Heroes, Innovation and the Economy

On March 19 the Centre for Social Innovation held an event in partnership with Kultur Design entitled "Innovation in Times of Economic Challenge". We had a 'capacity crowd' of 45 people (woohoo Facebook Group!) that included artists, activists, economists, civil servants, political scientists and some un-labelable people too ;-)

Jeffrey Graham of Kultur Design has an incredible bag of facilitative tricks, developed mostly out of the MG Taylor GroupGenius process. Jeffrey has used this approach all over the world, including several World Economic Forum sessions with some seriously heavy-hitters.

Last night we used the "Hero" myth/archetype as a device to explore how we are dealing with this economic crises. Where are the heroes? What is heroic action?

Personally, i really struggle with this notion of heroes. It's analogous to how we regard social entrepreneurs. I think when we deify or elevate certain individuals we fail to account for the systems, networks and relationships that actually support and give rise to individual behaviour. It also forces us into this passivity - that we just sit around "waiting" for the hero or entrepreneur to emerge, instead of exploring how we can set the conditions for the emergence of these individuals and, more improtantly, 'heroic' groups of individuals. It also creates a crutch for those who can simply say "i'm not a hero" rather than recognize their role in addressing pressing issues.

As one of my group members said it, "there's no one coming".

The idea that stuck with me is that the archetype of the Hero and the Hero's journey could be considered an analogy for what we are experiencing as a society. The hero encounters a challenge, overcomes it, and is stronger for it. So is this the 'hero challenge' for society - at the level of the group rather than the individual? Can our society act herocally in the face of calamity?   

Check out this article on Entrepreneurship and Heroes, just published in The Economist. Thanks to participant Chris Chen for sending it along! (and a great comment that relates to the above...)