Vision Lent 2020

ROSIE WRIGHT
IT’S A BALMY DAY IN SAN JOSE WHERE
ALMOST 100 YOUNG WOMEN, FROM
ACROSS THE GLOBE, HAVE COME TO PITCH
THEIR IDEAS FOR CHANGING THE WORLD.
THEY’RE FINALISTS IN A COMPETITION TO
DESIGN AN APP WHICH TACKLES A SOCIAL
PROBLEM. THEY ARE ALSO A PERFECT IL-
LUSTRATION OF THE GROWING PHENOME-
NON THAT IS SOCIAL INNOVATION.
Popularly understood as using new ideas- and
sometimes technologies- to bring about positive
change, social innovation is enjoying increasing
public attention even whilst being debated
in the academic literature. Frequently, as
in the competition above, it’s also linked to entrepreneurship
and an intention to combine
doing good with making a sustainable profit.
This enables it to offer promises of new directions,
which have obvious appeal in a world
which still seems to be reeling from the global
financial crisis whilst the challenges of climate
change and growing inequality loom ever larger.
That appeal is forging a new movement: nearly
19,000 girls originally entered the app competition
and it’s just one of hundreds of hackathons,
crowdfunding contests and enterprise
incubators I’ve seen appear in the last few
years. Naturally a number of those are emerging
here in Cambridge, hoping to make the
most of the potent combination of professional
expertise and a passionate student population.
Typically they favour short-term approaches,
designed to help generate new ideas, develop
innovators’ business acumen or enable funding
provision.
Much of this activity is important and exciting,
especially when it’s integrated with international
development. To date many development
challenges don’t appear to be responding to
traditional NGO approaches nor conventional
capitalism, creating opportunities for these new
ways of working. It also offers a way for individuals
to use their expertise in developing solutions
in contrast with other forms of involvement,
such as voluntourism, which have been
criticised for encouraging enthusiastic but unskilled
interventions. And with the spread of
new technology, particularly smartphones, in
areas where other forms of infrastructure (and
often state intervention and regulation) are
lacking, innovation invites hopes of being able
to ‘leapfrog’ to new solutions. For example, M-
Pesa, the mobile phone money transfer which
has supported business growth where there
are few physical banking services, or microfinancing,
which aims to encourage enterprise
through small, affordable seed loans, are frequently
held up as hopeful examples.
Yet, despite all the potential I’ve seen in my
years working in this area, I’m still often uneasy,
reminded of the old aphorism about the