Launching grenades in an institution to bring about change was advice we got from Berkeley Professor John Danner, Senior Lecturer at Hass School of Business. Even today a revolutionary spirit exists at Berkeley. When discussing our agenda of change management here at WBI, Professor Danner asserted that to catalyze change, one must inject a sense of urgency by launching mini-grenades to force an institution to grapple with what it means NOT to act. Institutional change must be presented in ways that are urgent yet intuitive, logical and emotional. Looking back to the rich history of change in the Bay Area, we know that change was built by those active on the fringes.
The Development Marketplace began on the fringes and has been used to scan pilot and test innovation from the external world and inform its operations. After 10 years of implementation, the Development Marketplace has gained a certain amount of traction and is poised to make an even larger impact if it can effectively leverage what it has learned over the last decade and press forward using the strength of its partners and operate from a design that addresses gaps, while being nimble, flexible and iterative.
Here within the Innovation Practice, we have a real opportunity to act with urgency but also to learn from one of our longest standing partners the Global Environment Facilty. This was also a program that started on the fringe when the environment agenda was seen as tertiary. But with GEF funded project funding linked to Bank loans in projects such as infrastructure, the environmental agenda has been mainstreamed and is no longer considered an innovative add-on but a necessary component.
I am advocating for the creation of an Innovation Facility designed to deploy a variety of funding modalities: stand-alone preparation grants along with small and medium sized projects, and full sized project grants blended with Bank operations. With a suite of funding windows, innovative approaches can be conceptualized from the beginning to affect larger Bank investements if successful.
The GEF began in the Bank in 1991 as a pilot and was formalized in 1994, at the Rio Earth Summit, when the GEF was restructured and moved out of the World Bank system to become a permanent, separate institution. At the Earth Summit the world began envisioning a what would happen to the world if we did NOT act - and that future looked grim.
It is now time to ask the same question when considering the possiblity of an Innovation Facility. What would happen if we did nothing to support the burgeoning class of social entrepreneurs? I think it would be a bit like keeping our heads in the sand. Continuing to rely on service delivery supported by government and civil society lacks out-of-the-box thinking and sustainable funding models that social entrepreneurs are looking to test.
1 comment:
Wow what a great comparison. I had never thought of innovation and essentially capacity building like the environment agenda.
It's difficult to move the small amounts of money needed to fund social entrepreneurism in the Bank. Prof. Jim Patell of Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability at the D.School said that 200K can sometimes be too much and not optimal. The course has led to innovations like D.Light, a solar light that has impacted over 1 million people in Africa and India.
Despite success, Prof. Patell says it is difficult to find adequately-sized funding. There aren't enough institutions with the mandate and capability to do so, like the World Bank.
During the journey we saw countless people working at break-neck pace to smartly address social and public needs, particularly for the BoP. They struggle though to find the support needed to scale-up (ie. investment, contact with local public institutions, etc).
I see WBI playing an important role in this space as a partner that helps build capacities and connect these innovations to the right sources of funding, knowledge and social capital.
http://extreme.stanford.edu/index.html
Post a Comment