Social Innovation: The Logic of With

San Sebastian, July 2008

Charles Leadbeater

We Think…

Wikipedia, Linux, ….

Barefoot College, Grameen….

A monsoon of ideas….

Gerrard Winstanley, April 1649, St George’s Hill….

The Levelling:

Knowledge, Authority, Power, Economics

Social Innovators: the New Levellers

A single design principle …

With (and by), not to and for…

The to and for world …

Knowledge and learning from experts to peopleOrganisations as hierarchiesAuthority top down, centralisedServices that deliver for and do to youPolitics that speaks for you, broadcasts to youValue created by transaction and exchangeGenerating and meeting unmet need/deficits

The with world …

Knowledge and learning co-created, ProAmOrganisations as networks, partnershipsAuthority earned peer to peer, distributedSolutions that co-produced, negotiated Politics is your voice in conversation and argument Value created through interaction, lies in betweenGenerating capabilities/building on assets

With is a way of working, an organisational principle,

and commits you to a set of values

With values: respect, mutual, reciprocal,

democratic

What is the difference between a full life and an empty life?

What is the difference between a full life and an empty life?Relationships with

Expanding and deepening who we work with and how

Dilemmas of scaling with solutions (mass adaptation) or turn them into to and for solutions (with a trace of

values in them)

Do with solutions become by solutions

Identify and understand challenges with the

people they affect,

Identify and understand challenges with the

people they affect, people often done to by government and markets,

Identify and understand challenges with the

people they affect, people often done to by government and markets, and develop

solutions with them so they have the capabilities to enact them

Identify and understand challenges with the

people they affect, people often done to by government and markets and develop

solutions with them so they have the capabilities to enact them and take more

control of their lives, with one another

Think and Act, With

First, the promise and the purpose

Second, the capacity to act and to learn

Third, to invest, diffuse and embed

Fourth, change relationships of power, knowledge, resources

Innovating the social: remaking it and reassembling it

A different model of social change - transformation by many small

steps

Pragmatopians

Not just a method, set of tools…

The search for ‘Something More’ …

What happened to the Levellers?

No economic/organisational model

Politics turned against them

Their ideas changed the world