Dear colleagues,
A couple of weeks ago, I participated at an event that not only reinforced my belief that systems thinking is important for social entrepreneurs, but also taught me a lot about how we can promote that skill: Map the System by Oxofrd's Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship is a global competition for students where teams don't pitch social ventures, but their understanding of a social problem, including its causes, existing solutions, and potential levers for improvement. In an earlier version of this e-mail, I just claimed that all 15 finalists -- including the undergraduate teams -- had a better grasp of their social problem than some of the finalists I saw in multi-million dollar competitions. That would have seemed a bit far-fetched, though, so I waited until the recordings of the presentations went online. Now you can see for yourself:
The organizers are willing to share their methodology and rating criteria in case you want to incorporate some of their ideas into your projects.
Following the theme of systems mapping, here are two more resources that you might find useful:
- Omidyar's Systems Practice Workbook. It contains all the exercises from their great online course and makes it easy to include them in workshops and strategy processes..
- Two podcast interviews with me on systems change and systems thinking at "Impact Boom" and "Inspiring Social Entrepreneurs". Topics include the qualities of systems entrepreneurs, funding systemic initiatives, and how to avoid unintended consequences.
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