Perth, 26 September 2011
for Social Innovation in Western Australia (SiiWA)
20 minutes

Although the title of tonight’s conversation is “social innovation”, you’d realise that throughout tonight, I’m using the word innovation and social innovation interchangably because I think its time to put human hearts into innovation. Innovation should be, I believe, around adding social values – otherwise, innovation for innovation sake is anything but self-indulgence.

Hyperconnectivity is a word often used to describe the wild extent of connections between human-to-human, human-to-machines and machines-to-machines as a result of the advancement in technologies and new media.

One of the outcomes of this is the way we consume information. We are now becoming more exposed to information, thus we are no longer trapped in ignorance. More excitingly, this also increase our ability to spread information, hence an increase in production of information. These aren’t just pure information for spreading information sake, but we are turning information into understanding resulting in knowing how to act on the problems, issues and gaps that our society or systems are facing.

The other outcome is an emergent effect and the increasing probability of this serendipitous innovation at the convergences of people, resources and great ideas. We all know this, when you put the right players, in the right field, with the right conditions and the right strategy, magic happens.

Although we’re recognising this (very slowly), there still need a lot of fine-tuning and understanding how we can best accelerate and best harness this rapid innovation.

A good example is StartUp Weekend a global movement where you bring together all the different geeks, give them a playground, lock them up for 54 hours and give them mentors and attractive prizes and at the end of the 54 hours, they pitch the product or their magic. One of the success stories out of that is Memolane.com – which if you haven’t checked it out, go do it – which was pitched at Hamburg StartUp Weekend. Since the weekend, the Founder has quit his job, formed his team officially, set up an office in San Francisco and raised $2 million from venture capital fund, not in that order. Although there have been a number of other success stories, comparing it to the number of StartUp Weekend events and ideas that have been pitched, it is relatively low – and I believe that’s because we haven’t found the right environment for these innovation to grow and prosper, not because these aren’t good ideas.

Why is this the case and what are the opportunities for us? I’ve summarized a few points and these are far from complete.

1. Understanding the process
A lot of us focus too much on the ideation/creation/invention stage and we spend too much resource, in my opinion, investing into this stage. The big gains, really, come from the execution/implementation, adoption and dissemination phase and I think this is the part where we need to put some serious investment and effort into.

The development of technology and hyperconnectivity also means that the product development cycle is significantly shortened. Customer engagement or development is now also becoming an essential part of our ventures and the hyperconnection allows quick feedback, customer involvement in in he adaptation, refinement and evolution of the initial idea at a much greater and easier pace. This means no good ideas will ever be good enough unless you execute and constantly reiterate.

2. Understanding the cause and framing our language
Although Australians are faring well, I think that we’re also close to a tipping point of social problems – an increasing ageing population, chronic diseases, unstable financial system and recession and an energy crisis not too far away and climate change.

The way we frame and look at these challenges also have a profound impact on the innovation process. I believe when we approach problems, we need to also start viewing it from bottom-up rather than just top-down (improving systems, processes and approaches) based to meet the needs of those at the bottom lines. I could be wrong but I think there is a synergy between a bottom-up and top-down approaches.

Although we’re at a tipping point of social problems, we’re also at a tipping point of economic shifts – the rich are coming out asking to be taxed more and the superannuation fund in Australia is more than $1.3 trillion and there are a lot of conversations around how to make these savings more useful – they have never wanted to invest any of these money into the social sector because of the word “social” (and the absence of economic return) but there is also conversation around “impact investment” which is more around socio-economic returns. It’s an awesome synergy between the top-down to bottom-up and an interesting space to watch out for.

3. Connecting the disconnected and making the right connections
Beyond connecting the right people, we need to connect those who are disconnected and personally, its the different sectors, and organisations and individuals – there is still an “us vs them” mentality whether in our everyday practices or language – many still have not fully recognise how interconnected we really are.

One of the learning from the SoCap Conference in California last month is the need for a common language between the three different sectors – how do we bring them together and put the human heart into all our work. At Hub Melbourne, our biggest value proposition and one that we are starting to review, improve and understand is the diversity of our members – of the different sectors, disciplines and interests. The other one is our connection to the 28 different hubs around the world and the connections within those hubs.

