Art as a Path of Social Disruptive Innovation Towards New Community Paradigms

One source of the material for this blog’s posts is LinkedIn group discussions in which I participate or follow. A common theme across two different types of LinkedIn groups, the Community Engagement group and the Economic Development Professionals group, regarding the role of the arts in communities was recently noted. The perspectives and approaches are different but can be tied together under new community paradigms.

A Community Engagement question was, What's the impact of community art projects? A common response to this question leans towards finding the right metrics in terms of economic impact. However, as a result of new resources added to the New Community Paradigms Community Arts wiki-page, I now believe that focus is limited, that we make a mistake if we only think of integrating art and especially artistic thinking into our systems of community as window dressing for our economic development activities. We should instead be looking to art as a means of transforming and invigorating not only our economic development activities but also our community design and community governance as well.

Perceiving these connections was not mere chance, though. The unrealized contribution that art could make to creating new paradigms for our communities has become more credible over time and is not a solitary perspective. Paul Nagle, Executive Director of Cultural Strategies Initiative left a comment regarding this blog's post The Problem with the Future is Getting There and It will need Disruptive Innovation, "We totally agree with your thesis and we are working to put it into practice.” Cultural Strategies Initiative or CSI sees art being key to not only human expression and human thought but also to education, economies, community development, and innovation in technology. All factors of importance to the creation of new community paradigms.

"At CSI, we create project partnerships to demonstrate and measure how arts operate in promoting sustainability and resiliency. Our projects always target the same outcome: empower the arts and humanity.”

This suggests that art has the potential of establishing a path for sustainable disruption while at the same time going beyond sustaining innovation. Art could help communities face wicked challenges by moving towards being entities of complex collaboration and away from being ensnared by entrenched city halls through bureaucratic-like institutions of complicatedness.

It was interactions with other LinkedIn colleagues that led to EmcArts, a social enterprise for learning and innovation in the arts. Although they primarily serve as a nonprofit intermediary for many arts funders, and as a service organization for the arts field around innovation, from my perspective, they could also offer insights that would strengthen the capacities and effectiveness of all types of community nonprofits and other change agents, not just arts and cultural organizations. They could provide lessons in the design and management of innovative change, and assist communities in building their adaptive capacity.

One potentially useful resource for communities is ArtsFwd.org, a creation of the EmcArts Activating Innovation Initiative. Their latest accomplishments include a National Innovation Summit for Arts & Culture from October of last year that featured powerful thematically linked 12-minute Talks by bold leaders from across the country that highlighted the remarkable and mostly untold stories of innovative projects unfolding in arts and culture organizations. These included - Taking Collective Action, Co-Creating with the Public, Artists as Agents of Change, Animating Neighborhoods, Citizenship and the Arts and Transforming Organizational Structure. The creation of Fueling Adaptive Capacity: A Mosaic of Learning from the 2013 National Innovation Summit was an outcome of the summit, which you can download and read. As well as this report that describes their accomplishments over the last two years.

The contribution of meaningful real-world solutions that art can make towards community challenges, such as gentrification by exploring complex challenges around themes of scope, capacity, and constituency, was demonstrated by Fourth Arts Block, an organization supporting a rich arts community on the Lower East Side of New York and beyond.

Since its founding in 2001, FABnyc has made huge strides in the East 4th Street Cultural District by securing property ownership rights for arts groups in eight buildings on the block between the Bowery and Second Avenue, by providing free and low-cost rehearsal space and training programs for artists, and by serving as a centralized resource for its several arts, cultural, community member organizations.

This cannot be a one-way contribution or one-sided conversation, though. Communities seeking to create new community paradigms need to make a place at the table for this type of thinking. Artistic thinking should be added to design thinking and systems thinking as means of generating public and community innovation. Design thinking can help ensure that artistically inspired endeavors properly focus on important community needs and systems thinking can help in understanding the impact on the larger environment. Artistic thinking though can help reach deeper insights, generate more ideas and seep into the community's fabric so that its influence becomes one more of dispersion within a complex community system rather than a transfer of information from one institution to another. Richard Evans, President, EMCARTS INC contributes insights with the Debunking 10 Myths of Innovation that could be of great benefit to communities.

