Clay Shirky Argues For Social Innovation Incubators

NYU Professor and internet-in-society expert Clay Shirky has made a resounding argument that for real social innovation, we should be looking to incubators like those we've been discussing on the site over the last few months.

At least, sorta.

What he actually said  while speaking at the London School of Economics a few nights ago is that the "hijack" model has rendered the utility of crowdsourcing as the genus of innovation and new ideas relatively bunk. The problem is that large groups can game the system and get their issue to the top of any crowdsourced ecosystem, and that the things that crowds reward (such as with Change.gov's Citizens Briefing Book) aren't necessarily the best ideas for making a difference.

This is definitely something that I noticed during our own Ideas for Change campaign. There were some incredibly important ideas that just got buried under the weight of more "rah-rah" issues. There were a number of proposals for how a new national service corps could incorporate skilled labor such as legal assistants to support refugee case determination or trainers for community health workers.

These could be real game changers. Community health workers are essential to the fabric of any national healthcare system, particularly in places where populations are spread out and basic disease can be deadly. Refugee legal aid is in shambles around the world and there is an absolute labor shortage. But those ideas aren't quite as sexy, and the wisdom of the crowds passed them right over.

Its a big deal that Shirky is now advancing this argument. The author of my favorite book of 2008 "Here Comes Everybody" has long been convinced of the revolutionary power of the internet as an organizing medium. What he says here though is:

I would not be concentrating right now on the kind of large legitimating moves .... precisely because of the hijack model because in a way, even with new tools ... tightly interested groups have a way of throwing issues higher up the charts ... I would be worrying instead about how to get good ideas out of small groups.

If you want to know where new interesting useful idea are going to come from, don't look at crowds and don't look at individuals, look at small groups of smart people arguing with each other. Historically that's been a big source of change, whether you are talking about the Invisible College or the French Impressionists. Instead of having Government scale, or social scale initiatives, kind of have your say stuff ...

There are only a few places that have the sort of ongoing social density he's talking about. Universities are the first space that comes to mind. I've written before about how I love working with the undergraduates who will go on to become leaders of their distinct fields while they're all still part of a big, diverse, passionate jumble.

The other are these incubators and collaborative working spaces like The Hub that seem to be popping up everywhere. I read about yet another tech startup incubator today, Atlanta's Shotput Ventures, and it seems like every time I blog about this I learn of at least a few more.

I'm going to start keeping an ongoing list of tech and social enterprise incubators. Use the comments to let me know about any that you've come across please!