14 minute read
Hank Kune
THE WORLD NEEDS MISSION LABS
By Hank Kune
THESE days we find ourselves challenged by a series of crises which demand our immediate attention. These ‘burning platforms’ are urgent and serious – the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, wicked wildfires, devastating droughts and floods – and they need to be tackled each day. Yet they often distract our energy and attention away from some of the bigger issues of the age: systemic societal issues threatening to have a massive impact tomorrow, issues which need to be tackled now, in a focused and effective way, to prevent a global collapse next year.
A lot of good work is already being done, but it is hard to keep track of who is doing what. It sometimes seems we are all in our own boxes, working from different perspectives on similar pieces of the same planetary puzzles.
In 2015 the United Nations issued its urgent call for global action by launching the 17 SDGs initiative. A concerted response from stakeholders in every country – from academics to government agencies, from corporations to citizens – set many individuals and organizations to working hard on their pieces of the puzzle. But somehow it’s not enough. Something more is needed.
This decade of the 21st century calls for a collaborative innovation commons for addressing our grand societal challenges. Some kind of distributed orchestration combined with a choreographed focus are required. We need ‘moonshots’ and ‘mission labs’ for addressing the complex systemic issues of our times. In response to this, the idea of launching missions – mission-oriented innovation – has begun to emerge.
Initiatives like these help define the tenor of the times.
Inspired by the work of UCL’s Professor Mariana Mazzucato1, the European Commission has announced 5 EU Missions “to support Europe’s transformation into
a greener, healthier, more inclusive and resilient continent”. They are a “coordinated effort by the Commission to pool the necessary resources in terms of funding programmes, policies and regulations, as well as other activities.”. Last year the OECD’s Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI)2 launched its Mission Action Lab “to identify and analyse governance practice, and package insights into advise to governments. This advice aims at supporting governments in defining, setting up and governing largescale missions.
Lots has been written about missions in the last few years, but not much about Mission Labs. What could a Mission Lab be?
Think of a laboratory in the classic sense – a place for testing hypotheses and making discoveries. Now consider that to address the world’s grands challenges, diverse disciplines are needed – mental, behavioral, social sciences as well as technologies – and thinkers from all over the world. The experts don’t have to be physically present; indeed, in the age of pandemics and carbon footprint, they probably would not be. The Lab must of course be able to leverage the distributed intelligence of many disciplines and many places effectively online. Now in the virtual spaces of the online lab, tomorrow in the Metaverse.
Leveraging distributed collective intelligence to address common questions is a sensible approach. But where will the missions come from, and how can Labs work to achieve real impact?
We would need to move effectively from funding to research, from research to rapid experimentation and prototyping, and from prototyping to practice. In the past we had the campus, tomorrow the Metaverse. Now we have collaborative labs.
The Campus of Innovation
Most 20th century examples of effective collaborative innovation, like the Manhattan Project building an atomic bomb, or NASA’s ‘put a man on the moon and bring him home safely’, were tightly coordinated projects with one mission owner, and a steep hierarchic structure. Different teams, co-located on a specific campus (for example, Los Alamos, or Houston), worked independently and together to produce their ‘pieces of the puzzle’, concerned with a single application (the bomb, the Moon mission).
Essential contributions came from other Labs located in different locations were coordinated through a central authority. The innovation campus has carried over into the 21st century – co-located companies in Silicon Valley, Eindhoven’s High-Tech Campus, Stockholm’s Epicenter – but, with a few exceptions, these are organizations and scientists working within their boxes of expertise. With restaurants and some social activities for informal meetings. Not the kind of innovation commons of mission labs the 2020’s need.
A collaborative innovation common.
Collaborative innovation is not new. The collaborative innovation commons is. However, with all the challenges of IPR and ‘ownership’, there are a dearth of examples to learn from.
For any given mission – any of the SDGs – a collaborative innovation commons works best when the many diverse disciplines have an equal voice. But then, we are looking at how to how to leverage the distributed collective knowledge of dozens, perhaps hundreds (perhaps thousands) of networked experts to focus on the specific challenges of a mission. And ideally without the burden of bureaucracy or issues of IPR.