The implication of these diverse connections is the trans-disciplinary, cross-sectoral, inter-generational influence of the emergent ventures that is born out of connections. This offers an opportunity for the propagation of innovation through unchartered domains.

If all the different sectors start to speak one common language, which I think is possible given the infrastructure we already have, social inclusion is very possible and the acceleration of innovation at that point will be unimaginable.

I think the question and challenge for all of us is to constantly challenge the norm and push for a common language. And the questions to answer are what are the physical and virtual infrastructure and environment that nurtures and push these innovation forward but more importantly, how can we propagate these behavioural changes. Getting the right players and putting the right resources in at the right time is a tricky process but one that we need to understand better.

4. Understanding behavioural change
I think we need to put behavioural change into the equation of all innovations – whether this is consciously or subconsciously. The hyperconnectedness that we’re experiencing offers an unfounded opportunity to propogate behavioural change that either build better futures or create opportunities for us to build better futures.

We need to understand what are the motivations, ability and trigger to create these behavioural change – whether its physical behaviour or our perceptions – in order for us to amplify and accelerate change. We’re all inherently selfish, vain and love attention so don’t underestimate the power of nudges and peer influence in a hyperconnected, very visible world.

5. Investing into a pipeline of innovation
Lastly, although this is linked to point number one, I broke this up because I know you’ve forgotten what point number one was already, let alone 2, 3 and 4 so if you don’t remember anything, remember this.

I think we need to increase our investment into creating a pipeline in supporting innovations through the process rather than just at the ideation and creation phase – ensuring that mentors, capital and other support mechanisms can work around supporting ideas as they scale

By understanding the processes and right conditions needed to allow for these innovations to prosper and succeed, we have a better chance at solving more social problems.

I hope that gives you something to think about. If you have been tuning out the past 15 minutes because you were too busy tweeting and facebooking in your own little hyperconnected worlds, what I hope you take away is that we need to start putting the human hearts into innovation (or in other words, social innovation as innovation) – in order for us to solve some of these 21st century social problems and issues, we need to see innovation as beyond technological innovation.

Many people argue that we need build a Silicon Valley in Australia, or Australia can be the next Silicon Valley but my argument is that we don’t need a Silicon Valley and we cannot be a Silicon Valley – we don’t have enough critical mass (24 million vs 300 million), we have a completely different geography, we have people of very, very diverse backgrounds and we have a very different economy. However, that is an opportunity in itself because I think what’s going to set us apart is our ability to drive, accelerate and amplify innovation through unchartered domains.

Our unique link to Asia in terms of geography, resources, relationship and economy provides us with a different market. Our small population means that our convergences are insane and our connections is pretty much 2-3 degrees. If we get it right, our diversity and insane hyperconnectivity is going to allow us to build and create innovations never thought about before. Our small population means that the chances of serendipitous innovations are more likely and our very diverse crowd means that the propogation of these innovations is unimaginable – beyond all sectors, ethnicities, language, generations, disciplines and so on. Our link to Asia also means that we have a large enough market, to attract capital to the innovations that we simply cannot find a big enough market for here in Australia.

We know that magic happens at these convergences, we now need to recognize our strengths and use those to amplify our magic.

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I came out of Startup Weekend, feeling exhausted and just slightly insane.

Going in, I wasn’t sure what to expect of the weekend, and from the pitches, it was clear that there were quite a large number of tech genius in the crowd so I might feel a little out of place but it was all good in the end. I was hoping to hear more ideas more in the social innovation space but was slightly disappointed that most of them were only ideas that we want, not need.

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I was asked to speak at the International Volunteering Day Symposium 2010 eons ago (well, about a month ago) by the Department of Communities on Online Volunteering, and here’s just a quick summary of my spill. I found it challenging to first of all define what “online volunteering” means and second of all, where do you draw the line? The whole idea of the symposium / workshop is to build the capacity of non-profit organisations within Queensland to engage young people, families and culturally diverse volunteers, and how to expand the role of volunteering through online medium.


And funny enough, I was (or am?) a culturally diverse volunteer myself, and actually started volunteering here in Australia 5 years ago through the internet because I couldn’t speak the language, couldn’t understand the accent and didn’t grasp the sense of humour at all. What a change it has been!


