metropolitan initiative. And the idea was to look at why some of the cities in Michigan were.

Redeveloping at different rates. So we looked at Flint, Detroit, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids. And then another project I worked on was looking at art museums. And so we worked with, I don't know if it was like six or seven art museums across the country who are not the number one tier, but maybe tier two in terms of size, in terms of collections and such, and tried to help them figure out what was their business model for moving forward. And so they tend, you know, the governor's office and art museums tend to work as a government or a nonprofit trying to help more consciously or more intentionally to resolve public problems and address public needs. But what happens when we're trying to innovate around these? Who are the people who are innovating? Who are the ones that are really trying to push the boundaries and try something new? Is it the artists? Are the artists the ones who are doing these things? You look at something like the MacArthur Fellows, the MacArthur Foundation Fellows Program, and often the grants that they give to these people who they believe are trying to solve large public problems are artists. These are artists who are working with communities. These are artists who are telling stories. These are artists who are trying to dig deeper, and they can dig deeper into some of these public issues. It could be activists, maybe. Could be scientists, maybe.

I think it tends to veer towards individuals.

Maybe some organizations are really trying to push the boundaries on this, and maybe they do. I mean, I was watching a video about social innovation and social entrepreneurship, and how I lived in Colorado with this group called the Unreasonable Institute when I was out there for a year. The people I lived with were running it. And I think it was named actually after a book that came out a couple years before that that was talking about unreasonable people. And it was talking about social entrepreneurship and how some of these people take different approaches to try to solve public problems. I think one of them was like the leveraged nonprofit. Another one was something else. And then the third one was like selling hybrid nonprofit. And then the third one was kind of like a beneficial corporation. I guess you'd call it nowadays benefit corporation. and so is it organizations that are really trying to innovate maybe it's multiple people who are trying to innovate sometimes in a group sometimes individuals who are really trying to push the bounds and solve some problems that we share not a problem that one individual has but maybe a problem that we collectively have so sometimes the obvious one is climate change but it can also be clean air, it can be clean water, it can be better roads, it can be disinformation on the internet and having better communication on the internet. It can be open source software, which are softwares that are being used by many, many applications across the internet.

There's lots of different public needs that we have, whether they're problems that, like things that we need to resolve, or even dreams that we might have, things that we share And so I just don't know if people in organizations are always the ones who challenge the status quo that much. Because, frankly, I think sometimes in organizations, the opinions or at least the final decisions get diluted by the group, which, when you look at like a government, is what can keep us somewhat safe.

So, organizations that are too efficient and too radical can go radical in one direction or the other direction. So, it could be really, really good or it could be really, really bad. And the checks, the safety valves, the checks and balances that exist in a system like democracy, for example, in the government can dilute some of the stronger beliefs and kind of go towards more of the median voter theory, I think they call them. It was like trying to get towards the center. When people are running for political office, I think that's what it was called, if I remember from poli-sci class back in the day, that a lot of times in a majority rule society, which is kind of a democratic or democracy voting system or governance system, that people try to go towards the median or average voter, I don't know what it was called, but to, yeah, median, to try to grab the person who's like number 51 and appeal to them and everyone who's more, extreme that they are. And so I think a lot of times in organizations, strong beliefs tend to get diluted by culture and tend to pull towards the middle and pull towards the consensus, which is, I think, good when we're trying to maintain culture, when we're trying to maintain stability and things like this. But to innovate often is to destabilize. It's often to stretch the bounds. It's often to try something new and get into fights with people who want to maintain the status quo because sometimes the the normal wants to stay normal and the abnormal. Fights to become the new normal and so just curious where some of these sources come from And my hypothesis is that they often come from the individuals who just won't give up, the ones who just keep fighting really hard to try to address problems, to keep fighting really hard to address things in a different way. And I talked to a friend of mine earlier in the day that's going to be on the podcast episode, Peter. We had about a two-hour conversation, and Peter's been working on his brand. He does leather goods. He crafts leather goods, beautiful ones. And he's been working on it for, I think he said 2016, so eight years now. And Peter has lots of other opportunities in other ways. Why is he still working on this? Why is he so committed to this? Yeah, part of it's he likes leather, part of it's this, and he likes being the branding. But also, I think a big part of it is that he sees a need to share Sudanese culture with the world.

And a way for him to not just do these products, but to share that culture and to inspire other people. And we talked about how there's a war going on in Sudan right now. And how if he, with his work, can bring hope to other Sudanese people who are in the country or outside of the country, or he can bring hope to others who are looking at Sudan only as a war zone, how could that impact people? So, so much, I think, of people changing these cultural norms and trying to resolve some problems really push against the grain. And often I think it takes individuals who are going to fight very hard for what they believe and what they're trying to solve. And so often when people will tell me, they say, well, why don't you just get a job here? Why don't you start an organization that does that? I want to push and challenge some of the deeply held beliefs that we have around emotions, the deeply held behaviors and habits that we have around emotions, that we have around conflict, that we have around love. of. And to do that, I think sometimes I worry if I get into an organization, especially one that already exists, if I join one, it will be really hard to shift that culture.

And especially if I'm not running the organization. And if I start one still, there can be a lot of peer pressure to kind of have a collective decision to go in a certain direction. And I don't know, maybe the challenge is if I can't do it within an organization, how am I supposed to do it in a society? But I still think sometimes there is a benefit to having people work.

There's a book called Anti-Fragility, and this idea that sometimes authors are the most anti-fragile just because they don't have the dependency. They're not stuck with other people or being pulled towards the norms of other people. If I'm in an organization and there's 10 people who want one thing and I want one other thing, it's hard. A tug-of-war against 10 people can be really hard sometimes.

Yeah so i just i don't know i don't know maybe the answer is that people are trying it in lots of different ways and the question should rather be are these problems still existing and are the current solutions addressing them are the current solutions solving them and if not what else can we try to address these challenges there will always be conflict and i think actually that is the biggest problem that most of us don't just accept that there will always be lots and lots of conflict, almost infinite conflict. And ironically, coming to peace with the idea that there's always conflict might bring us the peace that we want. And so, yeah, so today was just a little reflection on that. I keep going over 10 minutes, so I'm going to stop this here and I will talk to you all, excuse me, I will talk to you all next Monday. All right, bye.