Reinventing Our Image: The Art of Social Innovation

Danielle  Garfinkel

03-Nov-2010

Artist Jackson Pollock was the first painter to make art that boldly focused on the development and progression of creation. His work epitomized what became the stereotypical art teacher’s mantra that art is about the process, and not necessarily the final result. Pollock’s lesson may be just as useful for understanding the art of social innovation.

Historically, one of our country’s greatest strengths has been our spirit to create and experiment to solve problems. Yet, many are concerned that this image of ingenuity is slipping, along with our effectiveness to resolve social issues. A 2009 study by the Boston Consulting Group ranked the United States as only #8 on their International Innovation Index, which assesses a nation’s business outcomes of innovation as well as its ability to encourage and support innovation through public policy. Increasingly, the government’s lack of innovative strategies and cross-sector collaboration is being scrutinized, and has been blamed for our failure to solve our country’s most pressing social problems. However, this need to adapt to new strategies is slowly being realized.

Offices are popping up all over the country, from Denver to Boston, which work to enhance government partnerships with the other sectors. Andrew Wolk and Colleen Gross Ebinger surveyed these initiatives in “Government and Social Innovation” which was published in MIT’s Innovation journal last month. The article landscapes the offices and weaves in the perspectives of various state and city level players.

Yet, it is interesting to note that the piece does not immediately look to establish a 360 degree change in sector practices, nor does it identify a definite ending marker of success for the goals of these interests. In this way, the article places value on the process of developing this social innovation system. Promoting cross-sector collaboration is about a series of steps and the impact that these steps have on the public. Landscaping these offices in itself spreads the knowledge of this growing network to inspire smaller, incremental work around the country. For example, Massachusetts Secretary of Education Paul Reville is using his Race to the Top funding to support schools that are reflective of charter models, called innovation schools. The hope is that greater dialogue about formal state and local partnership offices will strengthen confidence in these smaller programs and draw them into a web of support.

The creation of these offices is part of the greater process to train leaders to instinctively collaborate and work towards making this strategy the norm for the United States. They reunite us with our culture of innovation and reestablish the U.S. as a country for others to emulate. If we consider each office as a new splatter of paint, we can see that they are not the final result, but part of the process of this redevelopment, which maybe is ultimately most revealing.

Leave A Comment