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17 Nov 09

TIP Social Impact Bonds and Social Value | Launchpad

In principle the model is likely to work best in the short to medium term where:

- there is a reasonably short gap between interventions and measurable results.

- there are very tangible financial gains, for example the very high costs associated with prison places, as well as with crime

- the numbers of players are small, ie one primary national department, a local authority, finance body and other agencies working on contract.

All models bring some common challenges:

Measurement - agreed baselines and metrics that are not vulnerable to economic downturns, national policy changes (eg new crimes being legislated), and shared analysis of lifetime costs and benefits associated with different actions and client groups.
Action - all depend on there being a credible menu of actions to implement which significantly outperform existing ones, and they also depend on the presence of an implementation capacity. In most cases this is likely to involve a mix of public, private and voluntary organisations - in none of these fields does any one sector have a clear advantage in terms of performance.
Risk - handling downside risks, including not only the risk of failing to achieve targets but also other risks, eg political risk (if some of the interventions are overruled by elected politicians).

launchpad.youngfoundation.org/...-impact-bonds-and-social-value - Preview

Social Impact Bonds social impact bonds finance financial instruments Young Foundation

  • For example a city or London borough would borrow £5m for an intensive programme of work with NEETs or potential young offenders, and would be repaid according to the numbers who achieved educational qualifications relative to an agreed baseline of similar local authorities. The repayments would represent a proportion of the lifetime savings to national government (primarily through tax and benefits). Models of this kind are relatively easy to design and implement, involve relatively few players and transaction costs, though they require clear protocols on design, establishment of baselines, success measures & commissioning.

    • In principle the model is likely to work best in the short to medium term where:



      - there is a reasonably short gap between interventions and measurable results.



      - there are very tangible financial gains, for example the very high costs associated with prison places, as well as with crime



      - the numbers of players are small, ie one primary national department, a local authority, finance body and other agencies working on contract.



      All models bring some common challenges:


      • Measurement - agreed baselines and metrics that are not vulnerable to economic downturns, national policy changes (eg new crimes being legislated), and shared analysis of lifetime costs and benefits associated with different actions and client groups.

      • Action - all depend on there being a credible menu of actions to implement which significantly outperform existing ones, and they also depend on the presence of an implementation capacity. In most cases this is likely to involve a mix of public, private and voluntary organisations - in none of these fields does any one sector have a clear advantage in terms of performance.
      • Risk - handling downside risks, including not only the risk of failing to achieve targets but also other risks, eg political risk (if some of the interventions are overruled by elected politicians).
16 Sep 09

Strategy for Social Change Initiatives

  • This is also a thread I've been examining in the engagement frameworks I've been co-creating, for Transmedia Activism, which looks at how one uses cross-platform distribution of content, co-creation networks and shared authorship to engage activists toward change; and for Modeling Global Change, which uses design thinking, user experience and structured narrative to examine partnership, influence and stakeholder collaboration toward parallel action and systemic change.
28 May 09

The Power Of Us

  • Ultimately, all this could point the way to a fundamental change in the way people work together. In 1968, ecologist Garrett Hardin popularized the notion of the tragedy of the commons. He noted that public resources, from pastures and national parks to air and water, inevitably get overused as people act in their own self-interest. It's a different story in the Information Age, contends Dan Bricklin, co-creator of the pioneering PC software VisiCalc and president of consultant Software Garden Inc. in Newton Highlands, Mass.


    Instead, he says, there's a cornucopia of the commons. That rich reward may be worth all the disruption we've seen and all the more still to come.
19 May 09

Worldchanging: Bright Green: Solving Tough Problems -- A Conversation with Adam Kahane

Complex problems are complex in three dimensions: Dynamically, Generatively, and Socially.

1. Dynamic complexity occurs when causes and effects are far apart in space and/or time.

2. Generative complexity happens when systems evolve in unfamiliar and unpredictable ways.

3. Social complexity occurs when the people involved see things very differently, and so viewpoints become polarized and stuck.

www.worldchanging.com/...001070.html - Preview

complexity complex problem problem-solving dynamic generative social

  • Problems are tough because they are complex in three ways. They are dynamically complex, which means that cause and effect are far apart in space and time, and so are hard to grasp from firsthand experience. They are generatively complex, which means that they are unfolding in unfamiliar and unpredictable ways. And they are socially complex, which means that the people involved see things very differently, and so the problems become polarized and stuck.

    (pp.1-2)
  • Bill Torbert of Boston College once said to me that the 1960s slogan "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem" actually misses the most important point about effecting change. The slogan should be, "If you're not part of the problem, you can't be part of the solution." If we cannot see how what we are doing or not doing is contributing to things being the way that they are, then logically we have no basis at all, zero leverage, for change the way things are -- except from the outside, by persuasion or force.

    (pp.83-84)
31 Oct 08

NNDB: Tracking the entire world

  • What is NNDB?




    NNDB is an intelligence aggregator that tracks the activities of people we
    have determined to be noteworthy, both living and dead. Superficially, it seems much like a
    "Who's Who" where a noted person's curriculum vitae is available (the usual information
    such as date of birth, a biography, and other essential facts.)



    But it mostly exists to document the connections between people, many of which are not always
    obvious. A person's otherwise inexplicable behavior is often understood by examining
    the crowd that person has been associating with.



    Eventually, we will have synopses and analyses of creative works by the people
    in the database, including their books, films, and recordings.




30 Sep 08

Why The Flow Of Innovation Has Reversed | Union Square Ventures: A New York Venture Capital Fund Focused on Early Stage & Startup Investing

  • the vector of innovation has changed. It used to be that innovation started with NASA, flowed to the military, then to the enterprise, and finally to the consumer. Today, it is the reverse. All of the most interesting stuff is being built first for consumers and is tricking back to the enterprise. I suggested that one reason this is happening is that the success of a web service is more often determined by its social engineering than its electrical engineering.
  • We have marveled more than once on this blog about the remarkable efficiency of Craigslist. That service is essentially a very lightweight governance system that manages an enormous collection of users who contribute all of the content and much of the oversight that makes the service work. It is because Craig and Jim focus on managing the efforts of their users instead of doing the work of those users that Craigslist is so phenomenally efficient. Many of the most interesting web services are like Craigslist, at their core, lightweight governance systems. Facebook and Twitter come to mind.
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