May Update From nuPOLIS
The partnership with Innovation Networks for Communities, which centers on the development of nuPOLIS.com, has been a fascinating and rewarding journey into scalable social innovation.
Here is the May Update from this amazing network of innovators:
Online release of Chapter 2–”The Disruption of Community Life”–of new book: How Social Innovators are Transforming America’s Communities by Peter Plastrik and Theodore Staton. “Visit San Francisco, New York, Worchester, or nearly any community in America, talk to its leaders, look at their newspapers and data—as we have—and you will be struck by the presence of disruption wherever you go. In small and mid-size cities; gigantic metropolitan regions and rural towns—the largest, most complex places and the smallest, simplest ones—five forces of disruption are imposing new realities: economic globalization, environmental damage, cultural division, immigration, and self-empowered citizens…”
Scan in Boston on Climate Change and Social Equity. Conducting interviews of Boston-area community activists, environmentalists, and government officials to identify needs and opportunities for adapting to climate change in ways that build inclusive prosperity in a community.
Network Evaluation: 8 Regional Networks Promote Innovations to End Homelessness in Massachusetts. Madeleine Taylor, lead entrepreneur for our Center for Network Impact, and John Cleveland are developing an overall network evaluation framework to help the public and private stakeholders of eight newly formed Regional Networks assess how organizing as a network contributes to the implementation of housing-centered strategies to prevent and end homelessness in Massachusetts. The evaluation will track and compare network formation and practice across the 8 regional networks, with a focus on network structure and composition, network governance and management, network operations and the effect of network performance on network outputs and impact. Supported by the Massachusetts Interagency Council on Housing and Homelessness, outcomes of these network initiatives will inform new and emerging statewide housing approaches to ending homelessness in Massachusetts.
Recent Blogs:
- “Investment Capital is Migrating to the Climate Change Market–and Fast.” “Experts” predicted the climate change market might grow to be $500 billion by 2050, but it already exceeds $300B.
- “Capitalism’s Crisis is an Innovation Opportunity.” In a new article, our colleague Geoff Mulgan, director of the Young Foundation in the U.K., a leading resource for social innovation, and former policy head for Tony Blair, gazes deeply into capitalism’s latest crisis and sees the shape of social innovations to come.
- “Hunting for Social Innovations #1: Prizes, Harvests, and The Funnel.” Offering prizes and using the Internet to promote competitions are new ways to cast a wide net and “harvest” many ideas efficiently (take note, old-fashioned foundations).
- “Shrinking Cities: What’s the Sustainability Strategy for Them?” The shrinking cities of America have been depressed, failing places for decades. Now they are becoming “innovation laboratories” for large-scale experiments in urban design and sustainability.
- “Decoding Duncan: “A” is For Accountability, But What Comes After That? President Obama’s Secretary of Education embraces all sorts of ideas for change. What do they add up to and what difference will it make?