we’re for innovation
that solves our problems
instead of adding to them
Let’s team up in pioneering strategic but pragmatic changes to technology, media and civic decision-making that can help us successfully attack the biggest problems that face our society and economy — at scale.
the challenge we face
With the recent explosion in tech-driven wealth, some observers have suggested that we can achieve breakthrough change and progress on our social and economic problems through new private-sector and nonprofit social venture and philanthropic initiatives that apply Silicon Valley design concepts and startup methods to tackle them.
But even under the most optimistic scenarios with hundreds of billions of dollars in new private and nonprofit funding, only a very small fraction of the financing necessary to fully address these problems can be generated from such sources. An overwhelming fraction — as much as 95 percent — of the resources that are needed to deliver any effective solutions widely will have to be powered by public sector initiatives.
the solution we need
To expand our impact to the vast scale where it can have a truly transformative effect on those problems, we must therefore energize more than tech philanthropy and social ventures.
We need to develop a coordinated cross-sector, multi-discipline strategy that captures the freedom to experiment of private philanthropy and ventures AND unleashes more of the power to achieve massive scale of the public sector. Only then can we hope to discover and implement solutions at the scale than can truly address the most critical problems affecting our local communities, nations and the world.
current Focus areas
creating a coordinated strategy for the impact we need
We believe that only a cross-sector strategy can realistically address most of our biggest social and economic problems. This requires us to consciously and carefully understand and articulate how the power of BOTH the private and public sectors — including social enterprises, nonprofits, foundations and academia — can be unleashed and leveraged in a coordinated fashion for maximum impact.
elevating media that helps us to consider common goals + strategies
We believe that an essential element of a successful cross-sector, multi-discipline strategy is a sharpening of the quality of civic media to recognize that members of most communities have diverse and sometimes conflicting values and priorities for addressing civic issues — snd helping us address those differences is essential to solving our biggest problems.
reforming big government to solve our biggest problems
While our popular culture does not recognize it, myriad selfless public servants within government are already working every day to design and deliver high-quality services, slashing red tape and launching innovations within often tortured and conflicting mandates and constraints that the public and its elected leaders have consciously or unconsciously created.
To have the public sector implement solutions to our problems at massive scale, we need to empower more dedicated public servants and ensure that both policies and programs are designed for effectiveness and excellence.
investing in tech that helps power our strategy for impact at scale
At their root, our most critical social and economic challenges require broad behavioral and institutional changes — not just technology — to address them successfully. But technology is a growing contributor to those challenges, and innovative applications of technology can greatly facilitate our efforts to mitigate those problems and promote solutions at scale.
We need to muster the collective will and determination to direct sufficient resources to developing technologies that are invaluable for the public good, even when they do not deliver a market return on investment.
If you are interested in and willing to support the pursuit of change that can help us successfully attack the biggest problems that face our society and economy at scale, please consider joining our network of collaborators.
Sign up below to receive more information, updates on our work, and notifications of upcoming events where individuals and organizations will gather to discuss the challenges and innovative approaches to tackling them, craft action agendas, and collaborate on concrete steps to implement them.