An artistic perspective should not be left to the end but made foundational in community design through design thinking, systems thinking, and other approaches. A number of other organizations are able to tie an artistic mindset to community-related concerns, Art VULUPS does so with geography, environmental science, land use planning, sustainability, art and creativity concepts. Animating Democracy, a project of Americans for the Arts helps to identify, develop, and advocate for public and private sector policies, practices, funding, and initiatives that advance the role of the arts in fostering citizen participation and social change. They work to better integrate the talents of artists and cultural organizations toward helping people engage in civic and community life.

By establishing a trend away from massively subsidized development projects to broader-based efforts such as economic gardening, communities open up opportunities for a more community based and artistic approach to building, landscaping and public space related to Community Placemaking. These efforts could be enhanced through what the National Endowment for the Arts terms Community Placemaking. Our Town NEA works to improve America’s communities by engaging design and leveraging the arts to create livable, sustainable neighborhoods with enhanced quality of life, increased creative activity, distinct identities, a sense of place, and vibrant local economies that capitalize on existing local assets.

Another Community Engagement group LinkedIn discussion provides more empirical evidence that the Arts make a real difference to communities through the report, The value of arts and culture to people and society – an evidence review from the Arts Council (England).

Another discussion under the Economic Professionals group provides a more definitive assertion of the economic impact of art based on an article Arts and culture contribute more to the US economy than tourism, and with added insight from the Preliminary Report on Impact of Arts and Culture on U.S. Economy | NEA released by the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis and the National Endowment for the Arts. These are only preliminary assessments of the impact of an economy produced by a creative community but now that we are measuring it instead of ignoring it more of the same can be expected in the future.

A revolution has already started but it won't only be an economic one, it will be creative in multiple ways. People are already working to make a difference. They may not always realize that they are fighting the same battle as people from other sectors of the community and are therefore not alone. We need to start learning from each other, community planners, entrepreneurs whether business or social, community activists and artists all need to learn from each other. Our communities need to engage in more than one type of thinking to meet the wicked challenges ahead and no one person or group of persons alone will be able to create the new community paradigms that are needed without extensive within-the-community collaboration.

Open Data as End and Means of Civic Disruptive Innovation

The topic of disruptive innovation in the civic arena and public sector has been approached from different vantage points but is still being developed into a holistic concept.  Some basic ideas though are beginning to develop.  Beginning with the premise that paradigm level ideas are needed to address the challenges that communities are facing rather than simple changes around the edges, argues that we need innovations that go beyond sustaining the systems as they now exist to attain a tipping point for fundamental change. Thus the argument to move from sustaining innovations to disruptive innovations. Next, a recognition that complex systems consisting of dynamic components can transform through adaptive momentum created through changes in the configuration of the system.  This is hypothesized to be a rationale behind the momentum of disruptive innovation in a complex economic system.  Community advocates, therefore, have something to strive for beyond the current state of affairs.  The still to be established theory is that such a process could be created or designed through direct deliberative democratic means.  Disruptive innovation in the civic arena and public sector then becomes democratic directed disruptive design. 

Last month this blog took a step back to reassess a statement made about Code for America. What Code for America brought to the community advocacy table was a, 'there's an app for that' set of solutions and did not reach a level of disruptive innovation. This was part of the assertion that what Code for America was creating were instead sustaining innovations - important, beneficial innovations that had an impact but still sustaining innovations. That assertion is still maintained yet there was also a realization that such a perspective does not go far enough and that Code for America has the potential to contribute far more. 

My evolving perspective on Code for America is that they are developing a set of principles upon which to organize and manage change beyond the technical gadgets. 

A point of clarification needs to be made regarding Code for America and that is that it is not seen as a monolithic organization but rather as a movement.  It is not a matter of setting new general policy but of influencing the direction of that movement. Moving from sustaining to disruptive innovation is not a matter of stopping sustaining innovation but creating conditions needed for disruptive innovation. 

This perspective came about because of two books, the first, from some time past, Gardens of Democracy, was created outside of Code for America and the second, more recent, Beyond Transparency, from within.

Gardens of Democracy was considered in the same previous post.  Before getting to Beyond Transparency though, we need to get to basic transparency or the establishment of open data. That discussion was covered by a Code of America panel Open Data - Getting Started, as a sort of prerequisite to Beyond Transparency, consisting of Jack Madans (host) Government Partnerships Manager Code for America @jackmadans, Burt Lum Executive Director Hawaii Open Data @Bytemarks, Laura Meixell 2013 Fellow, Louisville Team Code for America @lauratypes and Laurenellen McCann (then) National Policy Manager Sunlight Foundation @elle_mccann.  The discussion, at one level, reinforced the perspective that Code for America was, for the most part, a source of sustaining innovation.  On another level, it helped to plant the seeds for innovation applied through what can be termed disruptive design. 

