Moving from cultures of investment to cultures of innovation
Why is this our moment?
Philanthropy finds itself in a challenging moment at the intersection of shifts in crises and community. While there are tremendous efforts, the reality exists that for many of the challenges we seek to impact the outcomes aren’t getting better. Instead, despite sometimes decades of investments, they continue to worsen. Similarly our traditional models of impact are becoming less and less effective, all while new pressures continue to arise that we’re asked to respond to. Macro issues like ‘equity’ and ‘sustainability’ increase the expectations upon us of our communities (and our boards).
Now is the time for us to truly embrace the promise of innovation. Not just in words, but in our actions. No longer can we proclaim our desire to transform systems, without truly behaving in a way that leads to this change. These behaviors live inside our organizations and across those that we fund. We’re in this together, and this partnership can thrive with a culture of innovation.
What is innovation?
In recent years, the term innovation has almost become a buzzword. Too often it’s thrown around without a concept or commitment to what it means. While there are different types of innovation, what we need at this moment is ‘transformational innovation.’ Commonly described as identifying solutions that represent entirely new approaches. However, most importantly, innovation is not a thing or a program - it’s a process and a culture. It’s this process and culture that leads to the “things” often labeled as innovation. While this may sound like a subtle distinction, the difference is profound.
What holds us back?
Unfortunately, a long legacy of entrenched mindsets and approaches holds us back from realizing the impact of innovation. Investments in innovation are an investment in a process - yet our bias is often to make investments in programs or pre-existing ideas. By definition, innovation also represents an investment in an uncertain outcome - yet our traditional models of investment often require evidence of outcomes prior to investment. Over time this bias has shaped our operational definitions of “stewardship” to a point where investments in innovation with uncertain outcomes appear to be poor examples of good stewardship. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Investments in innovation represent the allocation of resources in a process that seeks to understand human needs and rapidly iterate solutions that continually improve. The investment in that process yields a solution far more effective than an idea predetermined at the outset and statically funded.
How can culture move us forward?
Cultures of innovation can begin to unlock our ability to meet this moment. By embedding the principles of human centered design (HCD) into our organizations we can encourage the type of innovation we need. And several of these principles can begin to directly impact the macro issues we’re facing. A key principle of designing WITH not FOR our community directly relates to the call for equity. By nature, HCD is inherently equitable. Leaders in our own organizations have a key role to play - if we don’t embrace this culture, it’s unlikely our grantee ecosystem will.
The point we miss is recognizing that the culture of innovation that we need is one across our ecosystem that includes both donors and grantees. As donors, we can encourage these cultures to thrive and ultimately shift the behaviors of people and organizations towards the principles we need to embrace. Our power for change lies in these ecosystems and our ability to unlock them lies in their cultures of innovation.