Great piece. Another point in support of this case is how many of the very worst tech companies could comfortably have defined themselves publicly as 'for good' up until very recently, and indeed actively did so. The widespread public acceptance of this narrative in which motivation is sufficient justification of virtue certainly has some blame to bear for the mess they played a big part in creating.
One thing I feel is slightly missing though is in the call at the end for 'growing up' - ultimately this isn't only a matter of choice, especially on the part of the organisations involved, but that so much of the funding and support in the 'tech for good' world seems to go towards initial ideas and startups, rather than taking risks on growing more established businesses. That's partly a lack of overall capital available for these ends - which is a hard problem to solve - but also because in the absence of the drive from VC to back 100 startups for a decent period in the hope one becomes a unicorn, the sector defaults to a culture that prefers novelty and dislikes risk. Need some way of balancing against that if theres going to be major growth of the sort of tech orgs we need.
Thanks for the reflection -- really helpful perspective.
I think it's a two-way problem - too many people that work on social problems get comfortable in the non-profit headspace of grantsville; and too many in the for-profit space lose orientation to meaningful value creation outside of return on investment. The call to grow up was more to discourage this self-defeating self-sorting.
I think you're spot here: "'tech for good' world seems to go towards initial ideas and startups, rather than taking risks on growing more established businesses" -- I wonder how much of this is also that the larger a social good organisation the more it develops into a sort of fundraising machinery. So an attempt to shift that leads to the funding of upstarts. This leads to new ideas + new organisations, compounding the likelihood of failure or tiny impact.
yeah I definitely know what you mean about 'fundraising machinery'- seen some big charities that from the inside are as brutally focussed on their bottom line as any corporation, so can understand why people would want to change that, or create alternatives. I think there is also though an understandable but unhelpful aversion to the whole idea of growth/expansion within the sector, beyond an initial enthusiasm and sweat fuelled startup phase, where investment, competition and actual financial risk are seen as inherently contrary to an 'ethical' approach - and generally just less exciting and inspiring than the idea of something new.
I really love this! I think (3) "Be intentional and incorporate what you learn into the very fabric of the rules of your organisation" gets lost often, and in particular, gets erased by marketing that makes the cycles of learning longer. When companies/orgs create something and there is a lot to learn from it, but the marketing machine of how-amazing-are-we starts turning and I think orgs start really believing their marketing uplift, it cycles back to their own detriment of not really learning from what went wrong. I think there has to be a shift in our culture to demand that case studies, reports, etc contain a clear section of things that went wrong, things that could have been done better, not just "everything was rainbows and butterflies" (I am looking at you - tech conferences). I think transparency helps you continue to be intentional and the ability to incorporate what you have learnt back into your practice.
Great piece. Another point in support of this case is how many of the very worst tech companies could comfortably have defined themselves publicly as 'for good' up until very recently, and indeed actively did so. The widespread public acceptance of this narrative in which motivation is sufficient justification of virtue certainly has some blame to bear for the mess they played a big part in creating.
One thing I feel is slightly missing though is in the call at the end for 'growing up' - ultimately this isn't only a matter of choice, especially on the part of the organisations involved, but that so much of the funding and support in the 'tech for good' world seems to go towards initial ideas and startups, rather than taking risks on growing more established businesses. That's partly a lack of overall capital available for these ends - which is a hard problem to solve - but also because in the absence of the drive from VC to back 100 startups for a decent period in the hope one becomes a unicorn, the sector defaults to a culture that prefers novelty and dislikes risk. Need some way of balancing against that if theres going to be major growth of the sort of tech orgs we need.
Thanks for the reflection -- really helpful perspective.
I think it's a two-way problem - too many people that work on social problems get comfortable in the non-profit headspace of grantsville; and too many in the for-profit space lose orientation to meaningful value creation outside of return on investment. The call to grow up was more to discourage this self-defeating self-sorting.
I think you're spot here: "'tech for good' world seems to go towards initial ideas and startups, rather than taking risks on growing more established businesses" -- I wonder how much of this is also that the larger a social good organisation the more it develops into a sort of fundraising machinery. So an attempt to shift that leads to the funding of upstarts. This leads to new ideas + new organisations, compounding the likelihood of failure or tiny impact.
yeah I definitely know what you mean about 'fundraising machinery'- seen some big charities that from the inside are as brutally focussed on their bottom line as any corporation, so can understand why people would want to change that, or create alternatives. I think there is also though an understandable but unhelpful aversion to the whole idea of growth/expansion within the sector, beyond an initial enthusiasm and sweat fuelled startup phase, where investment, competition and actual financial risk are seen as inherently contrary to an 'ethical' approach - and generally just less exciting and inspiring than the idea of something new.
I really love this! I think (3) "Be intentional and incorporate what you learn into the very fabric of the rules of your organisation" gets lost often, and in particular, gets erased by marketing that makes the cycles of learning longer. When companies/orgs create something and there is a lot to learn from it, but the marketing machine of how-amazing-are-we starts turning and I think orgs start really believing their marketing uplift, it cycles back to their own detriment of not really learning from what went wrong. I think there has to be a shift in our culture to demand that case studies, reports, etc contain a clear section of things that went wrong, things that could have been done better, not just "everything was rainbows and butterflies" (I am looking at you - tech conferences). I think transparency helps you continue to be intentional and the ability to incorporate what you have learnt back into your practice.