The fundamental question under discussion by the Open Data - Getting Started panel was how to get communities to adopt and establish open data policies and practices.   

Code for America or its adherents on the panel seemed to be looking for high-level stakeholders, those with existing political influence, to whom to make a persuasive argument. The process the panel seemed to be suggesting was to first start at city hall then move to the community by working with experts and community hackers in establishing a legal and practical basis for open data.

This meant finding ‘champions’ (those supporting open data). First within the political leadership of the institution, be it city hall or higher institutions of power. The initial change for moving to a more open data platform can come more easily if implemented first through higher levels of government.  The problem is that only four states so far, Hawaii, New York, Utah and New Hampshire have comprehensive open data laws. 

It was seen as being better and easier then to get city hall politicians to pass their own open data resolutions by working with those supporting such an initiative rather than fighting with those who were against it. This recognizes a natural tendency of both humans and institutions to resist change if it is based on language forcing acceptance or that makes anybody to do something different, especially those who already hold power.

Once the data is to officially be made open by the politicians or as part of that process of making it open, one needs to find champions within the different departments of the city hall administration to demonstrate the benefits of open data both to them and to the public. It is at this point then, according to some participating in the Open Data - Getting Started discussion, that a collaborative environment is created and that moving out to work with the community becomes viable. 

This is still at the level of sustaining innovation though with no fundamental changes being made and with limited potential for any if left at this level.  It is hoped that the effort to establish open data can be completed with minimal opposition because it will be difficult to put the genie back in the bottle once accomplished. This approach though has some recognized limitations.

One problem is that even if there is political acceptance by one city hall administration, any change to a new administration could be a step backward. If established by public administration opened data may be limited and merely regulatory in nature.  Chicago’s approach to defining public data as being that which they have on their online portal system is one possible public sector tautology that limits the potential of open data. 

What if instead the community or community advocates outside of city hall were the first to work with hackers and then or even concurrently worked with champions within the administration and political leadership to establish open data as a platform to see the changes that they wanted legally sanctioned? a disruptive innovation strategy or a disruptive design strategy could combine different approaches, that of internal implementation through appeal to innovation and that of external implementation to avoid disruption.  This would mean recognizing open data as a right rather than as a privilege to be allowed.

The Sunlight Foundation sees open data as a right and advocates, among other means, establishing open data through right to know laws, one basis of the right-to-know argument for moving to open data is that citizens paid for the creation of the data so they should have access to it. 

The Sunlight Foundation has resources on local open data policies based on a new major initiative focusing on local government transparency through Google’s $2.1 million grant for Sunlight to expand their mission to open government data.  The Sunlight Foundation also has suggestions on how to implement an open data policy, how to make data public and on deciding what data should be public. 

A community doing this on its own, without open assistance from city hall, could potentially work their own way through this process, with some outside help, such as the Sunlight Foundation, along perhaps with unofficial inside help, but that would depend upon how entrenched the city hall was and how ‘siloed’ were the administration’s departments.  It would be an uphill fight though.

This is where we have to appreciate the usefulness and practicality of the approach advocated by the Open Data - Getting Started panel if made part of a larger effort.  Regardless of the approach, the establishment of an open data platform cannot just be a change to the political and legal structure of the institution, it must also be made separately as an administrative change or organizational transformation of the institution.  A move to open data needs to incorporate not only city hall politicians but administration department managers as well. First, by helping the department meet its own goals than helping the department find better goals. Whether implemented through the front door or the back door, there are different messages needed for policymakers and department administrators.

Moving to open data can be more though than a means of providing an online community-based infrastructure allowing for future innovation. The establishment of an open data platform could help move an institution from a system of centralized, complicated-oriented, mechanistic control system to a more open complex adaptive system.  Establishing an open data platform allows for a broader consideration of wicked issues from a community-wide perspective rather than just those selected for political motivations or implemented to meet self-serving political goals.  Expanding beyond that narrow perspective could require implementation through a process of disruptive innovation.  

The Problem with the Future is Getting There and It will need Disruptive Innovation

As was anticipated, I have risked placing my self into a conceptual corner in an effort to apply Professor Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation to the public sector by means of community governance. The specific reference to the theory is necessary as an operational term synthesizing both the idea of disruptive and of innovation going beyond the mere addition of both ideas together. The objective is to stay true to the theory’s principles while arguing for its viability as a strategy for meaningful change. 

