Innovation and Social Inclusion

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Innovation and Social Inclusion
David Adams April 09
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Innovation and Social Inclusion

• Internationally there are new approaches to
  social inclusion which are paralleling new
  approaches in innovation theory more broadly
  but especially in social innovation
• Both approaches have a focus on enabling
  conditions a strong emphasis on governance and
  place the interdependence of social economic
  human and natural capital and the important
  role of networks and trust

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Traditional Approaches to Social Inclusion

• Cultural and skills change ( hard to effect at
  population level)
• Legislation ( usually a stick more than a carrot)
  
• Political activism ( works for some)
• Service delivery through programs (endless pilots
  and often low resourcing)
• Secondary redistribution ( eg tax/transfer
  system)

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Organising social inclusion

• Group ( eg disability, indigenous etc)
• Population cohort ( eg youth, the elderly etc)
• Issue ( eg mental health homelessness)
• Enabler/disabler ( eg transport skills)
• Place ( eg poverty postcodes )
• Causation ( eg pathological structural)
• Traditionally seen as a welfare issue but
• increasingly understood as a broader civic
• and economic issue

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Structural Cracks

• Separation of economy from society ( and the
  environment)
• Planning failures ( land use and urban planning
  in particular)
• Over reliance on market trickle down mechanisms
  
• Slow dismantling of the welfare state
• Fragmented governance
• Promise of the social sciences unfulfilled

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Consequences

• Old forms of exclusion just wont go away
• New forms emerging ( eg digital / water / energy)
• And being compounded by the persistent failure
  of market failure
• But much better knowledge about the geography of
  exclusion and solutions

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New Types of Place Exclusion

• Wealth belt localities ( eg Sandy Bay Norwood
  Rosevears)
• Gentrifying / population change advantaged
  localities ( eg Bridport, Port Sorrell)
• Battling family/ mortgage stress disadvantaged
  localities ( eg Shoreline Brighton)
• Middle class suburbia ( eg Mt Stuart Riverside)
• Battler - disadvantaged ( Bridgewater
  Ravenswood)
• Old economy extremely disadvantaged ( Scottsdale
  Newnham Moonah)
• Peri-urban/bush disadvantaged ( eg Bagdad Lefroy)

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New Geographies of ExclusionDriven by..

• Transformation in the division of labour ( eg
  part time/ knowledge workers)
• Globalisation of markets and production (eg
  nomadic capital)
• Unbundling of value chains ( thinking separated
  from doing)
• Demographic change ( eg older, footloose gen x
  and y)
• Liveability choices ( eg sea change/tree change)

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Social exclusion in Tasmania some statistics

• Tasmanian context ageing and regionally
  dispersed population
• High levels of welfare dependency high rates of
  deprivation
• Essential items now cost 94 of welfare
  entitlement for unemployed families (TT benchmark
  1.1.1)
• 27 of households receiving CRA are in housing
  stress
• Lowest levels of adult literacy low school
  retention and qualifications
• Low labour force participation rates
• High levels of health risk factors and high rates
  of disability

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Disadvantaged suburbs in Tasmania
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How do we compare internationally?

• UNICEF Innocenti report cards
• For children
• Latest Report Card 7 in 2007
• 6 Dimensions (Australia not rated due to
  insufficient data)
• Material well being (poverty, wealth,
  joblessness)
• Health and Safety (child mortality, birth weight,
  immunisation)
• Education (achievement, participation,
  aspirations)

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How do we compare internationally?

• 6 Dimensions continued
• Relationships (single parent family, step family,
  strength of family relationships parents talk,
  peers kind and helpful)
• Behaviours and Risks (smoking, drinking, teenage
  pregnancies, fighting, bullying, health eat
  breakfast, fruit, physical activity, obesity)
• Subjective well being (Health self rated, life
  satisfaction, lonely, feel awkward, like school)

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How do we compare nationally?

• SEIFA 2006, Advantage/Disadvantage CD Level Index

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• Child Social Exclusion

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Social Exclusion Risk
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Geography of Social Exclusion
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Consequences

• Economic resilience has a postcode
• Place volatility
• Constrained adaptability for excluded communities
• Unable to leverage network or agglomeration
  synergies
• This is likely to create new layers of exclusion
  and new places of exclusion this is the most
  important new issue in social inclusion

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Structural Solutions

• Primary need for innovation is around the local
  governance of complexity with a focus on new
  forms of primary redistribution of opportunity
  and wealth.
• For governments this means a focus on 5 policy
  platforms
• Economic development
• Infrastructure and technology ( eg high speed
  broadband)
• Knowledge
• Governance
• Liveability and population settlement

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Economic Solutions

• Economic innovation policy should focus on those
  potential high value industries that can leverage
  both competitive advantage and constructed
  advantage
• Governments can then forecast future population
  settlement patterns and plan for associated human
  and social infrastructure.with a social
  inclusion objective

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Asset Based Strategies

• Shift from needs to assets and capability of
  people, networks and institutions
• Build reservoir of social capital
• Orientation to local governance
• Utilisation of planning instruments
• Promotion of distributed leadership
• Expansion of community enterprise to the
  mainstream
• Place management of complexity

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Community Enterprises

• Commercial operations
• Community ownership
• Primarily social objectives
• Profits returned into community (multiplier
  effect)

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Theory Stuff

• Essentially involved reconfiguring the
  institutional boundaries between the economy,
  government, society and the earth
• The reconfiguration is underway through the idea
  of sustainability which is about realignment
  with the earth
• Social inclusion is the idea capturing the
  realignment with society and community

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A search for theory

• Social capital
• Local governance
• Regional development
• New Economics and innovation
• Entrepreneurship and leadership
• Networks
• Communitarianism
• New institutionalism

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Revaluing community as a social agent

• Communities have value because they can cause
  things to happen
• Communities of location/interest make people
  proud and co-operative.
• They are places to
• make friends fun and security
• forge identity sort out values
• make sense of things judge whats right
• get access to resources
• Creativity and imagination precondition of
  innovation

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Innovation Synergies

• Governments role is to build enabling policy
  platforms ( constructed advantage)
• These platforms need to be integrated
• Governance is central not consequential
• Networks matter for trust, for knowledge flows
  for agglomeration opportunities
• Creativity and population settlement matters(
  Richard Florida may have been right after all)
• Innovation does have a postcode place has
  economic and social agency
• The state is active again