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Spread ideas that work

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By Tom Peterson

Inspired in 2002 by frequent electricity blackouts, Brazilian mechanic Alfredo Moser thought up a simple technology that’s literally a brilliant idea. Just fill a clear plastic soda bottle with water (add bleach to prevent algae clouding), cut a hole in the roof of the house and snugly place the bottle in the hole so the rain won’t get in. It takes less than an hour to make and install. And behold: the sunlight brightens the room as though it were a 50-watt bulb. Of course, it shines only during the day.

Moser’s idea slowly spread, and then in 2011 news articles and viral videos on the solar bulbs suddenly zipped through cyberspace. They described how to make the lights and how they were being adopted around the world. One group in the Philippines was installing 140,000 lights in slums across the country. Today these simple bulbs brighten once dark rooms for millions in from Ecuador to India. And entrepreneurs have created solar bulb making and installation businesses.

And what is more wasteful than a great solution doesn’t spread? What is more powerful than the spread of a practice that improves life? But how do good ideas spread?

Scaling up through the spread of ideas

spread ideas 2How do we spread good ideas and practices? How does an improvement—a new practice or great tweak on an existing one—travel from place to place and go to scale?

Being part of the world change tribe means having the trust and the generosity to share. And share deeply—not just the nuts and bolts of a practice but also the deeper nuances of why a practice works in this place, what failed, what we’re still trying to figure out. It means, too, we are willing to learn from others, to ask for help.

How we view the world and our role in it. How do we find people on similar paths so we can learn together (with their communities) and sharing those ideas that work—from one community to another. Done well, we help improve the world.

Adapted not replicated

I work with Stakeholder Health, an informal tribe made mostly of hospital employees who have both smarts and hearts. Spread across the country, they have this in common: getting their hospitals outside their walls to help vulnerable people in their communities have better health. From the outset, the Stakeholder community shied away from the idea that their practices could be “replicated.”

spread-ideas-3Their practices—such as health asset mapping, navigation networks, data-driven “hotspotting” of where certain patients live—are really adapted as they move from one place to another. Hospitals are found in a place, and each place has unique challenges and assets. When the “congregational health network” moved from Memphis to North Carolina some was the similar but much was not. The health systems are different. So are the internal champions, the external partners, the demographics, the culture and the politics.

Most complex practices can’t be replicated but can be borrowed and adapted. They refuse to mechanically “plug and play” into a new setting. One also has to understand foundational principles. It means having heart and commitment for the community and being a willing partner with others. This means being transparent and authentic, building trust, being in true relationship with the varied stakeholders.

How do we improve the chances that proven solutions will spread? We share, sometimes deeply, through stories, site visits, data-filled powerpoints, blog posts, in conversations over lunch or on the phone. Things that work and hopes for the next phase.

Good practices evolve as they migrate. If we stay connected to the others, we’ll learn new ways to improve our own practice. When a practice spreads enough, it creates momentum for large-scale change.

Five paths to spreading social programs

How do ideas like the solar bottle lights spread? Nico van Oudenhoven & Rekha Wazir described five different paths for replicating social programs in a paper for UNESCO. The paper is worth reading in its entirety, but I summarized their paths:

  • Franchise Approach. With a central agency that provides “technical assistance, marketing, training and other services” in a “cookie-cutter” way. The rules are fixed, can’t be changed.
  • Mandated Replication. Program is mandated top-down, usually from a government. No choice in how the program works.
  • Staged Replication. Three stages: 1) Pilot, the concept is tested; 2) Demonstration, the program is tried in a variety of settings; and 3) Rollout, go to scale.
  • Concept Replication. Focus is on not the specifics of the prototype program but on the components and principles that made it work. These are then adapted to fit the local context.
  • Spontaneous Replication. Program spreads by “spontaneous and informal contacts between like-minded individuals.” Communication is “a two-way process of convergence where participants ‘create and share information.’” 

Which of these make sense for the spread of practices that will improve the world? Many initiatives will be a mix of at least two of these.

Franchises

spread-ideas nonprofit-2In the 1850s, an ambitious young man named Isaac Singer had developed some improvements to the sewing machine. Needing funds to develop manufacturing distribution capacity, he offered to train people to spread the sales of the Singer sewing machine. This became the first franchise in the United States. Others, such as Coca Cola bottling, soon followed. One hundred years after Singer, Ray Kroc pioneered fast food franchising with McDonalds. Franchises proved to be an efficient way to spread a business that works in one place to all the other places it should also work.

In franchising, the original owner, the franchisor, licenses to a franchisee the right use the name and certain elements of an already successful business such as procedures, training, help in site selection, marketing and the ability to plug into a product distribution network. The franchisee gets to own a local site of a business with its brand, operational rules and customer base, and avoids some of the risk of starting from scratch. The franchisor collects fees and the brand spreads at little cost. Today franchises of all kinds—from fitness centers to tool rentals and coffee—make up over $1 trillion a year of the U.S. economy.

Habitat for Humanity is best known for building and rehabbing houses. It’s made up of more than 1,400 local U.S. “affiliates” plus organizations in 70 countries. “Each affiliate coordinates all aspects of Habitat home building in its local area—fundraising; building site selection; partner family selection and support; house construction; and mortgage servicing,” says Habitat’s website. Each one also “tithes” 10 percent of their funds, amounting to millions of dollars, to the work of Habitat overseas. Its 59-page handbook for U.S. affiliates covers everything from house pricing to logo use.

As in franchises, the local affiliate gets the credibility and brand of Habitat International. There’s the 10 percent fee. They have practices that have been tested in more than 1,000 locations, training and so on.

In a similar model, Chicago-based Feeding America is a network of 200 local food banks that are affiliated with an additional 60,000 food pantries and other programs. This network spread across the country in the 1980s in response to an emergency: people couldn’t afford food. It created an infrastructure to better deliver the leftovers of a food industry. They also engage in advocating for government programs for hungry citizens.

Likewise Goodwill International is a network of “165 independent, community-based Goodwills” whose 3,000 stores saw almost $4 billion in sales in 2014. Look also to scouts, Ys and YWCAs, Red Cross blood banks. A religious denomination and its member congregations

What it takes to spread ideas

Nicole Dubbs and Kerry Anne McGeary, were curious about how social change ideas spread. With the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Monitor Institute they spent six months exploring with creative people and experts “what it takes to spread ideas that others adopt, adapt, integrate, and ultimately take up as their own.” They share four conclusions in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. And their findings speak directly to the work of Stakeholder Health partners.

  1. Where you intervene in a system is important.
  2. Stakeholders don’t act on abstract ideas.
  3. Moving away from a traditional program focus is useful.
  4. Shape the rhetoric and shift action.

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