First, there is the fully admitted reality that even if the concept of disruptive innovation within the public sector is viable, in any aspect, that achieving it will not only be difficult but actual occurrences are likely to be few. What this post will attempt is to provide some insight why the perceived need for disruptive innovation in the public sector and how the realization for the need was arrived at. 

There has also been some push back or questioning of the notion that certain ideas or programs in the public sector arena, whether developed within the institutional system or outside it, are not disruptive. One example being Code for America. 

Code for America can be considered a disruptive element or perhaps it would be better to term it a disrupting element. It could potentially be considered a so-called disruptive technology for the implementation of an actual disruptive innovation, but it cannot be considered a disruptive innovation in its own right as defined by Christensen’s theory. 

The difference is that the type of disruption made possible by Code for America, through what has been referred to as sustaining innovations in recent past posts, can be thought of as at most rebellions to which current often entrenched local governments sometimes acquiesce. If not, the rebellion moves on to a more favorable target. These rebellions, regardless of how often they occur, do not seem able to coalesce into the type of revolution needed to truly bring us into a twenty-first century economy. Such a revolution needs to be transformative, as non-destructive as possible, at a level of social evolution. The current crop of disrupting applications through sustaining innovations will not reach the required tipping point by waiting for enough local government institutions to become self-enlightened enough to create the change themselves or in D.I. terms self-disrupt or for community advocates to put together the necessary components to overcome entrenched city halls. 

Disruptive Innovation is put forward as a means of revolution through redefining the community relationship of power to scarcity and abundance and the process by which change in the system is implemented. 

Disruptive innovation is a potential organizing principle that could energize a number of different approaches, including among others, radical community engagement, placemaking, community ecology, economic gardening, participatory budgeting, design thinking, systems thinking, and even adaptive complexity systems in redefining our communities to reach a critical mass needed for transformational change. Yet, as with many other innovative approaches to civic institutions, alone they remain not capable of creating the necessary momentum. They do have the potential though and have provided fuel to the creation of a strategy incorporating disruptive innovation as has the many interactions with professionals in a variety of different fields. 

Among these are those with Della Rucker of Wise Economy, who has been featured in this blog a number of times, in particular Seeing Economy and Community as Ecosystem Another Way of Shifting the Paradigm, and Looking for Non-Experts to Create New Community Innovations then Make sure They are Disruptive. She has been an important element in developing new ideas within this blog.

Back in May of this year, I had a conversation on Twitter with @DellaRucker, starting with my re-sharing of her observation regarding people’s willingness to participate in a community’s positive disruption and the resulting pushback from city hall through a City Crackdown on Tactical Urbanism. Tactical urbanism can be seen as a potentially disrupting combination of community governance with placemaking. Potential because some cities quickly quash such efforts but others, most notably New York, have now taken the concept from tactical to strategic.

One line of internal inquiry at the time was how to move from a tactical perspective of disruption, using tactical urbanism as an example, to a more strategic approach to disruption utilizing Professor Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation. At that point, the concept which has been introduced more formally over the last three posts was still in the preliminary stages, still being formed and molded for the most part in forums directly dealing with disruptive innovation in the private free market economy. Such an approach when applied to the public sector would, however, be a part of what Della has termed an ecosystem or what I see as a systems based platform for a paradigm shift of both community and economy.

The next day, Della shared with me, Building and Connecting Communities for the Future in the Futurist magazine of the World Future Society, via another thinker on Twitter (a seemingly paradoxical idea for some) @SandyMaxey. For some reason though, despite trying to put not too negative of a spin on it, I had issues with the article. It has taken me this long to both come to grips with and to be able to state why, while at the same time putting forth a possible alternative, disruptive innovation.

The Futurist article asserts:

So economic developers will now need to expand their focus beyond creating jobs to building better places in which to live, work, play, and run a business. And it means developing their citizens into a Future Forward Workforce—i.e., agile workers who can take advantage of opportunities anywhere in the world without abandoning their communities, and who can move in and out of the three types of economies at will. 

Undoubtedly, there is a need for change and those suggested directions are possible and viable, but there is no stated engine or source of momentum provided in the article for the transition to take place.

There is absolutely no argument with the proposition that the global economy, whether considered in totality or as an aggregate of local, regional and metropolitan economies of which it is comprised, has changed and that the traditional approach to economic development, and I would add community governance, no longer works for optimal benefit.

