Humans have been generating social innovations for a long time. Although the term has seen a rise in popularity within recent years, social innovation is not something new. Historical case studies can provide great insight into how we understand and think about social innovation.
I recently came across an example of social innovation that surprised me. Here I use it as a historical example of a social innovation that demonstrated three nuances about social innovation:
- They are not always these planned interventions, as is so often implied.
- Social innovations can become invisible over time. Unusual examples remind us that what we take for granted today, may have once been deeply contested.
- They can produce unwanted outcomes while at the same time providing very welcomed social changes.
It should be noted that Social Innovation Generation (SiG) has some great examples of social innovation on their website. Here I deal with an example of a particular type.
What is social innovation?
Social innovation is still a fuzzy concept for many people. One of the more widely accepted definitions has been put forward by Frances Westley and her team at SiG. She and her colleagues describe social innovation as “an initiative, product, process or program that profoundly changes the basic routines, resource and authority flows or beliefs of any social system. Successful social innovations have durability and broad impact”. I define social innovation a little differently. Social innovations in my view meets three criteria:
- They change or radically challenge existing paradigms.
- They change resource flows within social systems.
- They change our social relationships and interactions.
Using these criteria, we can look at historical examples of technical and social innovations that have profoundly shifted our paradigms, resource flows, and social interactions. With this move we can reveal how taken for granted everyday conveniences have radically altered our social reality.
Social innovations can sometimes become so normative that we miss how disruptive these activities are, or once were. One example of this is the modern elevator.
The modern Elevator
How did this innovation shift our paradigms, resources flows, and social relationships? How is the modern elevator a social innovation? I was surprised to learn that early versions of the elevator were designed like rooms. Gentlemen would have heated debates about if they should take their hats off in an elevator or not. The idea of having a facebook debate about if the elevator is a room, versus a transportation vehicle, like a train, would seem silly to most of us, but during the 1850’s, this was a topic of serious debate.
As elevators improved, largely as a result improvements because of the introduction of electricity and new safety mechanisms that stopped them from plummeting to the floor, it became apparent that elevators were a vertical transport vehicle. In his book Lifted: A Cultural History of the Elevator, Andreas Bernard outlines the history of the elevator and how it impacted modern society. Before the invention of the elevator, most buildings were limited to six stories. People did not want to walk more than that. To most of us, it would be surprising to learn that attics and top floors of buildings were reserved for starving artists and those who could not afford the high premium of a ground floor.
Could you imagine paying premium prices for a basement suite?
Bernard points out that when he examined the prices of hotel rooms before the introduction of the elevator, the most expensive rooms were on the bottom floors. Even after the introduction of the elevator, it took twenty to forty years before the rich were willing to sell their mansions for ‘penthouse’ living. The idea of having to share a building with commoners took a considerable paradigm shift. Our social norms are contingent on how we understand and define spaces.
When people first started living in these predecessors to the modern apartment building, it was the first time that strangers would interact with each other on a daily basis. Today, we do not even question the notion of apartment living or the allure of penthouse suites. Surprisingly the modern elevator in combination with other inventions, like electricity and the use of steel in buildings, have contributed massive changes in the way we think about and understand ideal city living spaces. For the development of the city, this shift in paradigm has meant that citizens, cities, and developers have been willing to allocate resources to these taller high rise buildings.
Today, most city skylines are dominated by high-rise buildings. Many cities are pushing young families out of the core. Cities have evolved into one of this centuries greatest challenges. Governments and city planners are struggling to find sustainable solutions to the modern city. In 2012, TED gave its TEDPrize not to a person, but to the idea City 2.0. City 2.0 which was an attempt to find novel solutions to the cities of tomorrow.
The elevator has had a profound impact on the way cities have evolved. Think for a moment, what might the world look like if the elevator had never been invented? The world could have been full of six-story buildings and Drake songs about starting from the top and moving to the bottom.
Wicked problems never have end solutions. New solutions tend to bring about new complex challenges. For example, lowering the Confederate flag does not end racism, it is just part of the move towards reducing the prevalence of racism. Making same-sex marriages legal doesn’t end homophobia, it just moves us closer to ending the prevalence of homophobia.
The example of the elevator does a few things. It reminds us how taken for granted social innovations can become after they have been introduced on a broad scale. It also points out that often these innovations are not planned, but instead emerge through semi-structured social processes. These observations, highlight the importance of understanding the nuances and plurality of different approaches to a better tomorrow.
There is a quote that I often have mixed feelings about, which is often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. It reads,
“Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.”.
The dominant do good discourse throws around inspirational cliches like “be the change you wish to see” and “anyone can be a changemaker,” when historical examples suggest that no one is actually in control. That is not to say we should stop planning, but instead, we need to adhere to loose control and adaptive strategies. We may not be able to control the outcomes of our social innovation attempts, but they are worth pursuing.
We live in a time were nonprofit organizations, governments, and corporations are actively trying to create the conditions for social innovation. We need to be aware that some examples of social innovation were not of the social intervention variety, but emerged almost by chance, or through a series of complex social processes.
The social innovation lens grants us access to the possibility of change, and it is deceptive to think of change as being anything but emergent. Too many of our examples imply that we are in control. In today’s world, we are trying to be masters of our destinies; we are working to change complex social systems, but we are referencing too few examples of social innovations that were less deliberate. Social Innovation is an exciting field and the more we examine less obvious case studies like the history of the elevator, the closer we will be to understanding how we can generate the preconditions for social innovation.
Photo retrieved from Flickr: Bob Vonderau
Title: Chicago Skyline
Reference
Bernard, A. (2013). Lifted: A Cultural History of the Elevator. NYU Press.