Archive for the ‘August 2009’ Category

Social Capital and Innovation

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

 snrdiagram

 

I like this diagram – I like diagrams generally when they tell a story, I like the collaborative generation of diagrams as a means of coming to a shared understanding of something complex. This particular diagram appeared in a Communities and Local Government piece on Sub-National Review; something that won’t interest a lot of people but the fall out of which will, in the end, affect us all – but “hey ho” to that, back to the diagram.
The reason I like it is not that it particularly describes my beliefs or thoughts or my approaches. It’s because it describes an approach which was meant to bring together approaches to economic development by recognising the contribution of everybody from the Regional Development Agency to the Third Sector and the Communities that they serve. Instead it had the unintentional side effect of creating an apartheid approach which marginalised community based approaches and social outcomes because it was seen as a twin track approach with the economic drivers at the top and the social drivers at the bottom.

I’ve dug this out because of all of the interest in Social Capital and Digital Inclusion recently and a comment I made on David Wilcox’s Blog piece about a NESTA event called Re-boot.

“Reading through blog posts and looking at this proposed event I am conscious that people move easily between social and economic as if they were the same thing. I don’t think that they are. They’re linked and have dependencies but they’re not the same so I can only appeal to people to be clear about what they mean. “

Thinking about this led me to dig out a think piece by John Field who was, at the time (2006), Deputy Principal of the University of Stirling, called “Social Networks, Innovation and Learning: Can Policies for Social Capital Promote both Economic Dynamism and Social Justice?” . I won’t go into the obscure route I came by this or why I read it but it does attempt to look at where innovation arises from social capital which in turn arises from learning communities and how this might be different, or similar, to innovation in a knowledge driven economy. There’s a copy here:  johnfieldfebruary2006 FYI but I’m not recommending it as a good alternative to the TV.

 

I also revisited Eric Von Hippel’s piece “Democratizing Innovation”. This was written in 2005 but still holds true today. Hippel attempts to look not only at how collaborative approaches lead to better innovation but also how innovation arising from social capital can cross over into the commercial world – a more holistic view of a knowledge society. There is a very good 15 minute video where he goes through this on the NESTA site:

Much of this works well with the things that Clay Shirky and Charles Leadbeater are saying now. The power of collaboration and the role of digital tools in making it faster and easier are making us re-visit the role of social capital building and the benefits to be derived from that. Leadbeater’s Core, Contribute, Connect, Communicate and Collaborate has echoes from Hippel’s Lead Users and Innovative Communities.

So what are the emerging themes? Well it’s very hard to do! Really! The bridging capital as well as the bonding capital that Will Davies refers to in his RSA piece is important. Social Capital has the power to isolate and to reinforce perceptions in a negative way just as easily as it can empower. Early writers on Social Capital saw it as a way of reinforcing social position and maintaining the hierarchy not as a way of engaging and including. It needs an appreciation of and a considered approach to risk, its outcomes are unpredictable, it can promote inequality, it can stifle innovation by re-enforcing expectations and its concepts and language are not well defined, as hopefully, this piece shows. What this means is that approaches by those people who know who they are working with are going to be best. Working with and not to, bottom up, not top down.

For me the big theme is to be holistic. Let’s not fall into the trap, intentionally or otherwise, of separate tracks of development, one for the economy and one for social capital. This is a knowledge society, not just a knowledge economy.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: ,
Posted in August 2009 | 1 Comment »

Digital Inclusion – Scratching the Itch!

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

I’m grateful to John Fisher, CEO of Citizens On Line, for a conversation we had about supply and demand, digital inclusion and the way that it’s supply led. I’ve been looking at the American experience; the whole social media idea appears to be far more embedded there than here. That may be just an impression but I think it stems from the social media phenomenon being driven by consumers. The desire to influence products and product quality has taken hold so that the social media environment is a way of talking publicly about a product or service experience. This means that in America, politics is getting wise to a consumer driven experience and is getting engaged with consumers. Here in the UK politics is driving the initiative and trying to get consumers engaged.

The consequence is that the supply side has overcapacity. We are awash with initiatives and yet 29% of people in the UK still do not engage with “digital”. At the same time, politics seeks not only to drive the initiative but also to control the dialogue. This is partly because of the nature of local authorities that tend to be hierarchical and inward looking. This means that messages flow down and outwards, not in and upwards.

If it’s not supply led, then what is a “Core offer” for digital inclusion? Lyndsay Grant of NESTA (Grant, 2008) highlights the generally accepted benefits of digital inclusion, improved access to learning and skills, and subsequently to employment and also to provide a citizen voice. We need, she says, new modes of learning and access to make a voice heard and an understanding that projects work best in the locality for which they are designed – we cannot change the world. Her view is that a user centred approach in the design of learning is appropriate, it is socially just, powerless people have power when they are involved in the process and to enable this articulation learners must be supported by means of scaffolding.

