Agenda for Innovation/Incubating Meeting

Tuesday, November 29

Focus:  Innovations

9:00 – 10:30    Staff Meeting – 5 Minute Reports from each team:  Health, Conservation, Peace, Community Capacity Building, Asset Control, Innovation Mobilization, Knowledge

11:00 – 11:30  Introductory Comments on Process and Evolving Structure

11:30 - 1:00     Our Innovations

1:00 – 1:30       Lunch

1:30 – 4:00       Innovations to Scale                                   

4:30 – 5:00       Wrap-Up Discussion

5:00 – 7:00       Dinner at Gateway

Wednesday, November 30

Focus:  Incubation

9:00 – 11:00       Innovation Mobilization Team:  Fundraising, Donor Tracking, Proposal Writing Process & Mapping Processes

11:00 – 11:30     Break

11:30 – 12:30     Knowledge Team

12:30 - 1:00        Creating Workable Work Plans

1:00 – 1:30         Lunch

1:30 - 3:30          Break-Out Sessions for Innovation Teams – Meeting in various rooms

3:30 – 6:00         Wrap – Up in Incubator: Each team discuss for 30 minutes what they will be                                     pushing for their team.           

Empowerment on an Unstable Planet

Carl Taylor, Daniel Taylor, Jesse Taylor

November 22, 2011

Introduction

Key Points:

• Since World War II development projects have invested 2.3 trillion dollars and as a result 5 billion lives have been improved yet 2 billion people have been excluded.
• The current development systems are working at only 2/3 capacity and have been paired with planetary destruction and human destruction.
• Today terror can appear anywhere and epidemics like swine and bird flu show the world just how interconnected we are.  Currently though, the responses of isolation and conferences are inadequate.
• This book is about solutions.  A process that advances all. (innovation?)
•  Human energy rather than money is the true currency of social change.  (pg. 10) (innovation?)
•   Human energy is a product of human hands, hearts and minds ; combustion of calories (pg . 13)
•   Social change happens because of what people do.
•  Mobilization of human energies occur community by community (process)
• Community action has the potential to scale up to global solutions (innovation?
• Growth through people teaching each other, people holding each other accountable, people acting daily in adaptive decisions to respond to opportunities (process)
• Social change can begin anywhere at any time.  Social change operates in the complex intersection of economics, human social relations and natural ecology (pg. 19) (process)
• Gandhi demonstrated the power of human energy to achieve freedom.  Economic opportunities, political liberties, social powers, good health, basic education, cultivation of initiative and protective security.
• Using their energies people can overthrow their burdens and obtain freedom without consuming or selling off their scarce resources working in partnership with their governments and the experts they can access, building on what they already have (innovation?)
• What is needed is a process of community strengthening through which individuals are supported (innovation?)
•  Definition of community:  A group with something in common and potential to act together.  3-Way partnership with government, and outside in partners.  Large enough to resist exploitation and small enough that each individual has a voice in shaping impact for themselves. Can extend across geographic locations.
•  SEED-SCALE is premised on communities taking action alone.  This is how it differs from “grassroots” or bottom-up approaches.  It is a more comprehensive theory of change than a methodology.  A means to structure and channel individual actions toward context-specific solutions.  Has the same set of functions but applications will all differ.  Helps communities, governments and social-change agents (NGO, academicians) adapt the ever-changing circumstances of our unstable planet.  One is never completely powerless; there is always something to be done.  SEED-SCALE is not a formula to be followed but a mindset with which to bring forward energy that is ready to grow (pg. 21). Field work in over 70 countries (pg. 20).
• SEED-Self-Evaluation of effective decision making. Means by which each individual and each community identifies the next effective action in the midst of changing circumstances.
•  SCALE ONE- Stimulating community awareness, learning and energy.  Evolves within policies, finances and knowledge.
•  SCALE SQUARED-Self-help centers for action learning and experimentation. Evolves within policies, finances and knowledge.
•  SCALE CUBED-Synthesis of collaboration , adaptive learning and extension.
•   Progress – The ability to learn, to adapt and to innovate

Discussion Notes:

·       SEED-SCALE is very relevant to the restructuring process we are undergoing now.

