There are many definitions of social innovation. The Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto refers to social innovation as: New ideas that resolve existing social, cultural, economic and environmental challenges for the benefit of people and planet. In the Stanford Innovation Review article Rediscovering Social Innovation (fall of 2008), James A. Phills Jr., Kriss Deiglmeier, & Dale T. Miller redefine social innovation to mean: A novel solution to a social problem that is more effective, efficient, sustainable, or just than existing solutions and for which the value created accrues primarily to society as a whole rather than private individuals.

As there is no universally accepted definition of Social Innovation, writers on the subject typically formulate their own definition and in so doing usually relate it to their specific field of activity and their specific perspective.

Following suit; a pragmatic definition of social innovation from the perspective of operationalizing the concept is: Inter-organizational collaboration addressing a compelling societal need. One can visualize this definition in action making it a powerful starting point for developing strategies and effecting strategy execution with an end game of tackling a big need.

Take for example the $15.9 Million grant awarded to Cook County (Cook County Department of Public Health/Public Health Institute of Metropolitan Chicago “PHIMC”), Illinois to promote policy changes for obesity prevention funded by the Center for Disease Control (“CDC”) under the Communities Putting Prevention to Work (“CPPW”) program. Led by Patrick Lenihan, Executive Director of the PHIMC, this three year initiative (2010 – 2012) involved 125 municipalities covering 2.3 million people; 70 sub-grantees and 1,500+ tracked milestones – the epitome of Inter-organizational collaboration addressing a compelling societal need.
  
Many of the steps, requirements and framework for operationalizing social innovation are described in two other Stanford Innovation Review articles, Collective Impact, by John Kania & Mark Kramer, (winter of 2011) and Making Collective Impact Work, by Fay Hanleybrown, John Kania, & Mark Kramer (2012) which are illustrated in the social innovation map.

Logistically, operationalizing Social Innovation is a daunting task, requiring the potential for large scale societal change to incentivize continuous momentum and justify the time, effort, human capital and money required to initiate and sustain a program. As the backbone organization for the Cook County obesity prevention CPPW program, the PHIMC expanded its workforce with dedicated full time staff including the executive program manager and 30 support personnel. In addition, an operational program manager was hired at the Cook County Department of Public Health. All program dedicated staff salaries were funded through grant proceeds and all staff were released at the end of the grant funding period. Having dedicated program staff is important. On average, permanent employees at the PHIMC number about ten and include 3 senior managers and 5 to 6 program managers. Although the PHIMC had the infrastructure, systems and administrative / strategic savvy to be an effective backbone organization, it clearly lacked the FTEs to fulfill the role for this CPPW initiative.

In addition to its role as the backbone organization, the PHIMC acted as the funding gateway organization, responsible for mobilizing funding and allocating / distributing funds to sub-grantees on behalf of the Cook County Department of Public Health as the project sponsor. Prerequisites for this role as fiscal fiduciary include sophisticated finance, accounting and reporting systems that rival those of any major corporation. Most smaller non-profits (collaborative partners) simply do not have those capabilities as was the case with this CPPW initiative. Funding agencies like the CDC expect and require transparency and accountability. The PHIMC used its systems infrastructure to optimize inter-organizational collaboration and gave the CDC 24-7 access to its strategy management system enabling the CDC to drill down to each of the more than 1,500 milestones that the CDC wanted tracked. Reporting by the PHIMC went beyond financial reporting. Multiple stakeholders including local elected officials and community groups were continuously engaged in meaningful ways supported by real time updates on program initiatives; something that would not be possible without the advanced systems deployed by the PHIMC as the backbone and funding gateway organization. Somewhat unique to funding gateway organizations, the PHIMC acts a line of credit facility to its smaller collaborative partners that require upfront money to jump start tactical program initiatives prior to release of grant money. This is accompanied by a degree of financial risk as painfully experienced by the PHIMC in the past when either grant funding did not materialize or a collaborative partner received the upfront money and failed to deliver on the outcome that triggered the ultimate funding. Tolerance for financial risk of this type is unusual for non-profits, but from Patrick Lenihan’s perspective “It comes with the territory”.

