The Social Innovation Imperative by Sandra M. Bates

Author:Sandra M. Bates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies,Inc.
Published: 2012-04-14T04:00:00+00:00

People Resources

In most social scenarios, people are at the heart of the solution. Whether it is improvement in the education system, saving natural resources, solving our health care problems, or improving economic development, it all comes down to the human players who need to conduct parts of the job. Some examples of innovative uses of people resources include using parents to volunteer time in the classroom to reduce the number of teachers needed and provide assistance and support to the growing number of students in the classroom. In the health care setting, less trained medical professionals are taking on more and more of the physicians’ workload, allowing the physicians to focus primarily on diagnosis and medical advice. In the military, there is increasing reliance on members of the local community and tribal leaders in battle areas to become liaisons and provide support. The group Safe Passages in Chicago uses former gang members as well as recently retired veterans to serve as additional support to the police force to monitor and report violence or attempted violence on kids going to and from school.

This example also illustrates another TRIZ principle known as, “Make your enemy your friend.” The goal is to basically take that which has caused the problem and use it as part of the solution. By using the gang members, or members of the tribal parties in Afghanistan, this principle is being played out; that which used to be part of the problem, gang members and Afghan fighters, are being used as a resource to solve the problem. This is a brilliant technique to use in all situations and can produce amazing results.

When looking at the social scenario, identify all of the people resources within the scenario going beyond those who have been identified as job executors, beneficiaries, and so on, as well as those who are the “standard” people within the platform. Some of the best uses of people resources are those where people on the periphery of the scenario or outside the traditional ecosystem are used.

Teach for America is an example of using nontraditional people resources. This program recruits recent college graduates and business professionals to spend two years teaching in low-income community schools. These new resources, the nontraditional teachers, bring new hope to areas of educational inequity. Teach for America has done an amazing job in meeting the related job needs of these nontraditional teachers, especially the recent college graduates. Its compensation program demonstrates the degree to which the organization acknowledges and addresses the needs of these teachers by going beyond the traditional salary and benefits, and including money to repay student loans, loan forbearance, paid interest for their tenure on staff, scholarships, benefits from graduate schools, and money for relocation. These are obviously attractive benefits to a recent college graduate. Has this strategy of ensuring satisfaction of the needs of the ecosystem members paid off? The numbers speak for themselves. The organization launched in 1990 with 500 of these nontraditional teachers and has grown to over 28,000 over a 21-year period.

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