The @SoCap09 Twitter stream from their recent conference got me thinking about the hype surrounding social enterprise. There is, no doubt, a lot of it. I’m guilty of contributing.
As I pondered the excitement I’ve witnessed in this sector, I was reminded of the changes that I’ve both experienced and read about in the technology sector. The analogy, I think, is incredibly telling. So before we dive in, a quick story…
For decades prior to the 1980s, “Information Technology” consisted of mainframes and supercomputers so large that they filled warehouses and so expensive that they were only accessible to major corporations and institutions.
The mid-1980s and Moore’s Law brought computers that were smaller and more affordable. PCs became ubiquitous, the internet began to take off, and corporations began investing massive amounts of money in rebuilding their organizations around a PC-enabled (known as “client-server”), internet-connected architecture that promised to increase workplace productivity by orders of magnitude.
Like the industrial revolution, we were on the verge of a new era that would bring even greater prosperity and forever change our world.
Not so fast. At first, the promised gains in productivity didn’t seem to be materializing. In 1987, Robert Solow, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, famously quipped, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” For awhile it looked like the IT revolution might just be a sham.
Of course, the story doesn’t end there. By the late 1990s, computers did finally seem to be having an impact on productivity. But why the lag? As it turns out, it takes organizations time to understand and adjust to new technologies in order to fully leverage their hyped-up potential. The idea of a “Technology Digestion Period” was born.
Perhaps as a result of watching people slowly digest new technologies, The Gartner Group (an IT research group and consultancy) created a beautiful thing called the Gartner Hype Cycle back in 1995.
Hype cycles “characterize the over-enthusiasm or ‘hype’ and subsequent disappointment that typically happens with the introduction of new technologies…Hype Cycles also show how and when technologies move beyond the hype, offer practical benefits and become widely accepted.”
Here is one below for emerging technologies. Note the five phases listed at the bottom.
As it turns out, hype cycles are incredibly useful and readily transferable to other disciplines beyond IT. Here is one for public relations (unofficial, of course).
I’d like to suggest that we need to create one for social innovation, as well. We can do it together. Here is our blank page to start with.
- Where would you put the dot for microfinance? Perhaps on its way down from the “Peak of Inflated Expectations”?
- How about the dot for social or patient capital? That is probably right at the peak, yeah?
- Social impact metrics? On their way up the peak, maybe?
- Social entrepreneurship generally?
- What else am I missing?
Put your comments at the bottom and I’ll create a real Social Enterprise Hype Cycle to publish in the coming weeks.
The point here is that social enterprise as a space – as a movement – is young and immature. For the most part, we don’t really know what we’re doing yet or where we’ll end up.
I am a firm believer that we’ll reach the Plateau of Productivity and that social enterprise will, indeed, change our world. But in the meantime, beware the peaks and valleys! In particular, do not give up when we reach that Trough of Disillusionment. It’s coming – it’s only a matter of time – but we’ll need the continued help of each and every last one of you to realize this shared vision of a better world where business is a powerful force for positive change.
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