Recent work by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Accelerator Labs – the world’s largest and fastest learning network on wicked sustainable development challenges – point out useful directions this can go. Co-built as a joint-venture with the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany and the Qatar
NOTES:
1 https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/funding/funding-opportunities/ funding-programmes-and-open-calls/horizon-europe/eu-missions-horizon-europe_en 2 https://oecd-opsi.org/projects/mission-oriented-innovation/ 3 https://media.nesta.org.uk/documents/UNDP_CI_Report2_final_20210521.pdf 4 https://marianamazzucato.com/books/mission-economy 5 https://www.vinnova.se/en/news/2021/12/the-only-way-to-sustainable-change---amission-oriented-approach/
Fund for Development, the Network covers 115 countries, and taps into local innovations to create actionable insights and reimagine sustainable development for the 21st century3 .
Suppose we could leverage the collective distributed intelligence of other networked knowledge networks to form parts of an online innovation commons: is it possible to see the World Futures Studies Federation and such networks as parts of a networked Global Mission Lab capable of tackling wicked societal problems with the knowledge, experience and perspectives of their members?
For many potential 4-Helix partners ,IPR and ‘ownership’ still may stand in the way. Funding too – despite the potentially philanthropic aspirations of such networks – is often a problem. “Where is the money to do this coming from?”, people want to know upfront.
But let’s suppose we could leveraging the distributed intelligence of networked knowledge organizations to collectively address the burning issues of their professions. Or to support ongoing international initiatives – such as specific support for NGO activities addressing the SDG’s with the power of their focused collective expertise. For example: n Open Global Mind (OGM) is a networked project to build communities and platforms that help us make sense of the world together, applying the curated knowledge of the world in conversations that help institutions really understand the issues-behind-the-issues that are trying to deal with. n The New Club of Paris, an agenda developer for the knowledge economy, pooling their expertise in intellectual capital, knowledge-creation and management in support of an SDG mission. n The European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) uses their collective expertise about spaces and places where prototypes can be created and tested in real-world settings. n The World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF), focusing its members’ expertise as futurists in a much-needed contribution at the service of solving wicked problems associated with the SDG goals, addressing the lack of anticipatory capacity and/or the shorttermism of far too many projects.
How could such a Mission Lab work?
It starts with asking questions, exploring provocative ideas, and realising them in practice.
How could networked knowledge organisations find the ‘thinking resources’ to start a Mission Lab?
The obvious place is with the members themselves. Asking them: n Which issues and big ideas would inspire you to work together with others? n What kind of ‘missions’ would you support, adding your expertise to help achieve real impact in the world? n Where lies the passion that drives you to do difficult things because they need to be done?
n Where do you find inspiration to make the impossible possible?
We know that powerfully compelling physical environments shape our ways of working, thinking, and collaborating creatively with others, and so do compelling virtual ones. Who could help us find one that works for us?
How could a Mission Lab work fast, effectively, and free of bureaucracy?
How bold can we be?
Bold strokes
Inspired by ‘moonshot’ programmes that successfully coordinated public and private sectors on a massive scale, the work of Mariana Mazzucato4 calls for “the same level of boldness and experimentation to be applied to the biggest problems of our time”. According to Dan Hill, director of strategic design at Vinnova, significant societal challenges require new approaches. “We are not helped by abstract models. . . a sense of ambition and courage is needed in the work. The core issue in a mission must be relevant to everyone involved to achieve effect in society. And the process must create networks between the actors and get them to work together”.5
The next frontier in collaborative innovation is the Mission Labs that together leverage and at the same time co-create a collaborative innovation commons capable of tackling major challenges together in a focused co-creative way. We know that there is a gap between knowing the advantages of working together ‘across borders’ and actually doing it, with many obstacles to overcome. Despite the challenges involved in collaborating across borders (all kinds of challenges, all sorts of borders), it is time to leverage diverse thinking resources to prototype models of what a distributed Living Lab could achieve.
Lots is being written about missions, not much on mission labs. Let us develop this new narrative of collaborative action together and test it in real-world practice.