I find this way of thinking attractive. I do not believe that a knowledge economy is possible without a knowledge society.

On the same theme of design a piece by Robert Fabricant takes a slightly different view of user centric design:

“We have been operating under the assumption that the primary challenge is to convince businesses to focus on fulfilling user needs with higher quality products, with more meaningful experiences? But what if the ‘users’ themselves are the problem?” (Fabricant, 2009)

Fabricant argues that a User Centric Design process will emphasise the benefits of an experience, such as ‘convenience’ rather than more meaningful sources of social value. I take this to be alluding to the situation we see when people are asked how they would like to access Local Authority Services. The majority will say, by telephone! Thus the “Death Star” is born and “one stop shop” call centres spring up all over the country. No matter how good the scripts and no matter how well trained the staff, what sort of social value is created and what sort of user experience do we have?

In short, Fabricant argues, user behaviour is always subject to influence. While Fabricant is speaking in the context of design generally it strikes me that his principles can, and should, apply equally to the design of services. His idea is that design should be for social systems, not individual needs because: “it is within cooperative systems that personal fulfilment has the best chance of intersecting with broader social values. “

“Social innovation in the age of networks is a process of change where new ideas are generated by actors directly involved in the problem to be solved.” While participatory design can be used as a technique within a standard UCD process, social media technologies are allowing it to play a more transformative role.” (Fabricant, 2009)

Lean thinking has gained a lot of traction in local government, particularly in process re-engineering for call centre delivery. Lean originated out of Japanese manufacturing and by a process of iteration, involving the people who actually did the work, it developed very efficient processes. The problem with Lean thinking is that it tends to emphasise the supply side experience.

I was fortunate to be a part of a workshop for the participants of the Digital Challenge competition led by Jonathan Drori, now a member of the action group for the Digital Champion, Martha Lane-Fox. The workshop looked at market segmentation, the creation of archetypes and the development of scenarios. It was a day well spent. There is a thought provoking presentation by Hugh Graham which looks at a process of design using emerging stories. He promotes a very similar approach to design:

Understand the context
Conduct research
Create personas
Define scenarios
Build prototypes
Iterate rapidly
Increase fidelity
Fail early and often (Graham, 2008)

The difference between this approach and the Lean method is that it develops the design through the user experience and then tests the design through a number of different user experiences. In a sense it forms the scaffolding that Grant talks about while avoiding the pitfalls that Fabricant highlights.

So what does all of this tell us about the “Core Offer” for digital inclusion. I believe that the core offer should arise from the dialogue with the final 29% not from a selection from the existing supply side, in other words, capture the emergent story rather than develop the supply side offer . What does this look like? It delivers something that people want now. It delivers through friends and trusted agents. This means that we must build the capacity of the front line services. What of the existing supply side? It has to be there, there has to be a place for people to go next, it is what it is, but I doubt that it is the Core Offer.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags:
Posted in August 2009 | No Comments »

Losing Faith – Hopefully a Temporary Blip

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

“Nous (pronounced /ˈnuːs/, Greek: νοῦς or νόος) is a philosophical term for mind or intellect. Outside of a philosophical context, it is used, in English, to denote “common sense,” with a different pronunciation (/naʊs/).” – Wikipedia.

One of my many faults is that I have no political nous. I am devoid of nous. Despite long years in local government, no nous! It explains, perhaps, why I’m more practical in nature, a doer, an organiser but not a political animal. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have political views, I do, though I tend to keep them to myself an awareness of the lack of nous has taught me that it’s unsafe ground, to be avoided. Having no political nous can be a huge disadvantage which is probably just one of the reasons why I never rose to the heights of leadership in the public domain – I’ll never be a fellow of the RSA -.

I think I’m suffering from a loss of faith. It was brought to a head by this item in the Sunday Times 16/08/09:

Following the encouraging noises that followed Stephen Timms appointment to take forwards the Digital Britain report I had thought, like many others, that there was hope. I understood why the digital agenda was now split between CLG and BIS, an economic imperative will always keep politicians attention. I hadn’t anticipated that even Stephen Timms would have to sacrifice Next Generation Access in the face of the political expediency of getting the budget through before next year’s election. If there is a chance that the Tories will oppose the finance bill because they object to the landline tax then the landline tax must go. Where does this put the Tories on Next Generation Access?

I’m not saying that NGA is a cornerstone of Digital Inclusion – far from it – so why a loss of faith? It’s because it’s a reminder that real power resides in national politics and commercial interests and not, in the hands of the people. Well of course it does, I hear you say. That being the case, what are we all doing? If two million people “Tweeted” and “Blogged” in opposition to the decision do we think it will make a difference?
Two other things this week have contributed to my apostasy.

