“Nearly every problem has been solved by someone, somewhere. The challenge of the 21st century is to find out what works and scale it up.” ~ President Bill Clinton
Good artlcle, especially in terms of its critique of capitalism solving the problems (that it is the biggest cause of). I also agree with the authors that the amount of finance for innovation is paltry compared to what is needed, or compared to the wasted money on consultants, reports and whatever else the Aid industry is up to. Similarly when I hear of yet another prize pool, challenge etc, I have to ask how much time will be taken from social innovators to produce yet another custom application, along with its requisite video, and is the total value extracted from the system in participating in the application process more than the value delivered by the prize, and will those prizes once again reward the person with the snazzyist video rather than the one most likely to solve a real problem at scale.
The authors make a valid criticism of ephemeral "platforms", when I hear of yet another platform being launched in the innovation / SDG space my usual response is to yawn, and pay it little attention, knowing - as you rightly point out - that is lifetime is likely to be short. But then it seems the author's solution is to propose a new platform? Unfortunately while I agree with the authors comments on the value of standards for exchanging information about solutions, the authors seem to make the classic approach of saying "we love standards, here's a new one", as a key contributor to several internet standards I can smile at how often I've seen that approach fail. If you want a standard, find two of the biggest players out there already and get them to agree on a common interchange format - if you can't do that, then your new standard is bound to fail.
Thank you for your comments, Mitra! -- The irony is not lost on us that we are also in the business of building a platform, or rather, infrastructure as a service. However, that's not the point of this article. Without a pre-commercial agreement around standards for describing innovations and deals, nobody's platform will succeed in mobilizing innovations, capital and people at the scale and speed we need to move the proverbial needle on the SDGs. We would very much love your help with that, and I am curious who the biggest players are in this space that you would try to enroll in a common interchange format.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "Without a pre-commercial..." though I agree that nobody's platform is really mobilizing at speed and scale as they are.
In asking about players - you've mentioned two areas - innovations and deals, and I agree these are distinct,
a: Innovation. In fact, this is probably broken down even further depending on the kind of solution. For the physical solutions, the best I know are Engineering For Change (E4C), and Appropedia,I've been collaborating with Ashdeep Seth from E4C on a list of organizations and projects at the intersection of engineering & design with International Development (Impact) and many of these orgs have their own catalogs of solutions. We've put together a google doc and while its got a way to go before its ready for public conversation I'd be happy to share it with you.
That is just phsyical (Engineering & Design) and I presume there are others in health; education; social change; and again separate lists for those working in the West rather than South.
Many of the prize organizations also seem to build up databases, however they are limited to whoever a: meets their criteria and b: has the time to spend on applying to numerous prizes.
b: Companies &/or Deals - lots of scattered platforms, in both mentor and investor roles I'm not sure where to list or source deals that is actually useful. I'm sure there were some, but I'm not actually aware of ANY investment in the impact space that was actually sourced through a platform. Outside the impact space, this is well established through Angel networks and I regularly find interesting pre-seed deals through those platforms, and syndication is well established e.g. through Gust. The challenge with deals, is that a long list is fairly useless, there must be at least 10, and potentially closer to 100 companies looking for funding for every 10 that make it to the pitch stage at an accelerator/incubator and of these there is 1 that is actually likely to achieve an impact and/or financial return. The value comes in the filtering, so I think any useful platform needs a way for a diversity of people to apply filters over the top of the collection.
I'm not sure if you saw the article in Pioneer Post on the lack of funding for impact innovation at scale-up, if you haven't then I can send you a PDF.
c: Non Profits - you mentioned Wiser Earth in the article, which is a distinct data set, i.e. non-profits. Personally I found their data next to useless - it was really just one big list - I'm guessing that was why it shut down if others felt the same way and didn't actually use it.
I'll connect with you on LinkedIn so I can send you those not-public links.
Good artlcle, especially in terms of its critique of capitalism solving the problems (that it is the biggest cause of). I also agree with the authors that the amount of finance for innovation is paltry compared to what is needed, or compared to the wasted money on consultants, reports and whatever else the Aid industry is up to. Similarly when I hear of yet another prize pool, challenge etc, I have to ask how much time will be taken from social innovators to produce yet another custom application, along with its requisite video, and is the total value extracted from the system in participating in the application process more than the value delivered by the prize, and will those prizes once again reward the person with the snazzyist video rather than the one most likely to solve a real problem at scale.
The authors make a valid criticism of ephemeral "platforms", when I hear of yet another platform being launched in the innovation / SDG space my usual response is to yawn, and pay it little attention, knowing - as you rightly point out - that is lifetime is likely to be short. But then it seems the author's solution is to propose a new platform? Unfortunately while I agree with the authors comments on the value of standards for exchanging information about solutions, the authors seem to make the classic approach of saying "we love standards, here's a new one", as a key contributor to several internet standards I can smile at how often I've seen that approach fail. If you want a standard, find two of the biggest players out there already and get them to agree on a common interchange format - if you can't do that, then your new standard is bound to fail.
Thank you for your comments, Mitra! -- The irony is not lost on us that we are also in the business of building a platform, or rather, infrastructure as a service. However, that's not the point of this article. Without a pre-commercial agreement around standards for describing innovations and deals, nobody's platform will succeed in mobilizing innovations, capital and people at the scale and speed we need to move the proverbial needle on the SDGs. We would very much love your help with that, and I am curious who the biggest players are in this space that you would try to enroll in a common interchange format.
Hi Astrid
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "Without a pre-commercial..." though I agree that nobody's platform is really mobilizing at speed and scale as they are.
In asking about players - you've mentioned two areas - innovations and deals, and I agree these are distinct,
a: Innovation. In fact, this is probably broken down even further depending on the kind of solution. For the physical solutions, the best I know are Engineering For Change (E4C), and Appropedia,I've been collaborating with Ashdeep Seth from E4C on a list of organizations and projects at the intersection of engineering & design with International Development (Impact) and many of these orgs have their own catalogs of solutions. We've put together a google doc and while its got a way to go before its ready for public conversation I'd be happy to share it with you.
That is just phsyical (Engineering & Design) and I presume there are others in health; education; social change; and again separate lists for those working in the West rather than South.
Many of the prize organizations also seem to build up databases, however they are limited to whoever a: meets their criteria and b: has the time to spend on applying to numerous prizes.
b: Companies &/or Deals - lots of scattered platforms, in both mentor and investor roles I'm not sure where to list or source deals that is actually useful. I'm sure there were some, but I'm not actually aware of ANY investment in the impact space that was actually sourced through a platform. Outside the impact space, this is well established through Angel networks and I regularly find interesting pre-seed deals through those platforms, and syndication is well established e.g. through Gust. The challenge with deals, is that a long list is fairly useless, there must be at least 10, and potentially closer to 100 companies looking for funding for every 10 that make it to the pitch stage at an accelerator/incubator and of these there is 1 that is actually likely to achieve an impact and/or financial return. The value comes in the filtering, so I think any useful platform needs a way for a diversity of people to apply filters over the top of the collection.
I'm not sure if you saw the article in Pioneer Post on the lack of funding for impact innovation at scale-up, if you haven't then I can send you a PDF.
c: Non Profits - you mentioned Wiser Earth in the article, which is a distinct data set, i.e. non-profits. Personally I found their data next to useless - it was really just one big list - I'm guessing that was why it shut down if others felt the same way and didn't actually use it.
I'll connect with you on LinkedIn so I can send you those not-public links.