In addition to a backbone organization, the other four criteria for Making Collective Impact Work are; a common agenda, shared measurement, mutually reinforcing activities and continuous communication.

To begin to formulate a common agenda and to quote the late Steven Covey, “Begin with the end in mind” and for operationalizing social innovation, the first step is identifying a compelling societal need.

Paraphrased from the CDC webpage http://www.cdc.gov/CommunitiesPuttingPreventiontoWork/ “Chronic diseases are among the most common and costly of all health problems in the United States, but they also are among the most preventable. Lack of physical activity and poor nutrition—two modifiable risk factors for obesity—and tobacco use are responsible for much of the illness, suffering, and death related to chronic diseases. To help address these health issues, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) created Communities Putting Prevention to Work (“CPPW”), which is led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”).

The need to reduce obesity, as declared by HHS, coupled with the prerequisite untapped source of funding under the CPPW program was the genesis for creating a common agenda for Cook County Department of Public Health as project sponsor, the PHIMC and their collaborative partners.

Non-profits are mission focused and their missions cascade into strategies and initiatives. When strategic initiatives of collaborative partners are miss-aligned in addressing a compelling societal need, an execution gap results, even though the strategic initiatives of each collaborative partner may be true to their respective missions and perceived by them to be on target in addressing the defined collective need.

A common agenda creates the foundation for strategic alignment.
Leadership of an organization considering becoming the backbone organization for any cause should first answer the question “Is addressing this compelling societal need, as identified, true to the organization’s mission?” If the answer is yes, a core group of collaborative partners should be engaged and required to answer the same question. Led by the backbone organization and the project sponsor, the collaborative should develop a strategic compass; a true north, by asking “What are we going to accomplish by when and who’s going to do what?” Akin to developing a strategic plan for an individual organization, the collaborative should examine political, economic, social and technological factors impacting the ability to address the compelling social need. Common to most strategic planning endeavours, consideration to stakeholders and their expectations should be given and a SWOT analysis undertaken.

There is a major difference between how strategy development and strategy execution are operationalized for social innovation as defined versus how they are deployed for an individual organization, and, the difference is as fundamental as the differentiation between collective impact and individual impact.

It is the responsibility of the backbone organization and the person assigned to lead the social innovation initiative to drive the agenda as supported by the sponsoring organization. The leader must take full responsibility yet be prepared to allow others to take the lead as appropriate. The CEO of an organization has the last word, which is not the case when operationalizing social innovation. With the Cook County CPPW program, Patrick Lenihan’s role was that of servant leader; taking charge when required but primarily engaging the infrastructure of the collaborative and building constituency. Much like a utility baseball player, the leader of a social innovation initiative must be versatile and good enough to step into any position that is required of her by the team and sit on the bench when others step to the plate. One year into program funding, the head of Cook County Department of Public Health left and its new leader began to question alignment of the goals of the program with where he thought the Department of Public Health should be heading. Situational leadership and style flexing enabled Patrick to directly manage those initiatives that would have slipped during the leadership transition period and to reengage the Department of Public Health leadership. As with this leadership transition issue, the backbone organization must be the source of consistency.

Developing the strategic compass by the collaborative led by the backbone organization manifests itself as a strategic plan, business plan and / or grant proposal and upon funding becomes the foundation for operationalizing social innovation.

Operationalizing social innovation is both complex and complicated involving many moving parts and a high level of difficulty associated with strategy execution. As with the Cook County CPPW program (70 sub-grantees and 1,500+ tracked milestones) a geometric progression of things that have to happen and be aligned to achieve success occurs. The significance of a competent backbone organization in channelling effort of a collaborative cannot be overstated. A backbone organization should be in a position to provide technical assistance (consulting) and technology to the collaborative either from its own ranks or by sourcing and coordinating resources via developing scopes of work, vetting experience and issuing requests for proposals (“RFPs”).

