Emerging Model of

CollaborationImplications to Policy and Advocacy for

Social Innovation

Anthony Wong

Business Director, Policy Research and Advocacy

The Hong Kong Council of Social Service

Nov 2015

Recognize a social problem

Leverage NGO value premise, government’s policies and business entrepreneurial strategies and skills

Aggregate resources and resource persons

Create social values, ultimately achieve social change.

Problem-based Collaboration

Recognizing a Social Problem

It is not just about awareness and knowledge, but also,

perhaps more importantly, about understanding.

There lies also a problem of collaboration!!!

Govt

NGO

sector

Business

sector

This is not

where

innovation

comes from.

It is where it

starts!

Leveraging Strengths: The Theory

• Collaboration is more than working together.

Collaboration is innovation. And innovation requires extra

efforts.

Poverty…Multiple Understandings

Experiments at Princeton, Harvard, and the

University of Warwick

- low-income people who were primed to

think performed poorly on a series of

cognition tests, saddled with a mental

equivalent to losing an entire night’s sleep.

- poverty imposed a mental burden akin to

losing 13 IQ points, or comparable to the

cognitive difference that’s been observed

between chronic alcoholics and normal

adults.

- Being poor means “coping with not just a

shortfall of money, but also with a

concurrent shortfall of cognitive resources.”

- poor people who aren’t good with money

might also struggle to be good parents. The

two problems aren’t unconnected.

Government’s Answer

• Essentially, it has to be bottom-up, rather

than top-down. But how can a

government/policy support be bottom-up?

Total Budget

You Contribute

SIE Fund Contribute

Top Down Budget Allocation

Collaboration as Bottom-up Aggregation

Space

Financial

resourcesTalent

Business Network Publicity

Urban Degeneration

• Urban Renewal Authority

• Statutory body

• Self-financed

• Used to market-driven

approach to urban renewal:

Property market

development

• Urban Renewal Authority’s

new strategy: rejuvenation

and revitalization

URA’s Strategy

• Introducing the “social” to rejuvenate the

community so as to balance the mainstream market

• Provision of space for civil society organizations or SEs

to help implement their renewal strategies

• Renovate historical buildings (4-storey) and invite the

Council, as an intermediary, to manage one of the

buildings by engaging SEs.

Aggregation….again!

• We were invited to submit proposal, based on a

framework broadly prescribed by them

• Proposal specifying our concept and approach,

laying down our plan on how each of the 4 floors

are to be used within the broad framework

• Calling for proposals from social innovators by us

• Selection and engagement of the social innovators to

implement their business ideas accordingly

Issues for Thought and

Discussion

We have a will and direction favoring collaboration

We don’t have necessary systems (legal and

institutional tools) to make collaboration

smooth, if possible at all

And that in turn may

discourage collaboration!

Policy Support: Challenges

• Government: Spirit strong, body weak! Market: Spirit weak, body strong!

• Outsourcing of Risks

• Public accountability

• Level playing field issue

• Resource allocation criteria and their operation

• Institutional risks

• Liabilities and contractual arrangement

• Administratively-incurred financial risks

• Maintaining mastery of power

Collaboration Capacity

Opportunities and Ways Out

• Power of innovation

• Intermediary level innovation (Collaboration capacity

enhancement)

• Consolidation of power through innovation

Power of innovation lies in

social impact