It’s hard to come to a symposium / workshop and be expected to go back to your organisation and starts something new, because change within an organisation requires not only the way we do things, but the way we think, so hopefully, my presentation actually plants a seed of inspiration in changing the way you think, because I sure as hell don’t want to change the way you do things first up. Only when you change the way you think, can you design with your stakeholders, systems that actually work.


I’m going to use two organisations that I absolutely love, and is affiliated with. Both of these, in my opinion, does volunteering beyond the boundaries of geographical locations, really well. One’s from an international perspective and the other from a local context.


I was in Atlanta earlier this year for the 2010 Non-Profit Technology Conference when I met @StaceyMonk, the founder of Epic Change, and in my opinion, one of the emerging leaders in social change. Epic Change is an organisation that really encapsulates what a non-profit / community organisation should be like. Its mission is to aplifies the voices and impact of grassroots changemakers and social entrepreneurs around the world through sharing their stories in innovative, creative and profitable ways.


So, through Stacey, she introduced me to deeply inspiring woman called @MamaLucy, a chicken farmer in Tanzania who used up all her savings to build the first school in her village (read her story). Not long after coming back from the US, I received a tweet from Stacey, with an invitation to be a part of a project. Through a simple tweet, she gathered 70 incredible and influential changemakers in their own rights from around the world. She sent an email to all 70 of us, simply asking us to state who we are, how we can help and schedule a chat. Simple requests that takes away the usual 4 pages forms that prospective volunteers have to fill out when they want to volunteer for any organisation.


This to me, is incredibly powerful, because this is what the essence of volunteering should be about – it doesn’t matter what your background is, as long as you have the desire to give back, bring about change, you’re in. It removes the barriers for everyone, to participate equally regardless of your dis/abilities, cultural background and/or geographical location.


Within 2 weeks, all 70 volunteers that Stacey has gathered worked together to create To Mama With Love, one of the most innovative and creative social good / social media campaigns, according to Mashable – one of the world’s largest and most recognised news website.


The beautiful thing about this campaign is, everyone involved were volunteers who have never met each other before. We’re all supporters of Epic Change and regardless of our backgrounds, came together to create a successful campaign. A few months later, we joined forces again to create another campaign, Epic Thanks on Thanksgiving Day.


The next organisation is the Inspire Foundation, an Australian non-profit organisation that utilises information communication technology to improve the mental health and well-being of young Australians with the mission of helping millions of young people lead happier lives. Inspire’s flagship program is ReachOut.com, a resource and support website for young people to increase their understanding of mental health, promote resilience and help-seeking behaviour.


ReachOut.com is staffed by not-so-young people, but the content of the website is created by young people, predominantly volunteers. Their head office is in Sydney, and in order to do this, they have to do everything online, which means that a lot of the content created on the website is done by young people across the nation and the only way of communication is through the internet. Volunteers also provide feedback on marketing campaigns and website design, and provide admin assistance on some levels. Sometimes, volunteers are also involved as peer researchers and online forum facilitators.


I think we still have a long way to go in terms of volunteering within Australia. We have not even got the definition of volunteering correct yet (refer to Volunteering Australia’s standards of volunteering). We also need to bring back the essence of volunteering without discriminating those from different backgrounds and dis/abilities. We’ve still got a long way to go in reducing red tapes for everyone to participate, appreciating the immense power of humanity and removing our tall poppy syndrome. We also need to avoid being caught up with the “lack of resources and funding” chant, and stop dreaming about, “if only I have the technology”, but think about how you can use the existing technology that’s at your hand reach.


So, I leave you with this quote, in the hope that I’ve changed, in some ways, the way you think about how young people work. We lived in an era where the physical and virtual world weave together, and the challenge isn’t so much making volunteering “online”, but to look at the online medium and how we can breakdown the existing barriers for more people to participate equally.

“Volunteering via the internet isn’t about connecting cold, inanimate machines called computers, but is really about an all inclusive concept, that eliminates barriers and borders to bring people, wether of varying religions, races, ethnicities, and/or abilities together, whether from around the corner or the world, to help non-profit organisations fulfil their mission.” – Randy Tyler, 2003, Macdonald Youth Services

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I was invited to sit in a staff meeting of a large non-profit organisation heavily funded by the federal government working on building communities and bridging gaps in the community. I spent about an hour talking to them about what I do and my beliefs as well as answering all their questions.


