China’s Opportunity for Social and Public Innovation

China’s Opportunity for Social and Public Innovation

Posted on 18. May, 2009 in Public Innovation, Social Entrepreneurship, Social Innovation

Last week I was in Portland, Oregon where I joined Greg Dees, David Sawyer, Kim Alter and others to contribute to the Social Innovator Leadership Program led by Mercy Corps. We worked with a 20-person delegation made up of representatives of China’s public, private, and NGO sectors from the All-China Youth Federation.

Besides the fact that it was my first time teaching using simultaneous translation − which was itself interesting − I was amazed at how engaged the participants were. As I reflected on the time I spent with these participants, it occurred to me that China, because of its recent adoption of capitalism, has a particularly interesting opportunity to advance social innovation. It was only 30 years ago that China began to explore free markets, and yet the country is already seeing market failures along with the vast opportunities to advance social innovation that come with those failures.

The leadership of the All-China Youth Federation got it, recognizing that it would take all three sectors to tackle issues of poverty, the environment and other society-wide challenges that will become even more pronounced as their economy continues to grow. The delegation was led by Dong Xia, the deputy secretary general of the All-China Youth Federation, who spoke with grace about exploring a program in China similar to the Peace Corps. In addition, I was able to spend some time with Jeffrey Q.G. Woo, the deputy director general of the Beijing Municipal Social Development Office, which, although it just launched, sounded a lot like our own White House Office of Social Innovation.

As I left to fly home, it struck me: the world truly is at an inflection point.

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2 Responses to “China’s Opportunity for Social and Public Innovation”

  1. JERR BOSCHEE

    19. May, 2009

    In 2007, I spent a couple of days working to familiarize about 80 senior government officials from various regions of China with social enterprise — and arrived at some of the same conclusions about the potential for social innovation. One sobering aspect, however, came to me through numerous conversations with individual officials: The embedded command and control culture imposed upon small and medium sized businesses by the government. It will be interesting to see how the relationship between the two sectors evolves, especially since many social innovations and enterprises touch upon human rights issues government officials prefer to place on the back burners.

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  2. Back from the Future Trends Forum in Madrid at Andrew Wolk

    12. Jun, 2009

    [...] by the Bankinter Foundation of Innovation, a Spanish bank. Spain is yet another country (see my post on China) interested in advancing a social innovation agenda. There were some familiar faces and [...]

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