A few weeks ago I set out on an experiment. I had a burning question – I had an itch that needed to be scratched. I was asking the question, Can the dreams of everyday citizens transform a city? I wanted to listen to others tell me their dreams. I asked a question, Can storytelling remake a city by making dreams come true? To find out, all I needed to do was create a way for those stories to be captured, permission people to dream big dreams, and build a system for people dreaming similar dreams to connect and begin to collaborate together to see those dreams realized. I believe more is possible when our dreams collide.
My good friends at Ripple 100 decided to team up with me, and together we set out to tackle this idea. We built a website that people can visit and upload a video sharing the dream they carry. Many people have shared their dreams and told their stories, and now we are beginning to invite people to connect and collaborate together. I believe that its possible to transform culture if we change the way we problem solve. When people are given a chance to work together, they can find solutions to the systemic issues that clutter the landscape of our cities. Allowing others to dream unlocks possibilities.
The mechanism for incubating these dreams is The Grove, a co-working space in our city that I helped launch in the fall of 2010. The Grove is positioned to be a place where ideas and people can work together and find real support in the process of finding sustainable ways to make good on their ideas. We call this” social innovation”. I define social innovation to mean: A novel solution to a social problem that is more effective, efficient, sustainable, or just than existing solutions and for which the value created accrues primarily to society as a whole rather than private individuals. To this end we are helping to grow a movement in our city.
At the Grove we define the social value created as the creation of benefits or reductions of costs for society. A social innovation can be a product, production process, or technology (much like innovation in general), but it can also be a principle, an idea, a piece of legislation, a social movement, an intervention, or some combination of them. Indeed, many of the best recognized social innovations, such as micro-finance, are a combination of a number of these elements.
The work of stewarding the real dreams or ideas of citizens for social impact is a task worthy of my efforts. I aim to see if collaboration across multiple sectors of society can create social value in our city. I want to foster the ‘social mission sector’ – an umbrella term used to describe the individuals and organizations whose primary mission is to produce some benefit for people and planet. Our social mission community includes individuals, nonprofits, for-profits, entrepreneurs and individuals working for change. Please follow our progress via Twitter #DreamNHV. or visit our website at www.dreamnhv.com Dreaming is good, not living our dreams is bad.