One of the leaders of the organisations mentioned something along the lines of, “Young people like you can get things done rather easily and quickly, but for old people like us, we need structures so all this talk about innovation isn’t going to work for us”. What she said later was what infuriated me. In her words, “We can talk about being creative and innovative in solving social issues, but we have obligations to the government. For example, this morning, while I was driving here, I was thinking about all these really creative stuff I could do for but then I had to stop because I have to think about all these reporting I gotta do”.


Of course, at this point, I had a go at her quite diplomatically. I think many people forget that community organisation exists because of community needs, and at the end of the day, that is what we’re for – not the money. I do know that we need to be talking about practicality and all that but at the end of the day, we need to understand the real role of a community organisation.


Creative and innovation solutions and funding obligations are mutually exclusive. As more and more community organisations fight for funding, more and more organisations change their structure, their programs, their work – the way they think and the way they work in order to fulfill the funding requirements and get the money. It’s a shame because we think that its OK but if these funders know what they’re talking about or know what you do – the community sector wouldn’t have existed.


It frustrates me because when I told this to a few of my friends, there are conflicting views and although I see both side of the story, I really do not believe that community sector should be focusing on capital and money, because we were born out of altruism, love and care. I know that its hard to get things done without money, but if money determines how we response to social issues, we’re quite doomed because we will always have boundaries to the way we do things. When the money talk starts, the thinking stops.


I really encourage people and executives to bring back the core of community organisations – voice your disagreements when something isn’t right. Don’t fall for the money because if it doesn’t align with your values and the real purpose of your existence, they are dirty money and you should be impolite and be daring to voice your opinions and encourage them to change their guidelines. Although funding guidelines are needed, we as community sector need to keep these guidelines informed, relevant and actually beneficial – not just adapt ourselves. There’s just so much we could adapt, and the more we adapt to what others want us to be good at, the less we are going to progress because the people who caused these issues will be the one guiding us in the end.


Rant over.

This post was reproduced and appeared in the October newsletter and the website of SiiWA.

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A few months ago, I was invited to be a part of a discussion with a group of social innovators from around the world discussing about what we believe is going to be a trigger for a massive global transformation. We call this the Emergent Transformation. It’s going to change how humans do thing, especially young people, utilising technology to its maximum potential.

I have often spoken about acknowledging human as an individual full of potentials, and that we have more resources than we think we do. We are more hyperconnected than we have ever been but many of us still view these hyperconnections as mere relationships. We live in an incredibly small world – the more people we know, the smaller the world become. If you look at this hyperconnectedness, it seems as though its just a big ball of connections, but if we actually map the skills, talents and resource that each of this connection that we have access to, we will unveil some incredible asset that we have access to right at the palm of our hands.


This is exactly how multilevel marketers make their money – in fact, a multilevel marketer once told me, if you scroll through your mobile phone and call each of your contacts, you’ll be surprised by the amount of assets that you actually have. And tapping into our networks isn’t new either if we know about Asset-based Community Development (ABCD). Asset-based community development (ABCD) is a methodology that seeks to uncover and utilize the strengths within communities as a means for sustainable development. The basic tenet is that a capacities-focused approach is more likely to empower the community and therefore mobilize citizens to create positive and meaningful change from within.


And based on ABCD, Nathaniel Whittemore, blogger on Social Entrepreneurship at Change.org is working on a start-up called Assetmap, an online platform that helps individuals discover and leverage resources directly from the community around them.


We’re also seeing more and more innovation in this area when it comes to start-ups, collaborative projects and entrepreneurship. People are tapping into their social capital to help make things happen, take for example, To Mama With Love. It’s a collaborative art project put together by a group of over 70 individuals from all around the world from Editor of Social Edge to an ordinary young person like me! All 70 individuals were invited, and is friends with Stacey Monk, founder of Epic Change.


We’re also seeing startups like Supercool School that seeks to challenge the traditional view of education being dominated and only accessible through structured institutions. There’s also PlanBig, an online platform for people to share their ideas and make them happen. PlanBig is a great place to crowdsource resources, ideas, thoughts and feedback from its online community to launch your idea.