AFTERMOST
THE FUTURE WE NEED: WHERE HAVE ALL THE MESSY THINKERS GONE
By Ralph Mercer
LIKE everyone else, I’ve had plenty of time during lockdowns and living with covid restrictions to consider how the pandemic has altered what ‘futures’ are available to us (the planet).
Sadly, the pandemic has demonstrated that a minority of people would willingly infect a neighbour, friend, family member, and innocent strangers with a potentially fatal virus because of their purely selfish beliefs. We also saw the inclination of national governments to put the lives of the elderly, infirmed and predisposed, in jeopardy to protect the neo-liberal structures that enabled the pandemic transmission. More recently, we witnessed world organisations looking the other way when a nation and its people called for help because they didn’t have membership in the right club.
My ongoing observations point to the tendency of individuals to disempower themselves in the face of official data. Self-interest has become a survival skill insulating people from choices that negatively affect their quality of life.
If, as I have come to believe, the available futures are born from the ideals, beliefs and ethics existing in the present, then I fear the ‘futures’ available are narrowing and darkening. These observations may be seen as overly pessimistic, but I question if the citizen and leadership of western nations have the resolve needed to make the hard choices to chart a path to the Future that will save the planet and its inhabitants.
What futures do I think we have available? Retooling Sohail Inaytullah’s, Used, Disowned and Alternate Futures matrix, I propose an alternative model that reflects the alleyways opening in front of our feet.
Three Available Futures;
1. The Future We Deserve, the path the world is on now, is inwards looking, filled with mistrust and fear of change. The ideals, beliefs and ethics that have been demonstration during the pandemic accommodate the expansion of this vision. To achieve the Future We Deserve, all we need to do is hope someone else will fix the problem; British philosopher John Stuart Mill observed, “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends than that good men should look on and do nothing.” This is the future where Westphalian thinking triumphs over global needs. The continued erosion of democratic ideologies by global technology companies, dictators and populist movements continues unchecked. New ideas are discouraged in these futures, and the good old days are entrenched and promoted. Neo-liberal and rightwing beliefs continue to question the worth of the education system other than producing skilled workers. This ‘used’ future became emboldened globally with the election of the 45th president of the USA in 2017 and continues to gather momentum during the Covid protests and as right media gathers market share of the news cycle.
2. The Future We Want: is possibly the most insidious. It is a future where the groups with power benefit the most. As a futures trajectory, it involves the least effort and disruption to our everyday behaviours/jobs/way of life, resulting in a ‘more only better’ approach to the future. It is considered common-sense and measurable but does nothing serious about the Anthropocene or social and political inequalities; it is comforting and accepted. Ideas need to be made actionable, while ensuring nothing too innovative sneaks through the filter of ‘actionable’. Fitting somewhere within the ‘disowned’ futures, it was the most likely future until early 2017, driven by technological dependencies and social needs. However, that path has diminished possibilities and is fading into the future we deserve.
3. The Future We Need: Is the most painful, complex and disruptive. To change a trajectory away from the futures we deserve/want is messy, and uncomfortable. But it is the path needed to solve the big problems that plague our world. The idea of the “adjacent possible” is a good way of describing how a dominant future trajectory is achieved. It can be described as the social, ethical, technological, and educational foundation that propels a possible future towards prominence, for without a strong foundation, a that possible future recedes into the background. Ideas don’t need to be limited by making them actionable; they can be messy, provocative and de-centring, fueling the next knowledge that is not yet adjacent. The foundations of the future are built through the efforts and stories of future visionaries, but the catalyst for change comes from the members of society. It is their ideals, beliefs, ethics and vision that creates the bridge (adjacent possible) to the future trajectory that we need.
One of the most promising initiatives to help shaping the Future We Need is the concept of Mission Labs, with the mandate to ask questions explore provocative and uncomfortable ideas, and I secretly hope we don’t place too much emphasis on trying to realize them in practice. I really look forward to getting messy with ideas in a few of the Labs. - Ancora Imparo-
PHOTO CREDITS
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