·       This is a game changer

·       Communities acting with what they have .

·       Individual minds and energies are part of the network as per the Johnson book.

·       The 2 billion people who are unreached may not have been empowered.

·       Quote: “I am feeling empowered using my gifts and blossoming in this new structure; thinking and acting outside the box ” Super Collider Club Member.

Next Steps:

·       We need to set systems to document how we are applying SEED-SCALE within.  The first step is developing a baseline questionnaire for our global partners.  Led by Pat and Becky

·       Set up the Super Collider Blog

·       We will need to find ways to answer the following questions:

1.     Question:  What does it mean when we have collective action and it is the individuals who are supported?

2.     Question: How does our network interpret human energy?  We should circulate this question to partners, students and alumni.

3.     Question:  How will we get more of the team members to feel more comfortable in a system with less structure?

4.     Question:  How do we support the individual by mentoring them?

New Idea from "Liquid Networks"

Have just been reading the next chapter in Johnson, "Liquid Networks," and it strikes me that there is the making for a super proposal to build the Incubator. I know Dan'l and Charlie have been working on the RF proposal for this aspect but I wonder if we couldn't identify another source of support and try to develop an institution strengthening proposal drawing on Johnson and maybe some of the other reading related to incubators. Just a thought inspired by his comments on pages 56-58 about the circulating of ideas to a wider population and how the collective network strengthens the individuals who participate and share. Perhaps there is a corporate foundation funder who could be intrigued by our efforts and would support the connecting and other practical, as well as the intellectual, actions.

Is this worth thinking about after we get littler further?

Book Discussion, November 18, 2011

Where Good Ideas Come From

Steven Johnson

Introduction: Darwin’s Paradox

• What is it about coral reefs that enable innumerable species to thrive in otherwise nutrient poor waters? It is the story of the innovative persistence of life.
• The super-linear city – identification of a mathematical relationship between the size of animals and their lifespan and heart rate – referred to as the Negative quarter power scaling. The larger an animal species is, the slower their heart rate and the longer they will live.
• A similar relationship exists in cities – governs the growth of infrastructure (energy supplies and transportation).
•  Innovation behaves similarly but in a positive direction. In other words, a city 10 times as large as another will generate ideas 17 times faster than the smaller one.  The average resident living in a city of 5 million is 3 times more creative than a resident of a city with 100,000 residents.
• 10/10 rule – as new paradigms keep rolling in, the intervals between them are decreasing. It used to take a decade to build a new technology and another decade for it to become widely accepted. Example: HDTV
• With the advent of the Internet, it now only takes 2 years for internet-related technology to be built, introduced and adopted. Example: YouTube
• The old belief that competition spurs innovation no longer holds true.  Openness and connectivity are more valuable to innovation than competition.
• How does this relate to Future Generations?
•   Does our Circleville location hinder us? How does it help us
• A city location encourages collisions but also creates distractions that can quickly pull you off track.
• Need to focus more on how to simulate conditions in the city or in a reef, not so much on physical location.
• If connecting and collisions among different cultures, disciplines and viewpoints encourage innovation, what can we do to promote these conditions in Circleville? Within the Future Generations universe (countries, board, partners and alumni?
• Move up our International staff meeting to April and encourage the trustees to participate as equal partners.
•  Turn the heat on so people in Circleville don’t hole up in their offices.
• Encourage people to not eat lunch at their desk – but to encourage them to eat in the Incubator or in the sitting area.
• How do we engage the whole team in understanding innovation?
• Leave inquisitive statements on the blackboards in each office to pique people’s interest
• Create opportunities for reading about innovations in the Incubator
• Whiteboards in the hallway (Preservation society might object)
• Offer a brown bag discussion session once a week