Disruptive Education

“About a fifth of American 15-year-olds do not have basic competence in science; 23% can’t use math in daily life.”

This line lingered at the bottom of the paragraph in the reading assignment, “One Man, One Computer: How Khan Academy is Reinventing Education.” When we talk in class about disruptions, and, namely, how we can identify waves of the emerging changes upon which  disruptors ride, it’s clear that education displays indicators pointing ahead to innovation and change rapidly approaching.

With public education widely suffering at the hands of public sector funding shortages and disparate resources, those in the most disadvantaged communities watch as their children fall further and further behind in the achievement gap. The IT revolution’s emergence into a wide spectrum of previously uninterrupted pools of the status quo, from transportation to journalism, has continued to expand, now approaching the inaccessible-shores of a basic human right.

As a social innovator, Salman Khan’s credentials more than check out. 

His MIT and Harvard training provides him with a healthy set of for-profit opportunities in the innovation space. But Kahn, like fellow social innovator Muhammad Yunus, took an idea, educational software, which would traditionally have been leveraged toward profit-motivated ends in a different direction. Instead, Khan positioned his new organization's mission to catalyze and result in positive social impact. Khan Academy’s status as a non-profit 501c3, paired with its effective and widely used online video tutorials, combine to produce an offering with the potential to radically shift the long-stable ground occupied by education circles. 

Indeed, Khan academy could be a keystone piece in a push to democratize educational opportunity across the globe, from developing economies to urban American centers.

As the education field finds itself preparing to weather a looming wave sure to shake ineffevtive equilibrium already rattled by policy pressures, Khan Academy could be indicative of ventures able to develop new ways to understand social problems. What's more, with minds dedicated to redesigning possible solutions to surmont barriers to education, there is added hope that we might yet accomplish an as-yet impossible task: equiping all people to access the tools to build avenues to opportunity.

What makes a social innovation successful?

In class we learned that every social innovation needs 3 things: Desirability, Feasibility and Viability. But maybe there is one more variable, that makes a social innovation really effective: Distribution.

One of the articles, we had to read, stated that more than 43 million people worldwide had to leave their home due to different circumstances. 3.5 million of these people are placed in UN-provided tents, which offer little to no comfort or dignified living environment. According to Better Shelter in 2015, they have delivered more than 10.000 units for humanitarian operations worldwide.[1] One unit can host up to five persons, therefore 50.000 people are now housed in better shelters. But what about the other 3 million? Why is the adaptation and distribution of social innovations going so slowly?

Another example is the SOCCKET, a soccer ball that stores the energy generated during the time, that the children play with it, to light an attachable lamp. This innovation was created by a couple of Harvard Students in 2010 and has sinced failed to acchieve great success in distribution. One of the main problems was, that the ball wouldn`t work anymore after few times of using it.[2]

The challenges that the Berkeley-Darfur Stove faces are from different nature. The problem they are trying to solve to improve the health of people living in developed countries and at the same time reducing environmental pollution. More than half oft he world`s population still prepare their food on open fires or rudimentary stoves. This energy-efficient cookstove is build so that it reduces the smoke inhalation, which is bad for your health und proves many risks. Additionaly they try and modify their stoves for other countries like Ethiopia or Haiti, to meet the specific need their, which I think is a great implementation of Human Design Thinking.[3]

Although this all sounds great, there is still not a Berkeley-Darfur Stove in every needed household, which brings me to my starting question. It seems that the distribution of social innovation is dependent on a couple of factors.

The first would be, if the social innovations is really worked as planned. Problems like with the SOCCKET can slow down the distribution process and also the trust that people have in the product.

Another problem can be, that tob e distributed to different countries the product or services needs to be adjusted, which takes time for research and production. This we can see with the Berkeley-Darfur Stove. Also, as may be with Better Shelter, the innovation is to (to date) expensive to supply shelter for every person in need.

Lastly I think that, just as with every commercial product, social innovations, if helpful, need to be more promoted. This means to also put the media in responsibility to report more about topics like this. Most of these innovations i have never heard before, which is really unfortunate. Better knowledge of this could motivate other people to also help the cause, either with money, ken or personal innovations.

But every person can do their part as well, including me. Through social media we can reach a lot of people with just one click, so I encourage everyone to make social innovations great.