I was as appalled as most people by the featured “news” item on the Fox News Network about the NHS as a recruiting ground for terrorists: This was not so much that I was offended by criticism of the NHS it was the corporate sponsored racial profiling that was perceived as “okay” in the US because it was part of a Republican campaign about healthcare reform. Do we imagine for one moment that overloading Twitter with #welovethenhs is going to make a difference?

I was also struck by the item on the BBC’s “Click” about a proposed law in Italy which will force Bloggers to publish a right of reply for people who feel that their reputation or honour has been damaged. This is in a country where 50% of the people do not have access to the Internet and the majority of the media is owned by the country’s Prime minister. Will it become law – I’m sure it will, because the power lies with national politics. Do we imagine for one minute that all the blogs in Italy are going to make a difference?

I am a passionate believer in the empowerment agenda. I believe fundamentally that digital inclusion should be a right for every single individual. I see the power of inter-connected ICT as self evident in its ability to educate, give access and, most importantly to give voice. But a voice that is not heard is just a rage against a storm. If the democratic potential of the internet is just a myth then why are we doing this? Yes we can help give coherence to communities, yes we can provide access to services to those who most need them and yes we can share knowledge and understanding; but until we can give substance to the voices of the people, make them heard and make them a power for change we are, perhaps, just tweeting in the wilderness and the world will go on as before.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: ,
Posted in August 2009 | No Comments »

The Infrastructure Debate, Random Jottings

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

I picked up a “Tweet” today from an academic in Boston MA called Danah Boyd who Tweets under the name of zephoria. Although they have the equivalent of our Carter Report, who’s Implementation plan was publicised in timely fashion by Chris yesterday (I would never have found it!), called the National Broadband Plan they are still thinking through how it might impact on Education. Danah Boyd put out a call for peopl’s thoughts and ideas which are being posted here but try as I might I couldn’t get them to give me access, so I thought I might put the thoughts here, and maybe develop them because they’re a bit random at the moment – some might argue that my thoughts are always random – hey ho!

Take the British experience as a benchmark (to be aspired to or to be exceeded is up to you – at least it’s not about health reform). Here, it’s called Next Generation Access, NGA for short though the arguments get blurred between people who talk about core networks, access network, economic benefit and social benefit. Lesson 1 – make sure you and the other person are talking about the same thing! There are a couple of strands to this one, the economic and the social. In economic terms it’s a battle between our two dominant service providers to keep market share. In social terms it’s about the haves and have not’s, what we call digital inclusion, which is where I work.

An early evaluation on what NGA might be worth in terms of ROI was published by the Broadband Stakeholder Group (basically a trade body that advises government) from a consultancy called Plumb – hence, the Plumb Report – you can see it here. While it has been generally ignored it does make a good attempt at putting money into the argument; worth a read but take a deep breath.

It was largely ignored because the UK Government commissioned Francesco Caio (ex- Cable & Wireless) to produce a report that basically said, leave it to the market. You can see it here.The problem with Caio is that it sidesteps the impact of geographical and social exclusion, never really confronts the impact.

The Government was partially persuaded and they produced a digital inclusion action plan:

So Stephen Carter (ex- NTL) was then commissioned to take a wider view and he came up with the much publicised Carter Report, Digital Britain. This forms the basis of UK policy for the next x number of years and has resulted in an implementation plan.

Problems and possibilities? The good stuff is that digital inclusion is embedded into government thinking. The not so good stuff is that it doesn’t communicate down to regional and local government and so there are tensions. Having worked on the first implementation of broadband into UK schools I have no doubt about the impact it has had on education generally. I know that it has widened the gap between those that have access at home and those that do not. I also know that of the 29% of British people who still do not engage with the digital agenda, and that group includes what we call NEETS (Not in Education, Employment or Training) and PPOs,(Persistent and Perpetual Offenders) that their disadvantage and disconnection is deepened because of their exclusion.

Just because you cannot say what NGA will “do” in education doesn’t mean that it will not “do” anything – in 2001 when we began the initial roll out of connectivity to UK schools we only had the vaguest idea of a universal good – the impact has outweighed the original possibility many times and I firmly believe that it will do so again. Not that we don’t have issues: rural exclusion, social exclusion, business competitiveness in areas of poor provision, a weak market place.

What am I saying? I’m saying that you cannot, not do this but if you can, do it equitably with a view to the benefit of every young person and you will reap the rewards a thousand fold, even if you don’t yet know what that reward is!

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , ,
Posted in August 2009 | No Comments »