The first step in cascading strategy from high levels goals to tactical social innovation initiatives encompasses creating shared measurement. On the surface it seems straight forward. In reality it’s complicated, especially when addressing adaptive needs like obesity prevention. Population obesity can be measured and one could envisage a top level goal of improved health outcomes reading something like “To reduce the incidence of childhood obesity by 20% within 10 years”. However, the Cook County CPPW program was three years in length and although a sizable grant ($15.9 million) was involved, it would be unreasonable to think that a statistically significant dint could be made in this improved health outcome over the grant funding period. The PHIMC developed a sophisticated logic model of cause and effect relationships that liked achievable program objectives to long term improved health outcomes. These included the number of schools serving healthy snacks and the number of times a municipality takes healthy life styles into consideration when addressing zoning issues. These intermediate outcome shared measures were determined in the planning process and amalgamated with some others which were predetermined by the CDC. Reaching consensus on the measures and solidarity once consensus is reached sets a social innovation initiative up for success and narrows the focus of the collaborative for decision making. Patrick Lenihan espouses that shared measures when achieved should be a bridge to sustainability in addressing a compelling societal need.

A challenge experienced with the Cook County CPPW program  in establishing shared measures was the unrealistic expectations of the funding authorities given the magnitude of the compelling societal need to reduce obesity and the relatively short term (three year) grant funding program. Again, the importance of the backbone organization cannot be overstated and in this instance the PHIMC was able to temper expectations whereas a less corporately mature organization may have succumbed to the pressure and committed to unrealistic expectations.

Once shared measures have been determined, the social innovation initiative can be rolled out from the core group of partners to include a more expansive roster of collaborators. Continuous communication and mutually reinforcing activities, all coordinated by the backbone organization, create a constituency for momentum. Technology plays an important role in supporting the backbone organization in fulfilling its alignment, communication, coordination and reporting responsibilities. Software as a Service (“SAAS”) based strategy management systems are particularly effective tools in this regard.

As rollout occurs, human capital allocation and deployment become paramount for the backbone organization.

No mission, vision, strategic objective or theme, strategy map or strategic initiative has been executed on its own. It takes people. Every strategic initiative is impacted by human resource allocation which forms the fabric for strategy execution. A backbone organization should possess the HR competence for recruitment, selection and performance management or farm it out to an organization that does.

The collaborative should analyze the shared measures using from / to analyses. When execution gaps are identified, one of the first questions to be asked should be “Do we have the right people in place to accomplish what needs to be done to close the gap?” If the answer is no; there are three options; borrow the talent from somewhere in collaborative, promote or transfer from within or recruit externally on a contract or permanent basis.

Borrowing talent or promoting and transferring from within may create a cascading “open position” symptom which can increase execution gaps throughout an organization. Most non-profits are fully engaged with existing programs requiring new talent for new social innovation initiatives.
Shared measures allow the backbone organization to effectively allocate human capital by:

• Providing a frame of reference for human capital decisions in a common language – the language of strategy. 
• Ensuring that project group compilations and external recruiting become aligned with addressing the compelling societal need.
• Enabling collaborative team members to gain an understanding of the “Big Picture” and the logic behind human resource decisions helping dispel misunderstandings fueled by rumors.
• Hiring justification becomes more objective and easier to describe and communicate.

Defining social innovation as “Inter-organizational collaboration addressing a compelling societal need” creates a powerful visual for operationalizing the concept. Although both complex and complicated, operationalizing social innovation can be achieved via a stepwise progression through the five criteria for collective impact once a large scale societal need has been identified and new and untapped funding has been mobilized. The roles of a backbone organization and the individual assigned to lead the initiative are core to operationalizing social innovation and require flexibility that is not inherent in individual organizations. Using shared measurement and from / to gap analyses creates a platform for effective human capital deployment in operationalizing social innovation.

Doug Ward is the Managing Director of the Specialized Recruiting Group at Express Employment Professionals and a Senior Consultant with Insightformation, a strategy management company.

Doug Ward Contact Information
(289) 440-0082
[email protected]

A special acknowledgement and thank you to Patrick Lenihan, Executive Director of the Public Health Institute of Metropolitan Chicago whose interview was the source of the information contained in this article regarding the Cook County Obesity Prevention CPPW program.