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01 Dec 09

The power of positive deviants - The Boston Globe

positive deviants = the right kind of weak signal
goes to alex pang's point about ethnography being an important part of futures work...as anybody that follows jan chipchase would know!
this is really important - can be transferred to research approaches esp with design/improvement focus + futures obviously...

www.boston.com/...the_power_of_positive_deviants - Preview

innovation community society future trends essential

  • This initiative is an example of “positive deviance,” an approach to behavioral and social change. Instead of imposing solutions from without, the method identifies outliers in a community who, despite having no special advantages, are doing exceptionally well. By respecting local ingenuity, proponents say, the approach galvanizes community members and is often more effective and sustainable than imported blueprints.

easyCouncil should soon be taking off | Mike Freer - Times Online

  • Strikingly, even as the quality of local government services has
    risen over the past decade, citizen satisfaction has drifted downwards.
  • So this round of reform shouldn’t just be about bigger or smaller government.
    It has to be about smarter government and about moving from “Henry Ford
    government” to “Amazon government”.
  • 5 more annotations...

Poor whites: On the edge | The Economist

  • Most outlying estates have not had Castle Vale’s makeover. Many are shabby and a long way from shops, jobs and power. Frankley, an estate that lies at the end of an infrequent 40-minute bus ride south from Birmingham, is one. “Here feels so far away from the power base,” complains Andy Ross, a community worker who recently lost a colleague after an unexpected edict from city hall unilaterally deployed him elsewhere.
  • Frankley has had a particularly rough time, straddling the boundary between Birmingham and a neighbouring council. Squabbles over who is responsible for drains, street lighting and other services mean that, sometimes, work goes undone. Ray Goodwin, who works for Birmingham Settlement, a local charity, says that these slip-ups leave gaps for the BNP. “Someone will come round and take your rubbish away, or mend your fence. The next time he knocks it’s to ask for your vote,” he says. Frankley is not alone in feeling cut-off: national polling shows that whites feel less in control of their communities and country than any other ethnic group (see chart).
30 Oct 09

Do "local currencies" really help the communities that use them? - By Tim Harford - Slate Magazine

  • Money, whether pounds or Brixton bricks, isn't wealth. It's just a way of keeping accounts, and swapping one system of accounts for another isn't going to alter the basic productive potential of Brixton.
  • True, community currencies may very gently encourage trade with locals rather than strangers. But the gains from more trade with locals are more than offset by the losses from less trade with strangers.
  • 3 more annotations...
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