Putting people at the center of transformation processes
Article by Giulio Quaggioto, published in issue 0 of K Magazine
Photographs: ALC.
As the discourse on (social) innovation evolved in the last decade, it has increasingly brought to focus the value of distinguishing between incremental and transformational innovation. The former works within existing paradigms to bring about discrete improvements, the latter seeks to create new paradigms altogether. Given the urgency brought about by the polycrisis and the collapse of trust in institutions (as reflected quite dramatically in the latest Edelman Trust Barometer), the call for systemic transformation has grown louder. In a statement that well epitomises the current zeitgeist, Darja Isaacson, head of Sweden’s innovation agency Vinnova recently noted that (impact) “Innovation is not only political. In our current time it is existential”.
System transformation, portfolio approaches, missions and moonshots, transformative innovation policy: all these approaches put the question of transformative intent at their core to emphasise the need to move beyond incrementalism. This, in turn, raises a fundamental question: if a transformative intent is central to the need of the day of addressing structural inequalities, who is to set that intent?
And as a corollary: How do we prevent the process of setting a collective, ambitious direction of travel from falling into the old trap of top-down and expert driven decision making, thus replicating existing power imbalances?
How do we make sure that we do not fall into the eternal temptation of thinking that we start from a tabula rasa, and acknowledge existing dynamics in society and their evolutionary potential (rather than working backwards from an idealised future)?
How do we create the collective will to transform in the context of a deficit of trust in institutions and erosion of the social contract? How do we square the paradox that we know social transformation takes time, and yet we face the urgency of a collapsing planet, and the pressure from leaders and funders who expect immediate results?
System transformation, portfolio approaches, missions and moonshots, ALC’s approach to transformation has important insights to offer on the above questions. First of all, it is grounded on the (remarkable) experience of transformation of the Basque region: both in the past, in a context of low trust and conflict, and in its current attempt to embrace more purposefully the challenge of climate change.
Secondly, it is centered around people and their narratives as a way to understand the opportunities to “nudge” a social system towards its evolutionary potential. In doing so, it often embraces oblique entry points (such as food) as a way to tackle difficult questions around trustand collaboration.
And, lastly, it seeks to accelerate transformation by adopting a multiscalar approach - intervening at the micro, meso and macro level in a system at the same time to generate positive feedback loops and generate momentum for change. The combination of these three factors means that it strives to generate the will to transform at different levels within a system, putting people at the center.
I had the pleasure of collaborating with the ALC’s team in projects of the United Nations Development Program that applied the “deep listening” approach in different contexts and communities around the world - from exploring food as a way to transform the regional economy in Thailand and Pakistan, to helping create opportunities for community regeneration in Mozambique. Their approach helped us ensure that the interventions we designed were grounded on a granular understanding of local dynamics and created distributed agency at different levels of the systems that communities wanted to transform.
The experience of working with ALC has also opened up a reflection on potential directiosn of travel that the Foundation might want to explore moving forward. A couple that might be worth mentioning are:
First, as the ALC methodology evolves and is being applied in more and more countries, how can it evolve to embrace more purposefully different, non-western worldviews and forms of knowledge? The deep listening approach is a great starting point to create a permeable space of “contamination” where a new form of understanding that is truly endogenous can emerge.
And second, digital tools can be applied at different stages of the ACL process to enhance and accelerate effects, and provide new insights for real time learning and adaptation. Here the caveats of potential bias, the need for informed consent and lack of quality digital inclusion apply.
I very much look forward to future collaborations with ALC. K
Article by Giulio Quaggioto, published in issue 0 of K Magazine
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