Also agree with the stages of economic transition from Industrial Age, to Knowledge Economy to Creative Molecular Economy and though some of their claims it could be argued are overstated, especially manufacturing, I don't have any disagreement with their elements defining a Creative Molecular Economy.

My primary disagreement is with the unstated or unexamined assumption that we can or will be able to passively transition from a materialistic economy into a transformational society, that this will be a matter of inevitable evolution rather than purposeful decisions. Disruptive innovation, admittedly, does not provide paint by numbers steps to implementation but it does provide an organizing principle and momentum.

The article does provide a possible framework for future deliberative democracy through a 'Mobile Networked Governance for the Creative Molecular Economy,' which could be an avenue through which community building ideas, sourced through the community, are nourished and brought to fruition but the article, at least implicitly, puts the community into a passive role.

Economic development professionals should not presume to develop their citizens into a “Future Forward Workforce” as if they were a passive commodity. Any redefinition of economic development through community building will have to involve the community, not as passive recipients but as active creators.

This is no longer a matter of economic development but a larger matter of community development in the most expansive sense of the term. This requires new systems or platforms for systems needing to be created but those now in power benefitting from existing system are not incentivized to change and those with the potential incentive don't have the power.

A call for reinventing economic development as a profession rings hollow if those called on to make the change have neither the controlling power over the existing system, this would be the often entrenched politicians, nor any real means of empowering those for whom and by whom the change should be made. Visionary leaders of this transition seem to arise out of the ether but in reality the current system will continue to regenerate itself and work to stop those that would change it unless enough momentum can be created to overcome this. That momentum cannot come from the economic development profession alone. It will require transformation of and by all social components, economic development, community development and all other sectors of the public sector and our means of community governance incorporating policy and politics.

Why Disruptive Innovation in the Public Sector Will Not be Easy.

The concept of applying disruptive innovation within the public sector was put forward in the last two posts. There isn't any desire to retreat from this proposition but it does seem necessary to make clear that this will by no means be easy. Disruptive Innovation should not be seen as a slam dunk generator for solutions to the wicked problems facing the public sector and those communities it endeavors to support. (Yes, the public sector in general does try to help the communities with whom they work.) It may, however, be a viable catalyst for bringing about paradigm level changes needed to meet our current wicked challenges by transforming our current systems of community governance and management. The focus will be mainly on local city government, others may focus on other components of government at other levels.

In the previous post a set of premises were established before inquiring about disruptive innovation. I should have added a premise that we are speaking of the United States. How and if these concepts could be implemented elsewhere in the world will depend on local characteristics. I believe that in many cases, perhaps with some modification, that they could but will leave that to others.

First, in no example of private market disruptive innovation was disruption of the incumbent business, purely for the sake of disruption, the primary motivation. It was to capture market share to increase revenue and profits. Of course, the disruption of the incumbent is a logical outcome but there is an incentive of value creation driving the disruptor. Endeavors to create new community paradigms, particularly through disruptive innovation, must create net added value for the community, not merely move it around or block it. Some form of incentive needs to be created to get people to change before the institutions which they make up or live under can be made to change. This will be a difficult hurdle to get over.

Second, it must be understood that true disruptive innovation happens very seldom in the private economy so there will not soon be numerous disruptive innovations in the public sector occurring. Most claims of successful implementation of disruptive innovation within the private market, and perhaps more so in the public sector, are merely overblown promotional claims of at best sustaining innovations. It may be some time before a fully realized disruptive innovation by a community of an entrenched local government institution is accomplished, if ever. The pursuit is still worthwhile though because it has the potential of developing innovative means of far greater expansion of governance directly by the community and enhancement of community wealth.

In discussing the hurdles to implementing disruptive innovation within the public sector, two more premises need to be established. One, perhaps more of a reiteration, is that there is a democratic deficit within our local community government institutions. This issue has been raised before, at least indirectly, in posts such as Entrenched City Halls Defined then Disrupted and others. Two, there will be an innovative transformation of such government institutions and their role in community governance in the future. The second premise is not as hopeful as it might seem because it will depend upon the type of innovation path we decide to follow.

It is important to understand that disruptive innovation is not an event. It is a set of factors defining an economic evolution within a private, free enterprise based economic environment. It was within this environment that the concept of disruptive innovation was discerned, studied, understood to the point of being made predictable so the decisions could potentially be made to help ensure future successes, by Professor Christensen of Harvard University. The intention is to attempt to apply these principles to the public sector.