To finish this paper, what other reasons could there be for social innovations slow distribution to the people, these products or services can really be beneficial?

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[1] http://www.bettershelter.org/product/

[2] http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-04-08/impoverished-kids-love-soccer-ball-powers-lamp-until-it-breaks

[3] http://cookstoves.lbl.gov/haiti.php

The Benefits (and Ambiguities) of Design Thinking

When I spent time working at The Pittsburgh Foundation, I encountered the phrase "Human Centered Design" a lot. We had just unveiled brand new offices that had been designed in partnership with Maya Design, the premier firm specializing in Human Centered Design operating in the city. Colleagues referenced human-centered design regularly and cited its corresponding terminology while making decisions. Prima facie, human-centered design seemed great to me, but I still had a serious problem nailing down just what it meant and how it was actually changing the ways in which program officers were allocating funds, donor services representatives helped to work with donors to achieve the highest impact possible with their funds, and, most importantly, how design thinking was resulting in on-the-ground impact in a way that was aligned with the mission of the foundation.

Reading through the article, "Design Thinking for Social Innovation," I found myself at the same, familiar place. Designing a company or potential solution to a social or organization problem from the ground up, freely incorporating ideas related to the end-user's experience, and a cross-disciplinary approach are all great methods of attack. However, I ended the article with the same sense of slight disappointment, wanting more concrete explanations as to how this approach should be applied in specific areas. To be sure, firms like Maya have revolutionized how organizational strategy and planning are approached, and there is no doubt that the non-profit organizations who have employed human-centered design consultants and strategies have been able to uniquely position themselves to fulfill their mission.

That said, I still remain fuzzy on the explicit components of how human-centered design operates and why the approach works as well as I've seen it work in the real world.

If you really want to help someone, "Shut up and listen!".

It was not until little Preeti disappeared from school for a week that I realized that something was terribly wrong at her home and that I’d turned a blind eye to the child’s most long-standing problem. It took very little to find out what that problem was as Preeti was suffering everyday, right in front of our eyes.

“ Alcoholism isn’t a spectator sport. Eventually the whole family gets to play.”

Preeti’s father is a raging alcoholic and gets physically and verbally abusive with both his

children and wife, every single day. Through research and a little peek into Preeti’s home

and neighborhood, what we came to find was deeply disturbing.

 During my tenure as a primary school teacher in one of the most economically backward communities in Chennai, India, I had the opportunity to work on one of the most pressing issues in the community- Alcoholism. My first experience with tackling the issue, to put simply, was an utter and complete failure. But, it was also the primary reason behind why I take this class today. My research and analysis towards identifying my mistakes led me to two videos that completely changed my perception of the term " Social Innovation".

1)      A TED talk by Dr. Ernesto Sirolli- Founder of the Sirolli Institute and also referred to as the "iron man" of local economic development. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chXsLtHqfdM

2)      A TED talk by Senthil Mullainathan – Solving Social problems with a nudge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBJQENjZJaA

The readings this week complement my work in the past in this area to reaffirm my thoughts on how a concept as intuitive as Human Centered Design could be so challenging to implement or even think about, to begin with.

So as I read through these articles, I was looking at what could've been potential blunders in my problem-solving techniques. And the biggest blunder among the lot being " unrealistic assumptions". One of the key problems that failed Social Innovations are faced with today may include assuming the problem to be of a much higher or lower degree than it actually is. i.e. creating complex solutions for simple problems or simple solutions for complex problems. This stood out to me as the most longstanding issue with social innovation techniques as a design process could be constructed entirely around this rather "dangerous" assumption.

When I take into consideration, the case of Preethi's father- a case of the highest degree of alcohol addiction, we  designed solutions for an entire community assuming that everyone would be going through the same thing. Encountering a problem of such degree led to the development of a subconscious bias that was a deterrent to the solution  being widely adaptable and usable by all members of the community.

I think while extensive research and study are a given before we delve into innovating, it is extremely important to combine the process with a careful evaluation of personal bias and assumptions as these could affect even the most successful model/process to innovate better.

