CHAPTER 1

DEFINE THE SOCIAL CHALLENGE

Poverty, hunger, terrorism, natural disasters, environmental damage, lonelyelderly, poor graduation rates, inaccessible health care—these are issueswe know well. They have plagued us for generations because they are "wickedproblems."

Wicked problems are complex and involve several different constituents withcompeting objectives. They plague us because they defy our traditional means ofproblem solving: they are caused in numerous ways; they are interwoven anddifficult to untangle. John Camillus, the author of the Harvard BusinessReview article, "Strategy as a Wicked Problem," observes, "Not only doconventional processes fail to tackle wicked problems, but they may exacerbatesituations by generating undesirable consequences." Wicked problems have noeasily apparent answers; solving them can take generations. But there is hope.The key to solving wicked problems lies in defining the issue withprecision, clarity, and detail.

These types of issues are also such that they cannot be handled by just onegroup, no matter how large and powerful. "Large-scale social change requiresbroad cross-sector coordination yet the social sector remains focused on theisolated intervention of individual organizations." Successful programs areoften found where coordination among the government entity, nonprofits, andcorporations takes place.

Understanding the Ecosystem

Within any given social scenario—education, health care, resourceconservation, or hunger alleviation—there are many different groups ofpeople involved. These groups are highly interdependent on each other, eachhaving its own set of needs. Thus, to define a wicked problem, the first step isto map the members involved and what they do. The groups of people workingtoward the overarching goal of the social scenario (for example teachers,students, and parents within the education scenario) comprise anecosystem, and the groups of people within the ecosystem are referred toas members.

In social innovation, the members of the ecosystem are the customer for whom weare trying to create value and improve satisfaction. The challenge is that whilethere are some needs members all agree on, there are several needs that areconflicting so that creating value for one group may detrimentally affect theneeds of another group. These conflicting needs are often the source of theproblem within the social scenario and a key part of the instability anddissatisfaction of the ecosystem.

Let's look at an example of an ecosystem in the education space. All the membersof the ecosystem share the same overarching goal, "create educated, self-sufficient citizens"; however, some of the needs may bring them in conflict withone another. For example, students may be trying to accomplish the need oflearning in a way that feels comfortable to them, but this need may be inconflict with teachers' need to maintain an orderly classroom and providestandardized content to large numbers of students. A true innovation helpsmembers of an ecosystem resolve these conflicts and enables all members to meettheir needs without too much impact on other members.

Further evidence of the conflicting needs among members is found in our healthcare system. The needs of the patient, the health care provider, and the payerare in serious conflict. Patients and payers are putting the squeeze onphysicians to reduce their fees. Physicians who are faced with extremely largestudent loan debt coming out of school find that they cannot make enough moneyto justify the long hours, the school debt, and so on. This disharmony hasdriven physicians to simply give up their practices. In fact, recent surveysshow that over 10 percent of physicians plan to quit their practice, when thereis already a shortage of some types of physicians. Such is a typical result witha severe case of conflicting needs within the ecosystem. The goal of socialinnovation is to maximize the satisfaction of all members of the ecosystem withnew solutions that will address the needs across the spectrum.

Jobs: A Simple Shift in Perspective

A great deal of success within corporate innovation has been a result of gainingclarity concerning what is generally referred to as the "fuzzy front end." Thefront end of innovation involves understanding the problem, identifying thecustomer needs, as well as the constraints that must be overcome. Elimination ofthis fuzziness has been achieved as a result of a simple but elegant paradigmshift in the way organizations view customer needs and the timing of obtainingthose needs. The introduction of using "jobs-to-be-done" as a standardizedmethod of defining needs and the adoption of a "needs-first" approach have madesubstantial improvements in the innovation process.

Jobs are defined as the goals and objectives that people want to accomplish orwhat they are trying to prevent or avoid. In the commercial innovationliterature, jobs are what motivate people to buy a product or service such as aniPhone, which enables them to "be productive while on the go," or auto insuranceso they can "protect against financial loss in the case of an accident."

In the social space, jobs also reflect what people are trying to get done andwhat motivate people to engage in the activities they do. For example, studentswant to prepare for a future career, aid workers for the Red Cross want toprovide supplies to those who are displaced in a natural disaster, andphysicians want to educate patients on how to improve their cardiac health. Jobsexplain why people help or do not help others, what goals they want to achieve,and what they are willing to do without.

In the sphere of social innovation, breaking down social problems into the jobsthat the members are trying to get done allows us to identify where solutionsare needed and what constraints are preventing the successful execution of thatjob. Table 1-1 shows several sample jobs of different socialscenarios.

Consider the results in the corporate world, where analyzing jobs-to-be-done hasled to some breakthrough solutions—like the iPhone. The iPhone's focus isall about helping customers achieve the jobs they want to get done while they'reon the go. While the primary job of the phone is to communicate with others,there are a lot of other jobs that people on the go...