aporia step 1/6
By: aporia pidgeon
Category: (uN)HiDDeN, UIDM refinement-in-action, aporia, aporia approaches, benefits realisation, emergenomics, policy formation, prior art, real option, social enterprise, technology transfer, transforming six steps
Cohesive communities and building voice for citizens
[...] Cohering communities and homing voice for citizens [...] The community of beneficiaries needed no cohesion. Conversely, they may have been placed at risk of coercion in respect of the “Development Partnership targets” laid down in advance. In seeking to “invite” all those who might possibly benefit from the social enterprise, rather than merely seeking to prove that targets could be met, we were interested in homing in on our beneficiaries in a way that could co-configure a place from which to voice their on-going requirements. This proved to be in stark contrast to the “if we build it, they will come” approach of many a failed infrastructure project, as documented particularly in the field of information systems design. Cohesion is an on-going process – cohering and homing are on-going activities – these processes and activities do not begin and end with pre-defined targets. Interpretations of those policy targets, therefore, begin to play a key role all the way up and down the policy-making value chain [...]
Partnership working to deliver a shared agenda
[...] Partnership working to elicit a shared agenda [...] Aporia CPE chose not to pursue match-funding through EQUAL, by retaining the right to “invite” all and any beneficiary to the project as opposed to pre-defined parties only. In doing so, Aporia CPE abstained from entering into a contractual “Development Partnership” with Cultural Shift SE (care of SEEDA Social Inclusion Unit). However, in remaining in amicable contact with the relevant policy-making team, we are in a position to elicit a shared agenda for a next time around. At this early stage of our emerging knowledge economy, it pays dividends in terms of building social capital to engage in this type of partnership working. The return on social capital is one that comes about through potential for fine tuning later policies on what might constitute “optimal” delivery of complementary agendas in due course. In particular, both Aporia CPE and Cultural Shift South East agreed that in this example, the EQUAL targets would have posed a “sub-optimal” constraint on realising the fuller potential of the otherwise unconstrained social enterprise project. This difference in optimality arose from both a policy-making ambiguity and a policy-taking (or interpretative) ambiguity [...]
Promoting innovation and enterprise
[...] Recognising innovation and enterprise [...] Although Cultural Shift SE had had much experience of promoting innovation and enterprise in the third sector by the time Aporia CPE had approached them in a policy-informing capacity, it took some months to recognise Aporia CPE as a “new” form of innovation and enterprise. In promoting the familiar, without remaining open to understanding the unfamiliar anew, there arises an inherent intellectual risk to proposal appraisal/review processes. In particular, the risk of not understanding – or not being able to recognise – a brand new idea, purely because it has yet to be branded, stands prior to its possible promotion as the actual innovation that it is. Recognising an idea as unfamiliar and being permitted to admit it as such by passing it up/down/along the policy-value chain is time critical for new ideas to make it passed the first hurdle. That is, to be recognised as a possibility before what little financing there may be available for the proposing organisation runs dry, and the original innovation is either (silently) shelved, or watered down, or indeed abandoned without ever quite being heard. In this case study example, it was only after a face-to-face presentation of the proposal that enough common ground between the familiar and the unfamiliar was forged in order to come to a uniquely adequate policy-decision on behalf of all parties [...]
Creating a culture of volunteering and mentoring
[...] Supporting a culture of volunteering and mentoring [...] Here, an embryonic culture of volunteering and mentoring is striving to exist. It does not need creating as much as it needs supporting. Placing potential mentors under contracts that inhibit their volunteering of informal on-going contact with any variety of possible mentees can become an additional barrier to developing new streams of enterprising activity that may cut across traditional professional/sectoral boundaries and responsibilities. In this case study example, the ambiguity of contributors to policy-making “working outside of contract” poses an on-going cultural conundrum. Perhaps more explicit contractual and performance-related support for fostering such “informal” enterprise cultures could helpfully place public sector employees on a more comfortable and open footing. The sharing of learning-in-practice and experiences that cannot be easily written down is an on-going – and, again, time critical – process. In this case study example, a form of two-way support is becoming part and parcel of the partnership-working-in-kind, as described under eliciting a shared agenda, above [...]
Future role of the sector in shaping and delivering public services
[...] Future role of the sector in forming public services [...] Aporia CPE is working towards forming “new” public services that cannot otherwise be sustained by either the private or the public sector (or both). This is where the new value-added of the third sector lies – i.e. not just helping shape and deliver what already exists, but finding new ways to bring to bear public goods that may otherwise not be accessible to those who may require them. The potential economies of scale derivable from better policy-making processes and activities are thus key to enabling such roles, in all their shapes and guises, to get off the ground and work the relevant circuit before arriving back home ready and able to appease the problem at hand. Like pigeons with grass roots, as compared to doves with olive branches (if an analogy here may suffice) the policy-circuit flown by any may each be worthy of note for some one [...]
Creating a sustainable resource base
[...] Creating a sustainable learning resource base [...] In light of the above lessons being learned and issues arising from our “case study” example, we begin to see the value in the resource base that we have acquired thus far. Not so much one of financial capital, as yet, but certainly one of perhaps the beginnings of a sustainable learning resource base. Both Aporia CPE and Cultural Shift SE have sought to build in a learning resource base as core to our respective endeavours. This [...] submission, itself, is an attempt to invite a broader collaboration across academia in this respect. If lessons are being learned and issues are being raised, striving to sustain a learning resource base per se could help to identify and sustain resources of other relevant forms in due course. Judging policy relevance of possibly unfamiliar evidential forms of potentially sustainable resource bases, in this sense, can become an on-going and practical interpretive effort, with resources for learning as key to discovering multiple others [...]
[...] image depicting emergence of aporia in this beginning ‹ › [...]