In his New York Times piece, “A Capitalist's Dilemma, Whoever Wins on Tuesday" from November 3, 2012, Christensen arguably changed his perspective on disruptive innovations and began to use the term “empowering” innovations. Whether this is a change may be more of a matter of semantics or not, I am embracing the updated definition. There are, however, two other modes of innovation which were cited by Christensen, “sustaining” innovations and “efficiency” innovations.

“Sustaining” innovations, Christensen explains, “replace old products with new models.” While the new model Toyota Prius hybrid replaces the older product Camry, the customer likely does not buy both yet still stays loyal to Toyota. There is, though, a zero-sum aspect to sustaining innovations. Many innovations within the public sector today, such as those being put forward by organizations like Code for America, are sustaining innovations which are of great benefit but will not, as I will assert to greater lengths in future posts, be able to fundamentally change the existing systems. At least not without some catalyst for creating a greater momentum for change. These sustaining innovations could be stepping stones or a base for future disruptive or empowering innovations. Coalescing these practices into a disruptive innovation framework through collaboration of relevant stakeholders will not be an easy task.

“Efficiency” innovations, according to Christensen, reduce the cost of making and distributing existing products and services. Many of the institutional innovations within the public sector are of this type. In a time of cities struggling through budget deficits and in some cases going bankrupt, burdened by unfunded pensions and inadequately funded infrastructure this approach can be very enticing.

Some believe that city government should mimic business in structure and purpose so that our democratic institutions of community are run as profit or revenue motivated enterprises rather than laboratories of community collaboration. The argument to made on these pages is that such an approach will invariably lead to a greater democratic deficit. The problem is that if a way cannot be found to transform the sustaining innovations into empowering innovations, communities may default to this more efficient approach so that if they don’t get the actual community related job-to-be-done from city government that they want, that at least what they have acquiesced to is supposedly comparatively inexpensive.

If those within the walls of city hall the and the larger community are in basic agreement with this, then there may be little to no opportunity for disruptive innovation. Even more so, if the larger community is content with the managerial efforts of city hall and does not wish to involve itself to any great extent because it has the ability to address issues of importance through other avenues besides local government institutions. In these cases, the city hall in question serves as the incumbent within an unopposed market and has little worry from competition.

The standard approach to a change in city government is to offer supposed alternatives to the constituents within an electoral framework and then work with the elected representatives through the governmental processes such as planning commission meetings or city council hearings. This blog has asserted in the past that there is a difference between city government and community governance, again in Entrenched City Halls Defined then Disrupted and elsewhere, arguing that the first does not necessarily provide the best outcomes for the second.

The problem is that entrenched systems of government by politically powered institutions can create over time a culture that stymies broader democratic participation. This culture can become entrenched so firmly into the fabric of the community that even if the potential for disruption or change exists, the leverage to make it happen may not be enough.

This could though be a matter of appearances. Overcoming this illusion of supposed democratic processes masking an absence of actual meaningful influence, if and when it exists, is another objective of this effort. It may be easier though to discern this as individuals but far harder as a community as a whole and even harder to change it.

Finally, there may be a diminished sense of community by those living within the geographical boundaries of the community governed by the entrenched bureaucratic institution occupying city hall. Any larger sense of community having been hampered by city hall and replaced by a narrower network of special interests which supports and is supported by city hall. Within the walls of city hall, it may appear that the democratic apparatus is working but in truth is it merely the remnants of those being benefited by the current entrenched system while the majority of the community again settles for whatever is made available.

The development of this particular theory of disruptive innovation within the public sector is a long term strategy starting first with disrupting people’s thinking as to how they relate to politically based power structures that are supposed to represent the will of their community but too often end up serving narrow self interests and those of a limited pool of political supporters. Mere disruption of a political process is not all that hard. Disruption coupled with innovation resulting in meaningful change is impossible though if nobody first believes such disruption is even feasible. By providing an organizing principle that encompasses both disruption and innovation, all instances of either can be seen as potential stepping stones to actual disruptive innovation if such an overarching principle can be pursued.

By understanding how an ostensibly unassailable institutional system can be breeched using that system’s own structure and incentives against it gives hope that people can find innovative means of collaboration to transform a scarcity of community wealth into an abundance for the benefit of the entire community. The still to be answered question is how?