The Social Labs Revolution, Zaid Hassan, 2014
• "These planning-based approaches - so common across government, civil society and even business - represent a new-Soviet paradigm, one that is particularly out of step with what we know about complexity, about systems, about networks, and about how change happens." p. xiii
• Using grounded theory, inductive approaches which believe that in the particular lies the universal.
What are social labs?
• Pressure on individuals to effect change and find "individual solutions to systemic contradictions" in the words of Ulrich Beck
• Social labs are platforms for addressing complex social problems, they are social, experimental, systemic.
• They're about integrity and honesty, they are not about what we want solutions to be but about solutions that work
• Starts by gaining first hand experience of they problem, then suggestions of how to solve problem are tested and implemented through prototypes.
• Social labs generate capital in the form of physical capital, human capital, social capital, intellectual capital.
• Today how we treat social challenges is in contrast to scientific and technical challenges.
• M. Lewis says "it still matters less how much money you have than how well you spend it"
• Question of scaling: big issue in world of social issues. But social labs can be run at any scale, e.g. in South Africa with KYB initiative
• Pb is we lack a practical theory of action for complex social problems.
• Social labs are anti business as usual, they represent "a pragmatic attempt t act in the face of increasingly complex situations in a way that increases the odds situations systemically at their roots.
• Social labs in last two decades increased together with innovation labs, tech labs such as maker or fab labs.
Complexity and how to address it
• Complex social challenges are emergent, a constant information flow to handle and actors constantly adapting their behaviour.
• A challenge is technical when problem and solution are clearly defined. Inter connectivity explains why challenges that were previously technical are now social and complex, cf wicked problems. But these are the new normal.
• Today the way to solve complex social problems is through technical and planing based approaches, culturally dominant technocratic approach
• Technocratic approaches seek to optimise, not innovate. Applies to climate change, deforestation, poverty eradication...
• Market-based approaches have yet to figure out what to do with the environmental consequences of economic growth.
• Technocratic approaches are bound to fail, as they rely on a bet that our ability to optimise will be faster than the rate at which problems grow. Pb is that problems grow exponentially but ability to optimise is growing linearly!
A strategic vacuum
• Business as usual defined by four spheres today: developmental, humanitarian, security and battle:
- Developmental sphere: "People are not provided for by their governments, and cannot afford services at market rates, and therefore rely on the developmental sphere" p. 33
- Neo-Soviet character strengthened by results-based agenda which results in increased gaming of the system (e.g. fabricated data)
- Neo-Soviet character reinforced with development aid, «where a donor government provides financial aid either bilaterally (to another government) or to multilateral agencies. Typically decisions are made centrally and then programs are delivered on the ground via five-year plans.» p. 34
- "In recent years, the humanitarian sphere has also come under severe criticism. Formerly apolitical, humanitarian agencies are changing now and 'venturing into the formerly taboo area of politics'" p. 35
• Four spheres are blurring, e.g. AMISOM in Somalia
• "If we expect politicians to take the rational recommendations made by well-meaning experts and implementing them, then we are living a fantasy." P. 39
• Decision-making power and the control of resources rests with a narrow class of technocrats occupying Business as usual spaces, characterized by habitus. "In the face of increasingly complex social challenges, this results in a troubling strategic vacuum masked by frantic technocratic activity." P. 43
Examples: the Sustainable Food Lab and Bhavishya Lab in India
• Novel aspects of the lab included very diverse group of stakeholder peers, lack of predetermined set of outcomes, core process (U process by O. Scharmer) and keeping definitions fluid.
• Problem when innovation process distorted by opaque political processes, look at hidden conversations.
New ecologies of capital
• Lab is co-creating three sets of results:
- initiatives
- relationships
- capacities
• All these are different forms of capital, e.g. prototypes / initiatives are physical capital, relationships are social capital, capacities are human capital and the result of the whole process in intellectual capital.
• Production of these capitals contribute directly to preventing the collapse of societies (e.g. in Yemen),
- cf. J. Greer in a paper on How civilizations fail: A Theory of Catabolitic Collapse.
- They collapse due to depletion of natural resources, which causes cycle of contraction where most forms of capital stocks in a society are converted into waste.
• Bourdieu : "It is impossible to account for the structure and function of the social world unless one reintroduces capital in all its forms and not solely in one form recognized in economic theory" p; 85
• It’s all about energy!