Government's Hold on the Individual and Innovation

Many of the readings this week pointed to trends and technologies that allow analysts to have some predictive capability of the future. Arguably, the most important trend comes from the National Intelligence Council (NIC). It predicts that “poverty reduction and a huge growth of the global middle class, greater educational attainment, and better health care” could facilitate individual empowerment, diffuse power across smaller actors, and leave traditional power sources, like sovereign government, less impactful. Undoubtedly, individuals have and will need to continue to employ increasingly accessible and powerful communication platforms to achieve this outcome. When considering the potential global economic impact of an increasingly accessible mobile internet could be as much as $10.8 trillion in 2025, this outcome appears likely (Manyika et al, 2013). Still, societies with oppressive governments seem to be effectively constraining the impact of these communication tools and impeding this predicted social and economic progress. 

Recent examples of these constraints on individual empowerment are prolific. In Egypt, individual citizens calling for better access to economic opportunity organized the protests of the Arab Spring and the subsequent unrest in 2013. Despite ultimately leaving the country politically unchanged after ceding control to the Egyptian military, the short-term results were a twice overthrown government. Importantly, the short-term success of these protests were largely fueled by the ability to communicate and organize on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. These protests are a clear demonstration of the growing power of the individual.

Unfortunately, states like Egypt, China, and Russia also seemingly recognize the growing power of the individual and have taken action to impede on innovations in communications for individual by threatening to use and actively using coercion. The Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International report that state sponsored “disappearances” and torture of those who speak out against the current government in Egypt as well as unjust arrests of political dissidents in Russia and China are common place. Even more unfortunate is that these governments are not exceptions. 

As a result, leaders in both the public and private sectors must learn to operate within the constraints of this reality. Those invested in individual empowerment must develop better and safer platforms for communication and organization. That is, when Facebook decides to rebuild its recently exploded satellite to provide internet access in Sub-Saharan Africa, the company might also consider the effect that dramatically increasing internet connectivity may have on the safety of those in its new service area. If companies like Facebook do not consider these potential impacts, is their business in that area warranted? Are these companies responsible for the potential repercussions of individuals facing the consequences of oppressive governments due to the use of their platforms? 

The Challenge of Applying New Tech to Social Innovation

This is an era of challenges and opportunities. Things are changing in an unprecedented speed. Different from the First and the Second Industrial Revolution which took decades and centuries to put new findings into practice, new technologies and scientific breakthroughs in recent years are emerging every day. Along those disruptive technologies are opportunities that no one wants to miss.

The report Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy released by McKinsey listed twelve potentially economically disruptive technologies, which are Mobile Internet, Automation of knowledge work, The Internet of Things, Cloud technology, Advanced robotics, Autonomous and near-autonomous vehicles, Next-generation genomics, Energy storage, 3D printing, Advanced materials, Advanced oil and gas exploration and recovery and Renewable energy. It is estimated that those technologies will generate trillions of value in next twenty years.

Besides economic impacts, it is also important for us to think about the changes that the whole society would make. It is stressed in the report that policy makers should firstly have a clear understanding of the impact of disruptive technologies, then make investment decisions in education and infrastructure, and also create or adjust the environment for citizens to prosper despite potential risks that may be brought by new techs[i].

For organizations and individuals who take actual social innovation practices, however, the path seems less obvious. Although fancy technologies seem indicating bright future, it is hard to apply new techs to real world problems. In the real world practice, especially in developing countries, there may be some obstacles for social innovators to connect technologies to problems that they want to solve.

The lack of budget and human resource may be one of the most noticeable problems. As a capital intensive industry, the innovation in technology calls for a large mount of money, which cannot be afforded by most non-profit organizations. The budget for practice is also limited, which is a constraint for people to take the advantage of technology breakthroughs. Besides, outstanding graduates are easily attracted by internet titans or investment banks. It should not be ignored that many social innovation organizations are facing problems of the lack of human resource and the high personnel mobility.

 So the most important problem for social innovators is not how to catch up with latest tech breakthroughs, but how to make the full use of limited resources and new technologies to generate public fare. The focus should be fancy advances, but social issues themselves.

This reality makes think of my friend Richard Li, who is a financial advisor for startup companies. In a team building activity, Richard described his dream of change the education condition in poor areas of China. In his blueprint, VR (Virtual Reality) is the key to reducing cost and improving education quality. The idea is inspiring. Considering all the constraints, however, this is still not a good time to take practice.

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[i] Disruptive Technologies: Advances That Will Transform Life, Business, and the Global Economy (McKinsey Quarterly, May 2013); http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/business-technology/our-insights/disruptive-technologies