We’re seeing a shift, and we have to create a shift of thinking of social networks for social good. How are we able to leverage these connections so that people can get better access to knowledge, resources and wisdom to bridge the gaps in addressing social issues. We need to think about how can we unleash these human capacity we have access to and look at collaboration in new ways. We need to view each individual as unique and has something to contribute. We need to break down the barriers we have to more meaningful collaboration and ways of working together, whether directly or indirectly. It is at this convergences that we see the best of innovations occurring.


However, there still lack a brand for this form of rhizomatic ways of working and I believe given a brand to these projects, enterprises, startups or organisations will allow us to study this new ventures better. It will also make visible the process of these ventures, and allow better publicity, understanding and access for us to bring this ventures forward.


I believe that these kind of ventures will dominate the ways startup work and how we organise social change in the future. We will see a lot more social innovations in this sphere and its worth keeping an eye out. It will also change the way traditional organisations work, especially how they engage their audiences. It also holds a lot of potential in the ways we look at addressing social issues and creating a sustainable world.


It will contribute to the already shifting ways of value creation and perception of “value” in a highly social and online world. Their ventures aren’t about the money or how to earn money, its about how can we add value to improving human lives.


So, keep an eye our for this sphere (what we call Emergent Transformation) – check out the blog – and if you like to read more about this, its worth watching these videos and visiting these sites:

New Era of Human Capacity Startups by Nathaniel Whittemore


Implications of Startups That Exist to Maximize Abundant Social Capital Instead of Scarce Economic Capital by Max Marmer

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Stories are everywhere, and given the chance, what stories do you want to listen to? What stories have you heard today, and what stories have you created today? A story that is worth remembering, and a story that will make a difference.


We’ve heard about a hug can change a life.

And what if, a conversation can change a life?


The idea was borned out of a conversation with a friend. I said we are not having enough conversations. Cat said we are, but people just aren’t listening! Her idea: let’s claim public spaces to have conversations and to listen to conversations of everyday people.


Not long after, Lee told me of a similar project where people held conversations in public spaces and I said, game on, we’re doing it. I sent out an email to 5 of my adventurous friends, and we organised a coffee where we decided on a date and a time.


The week after the coffee, we brought beanbags, camping chairs, a table, tea, coffee, biscuits, some cups and a kettle and claimed a spot on Brisbane Square.


We put up two signs, one said “Free Chats” and the other said, “Feel like doing something random? Come have a chat!” Within minutes, we had two random strangers sitting with us having conversations about their life and as time went on, we had at least 40-50 random strangers ranging from students to tourists, foreigner on a medical visa to a homeless man dropping in, and some stayed for hours.





For the foreigners and for the homeless man, this was some sort of a recognition of their existence. No political drama, no agenda, just people having conversations like all humans should. To connect the dots and brings back the essence of humanity and community. To us, it was stories that we’ve never heard. Genuine, honest accounts of everyday people around us, and experiences that we hear in books and the media.





Quote of the day, for me, came from the homeless man: “Have a chat? What.. have a chat? The only chat I’ve had are people screaming abuse at me”, he said in a cynical voice in his very strong accent. He sat down for about 2 hours and shared with me his experience as a soldier in the Vietnam War which was really eye-opening and saddening all at the same time. This is an Australian who’ve served the country, and now sleeps on the streets in West End, all because of the mental illness he’s suffered after the war and inability to put up with bureaucracy to get aid and the stress of everyday life.


In our daily life, its hard to comprehend how many stories we missed listening to or initiate conversations that have an effect on someone’s life. The quick, “Hey mate, how you going?”, “Good, thanks and yourself?”, “Yeah, alright” has become so much part of a norm we’re losing touch with what humanity means. What, as a society, we stand for.


So, if you’re up for something random, I challenge you to bring some chairs, or picnic rug and some cardboard, claim a public space and listen. Listen to the stories of the people around you, and you will learn about humanity more than you’ll ever have. Sometimes, a person need in their life is to be listened to.


Where to from here? We’re looking at making Free Chats a monthly project, so every end of the month, you’ll find us in the middle of Brisbane, somewhere, having chats with just about anyone and everyone.

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