• Venture capitals deal with risk of failure by spreading bet, but "in the development sector, the notion of spread betting in unheard of. Instead, the rule of thumb is to avoid failure, which in practice mans to avoid admitting failure, as failure in complex systems is unavoidable. Innovation is not an efficient process - it’s messy." p. 87
- Peter Buffett in a NYT op-ed, "Is progress really Wi-Fi on every street corner? No. It’s when no 13-year-old girl on the planets gets sold for sex. But as long as most folks are patting themselves on the back for charitable acts, we’ve got a perpetual poverty machine." p. 88
• Market-based solutions are not panacea either:
• "It results in a shift from a horizontal, state-driven, planning approach to a vertical, market-driven, planning approach, as we see happening in the developmental and humanitarian spheres." p. 89
• "Organisations designed to produce only one form of capital are a dying breed." p. 89
The rise of the agilistas
• Beyond first general social labs, what do you do with a successful prototype? Instead of waterfall approach (planning-based) suggests to use agile approaches (e.g. difference between a pilot and a prototype)
• Use the U process throughout their social labs, by O. Scharmer.
• There are 3 forms of practical knowledge according to Aristotle: episteme (theory), techne (technology) and phronesis (no modern equivalent, that which is done).
• The Checklist manifesto by Gawande: a humble checklist is an antidote to extreme complexity, the idea is to develop a set of heuristics - codified rules or checklists - based on experience, which helps us to make decisions in complex situations. p. 97
• You have to start with what is plausible and not what is desirable, otherwise recipe for disaster!
• Given their nature, complex social problems present a particular challenge, which is how do you actually perceive the challenge in order to grasp and understand t?
• Systems thinking (e.g. P. Senghe) deals with systems as wholes and not parts, e.g. Iceberg model, which distinguishes between events, patterns and structures.
• "Innovation is a black swan" p. 101. Inventors and artists have no real problem imagining things that don’t exist!!
• Social innovation outcomes cannot be theoretically falsifiable in advance, cannot be planned. "We cannot, in other words, know what the new solutions to problems and challenges are before they are created, or invented; otherwise, we would have implemented them already." p. 103
Towards a theory of systemic action
• We need to be aware of underlying theories and power dynamics in addressing complex social problems. Today much guided by "theory of change"
• Power according to Foucault is symbolic and relational, J. Nye coined the "soft power" paradigm.
1. Constitute diverse team (T-shaped people, X-teams, where X stands for external according to D. Ancona and H. Bresman). Use open convening, let the right people come to you rather than cherry-picking everyone.
2. Design an iterative process: supporting the group is called process facilitation because it focuses on the process of a group self-determining where it wants to go and then inviting a facilitator to help it get there.
3. Actively create systemic spaces: Process used to create a container within which strategy can emerge from the friction of diverse participants working together as a team.
- S. Johnson in Where Ideas come from, idea that some environments breed new ideas while others squelch them.
7 How-Tos for starting a social lab
• "Addressing complex social challenges requires deep strategic commitment coupled with radical tactical flexibility" p. 126 —> A social lab is a strategy, requiring strategic commitment
1. Clarify intention: cf. quote by Ken Robinson: "For most of us the problem isn’t that we aim too high and fail - it’s just the opposite - we aim too low and succeed."
2. Broadcast an open invitation (p. 131 an example from the EU on how NOT to do it), invitation should be open, meaning that not all variables have been nailed down and only some decisions made.
3. Work your networks
4. Recruit willing people: don’t exceed 36 as hard to build trust in a starting group bigger than that.
5. Set strategic direction and create a space for the lab: it’s not about grand strategy but about unfolding multiple actions in a strategic direction.
6. Design in stacks or layers, only when needed: innovation or problem-solving (e.g. U process), information and learning, capacity building, governance.
7. Find cadence, a sustainable pace
Next-generation social labs
• "A zombie idea is one that leeps coming back, despite being killed." J. Quiggin, p. 139
• Social labs can be used for finding solutions to stabilise, mitigate or adapt, e.g.:
- State collapse —> a stabilization strategy
- climate change —> a mitigation strategy
- community resilience —> an adaptation strategy
• The part vs the whole: "A social lab is a gathering, a coming together of people across silos that characterize dominant social structures in order to attend to a social challenge for as long as necessary to shift the situation." p. 146
• "Labs must put enquiry - and not just advocacy - at the heart of their activities." (finding and addressing the root causes) p. 147
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