Adaptive Blueprinting

This is a copy-paste from a thread discussion forum Social-Edge a blog for social entrepreneur. This is a post from an entrepreneur whose NGO runs on principles that is similar to what I have in mind!

"Dave Johnson said, "I'm not a firm believer in reinventing the wheel for the sake of innovation."

And Bill Clinton once said during his presidency, "Nearly every problem has been solved by someone, somewhere. The frustration is that we can't seem to replicate those solutions anywhere else."

Both of these quotes illustrate perfectly why the organization I run, Global Gain, has been developing a new open-source framework and set of tools to enable social entrepreneurs, NGOs/CSOs, to adopt and adapt the existing solutions of others rather than re-invent the wheel. We call the whole process Adaptive Blueprinting (AB), because it first requires the organization that has created an innovative and proven program-model to create a relatively simple "blueprint" that can be transmitted to others in a way that makes sense. Since these blueprints have a high degree of built-in flexibility, partner organizations are free to adapt them based on local contexts.

John also had a great quote with respect to this point. "successful organizations certainly need to have the flexibility that allows them to be able to embrace innovative approaches when they do work." I would turn that around a bit and say that the creators of innovative approaches need to allow enough flexibility for partners to modify and adapt when they're willing to adopt the original approach.

We hope others will find Adaptive Blueprinting perfect partnership-building "tool", especially if the goal is scaling social impact by replicating proven ideas and models. And again, I should emphasize that it is an "open-source" idea, so if anyone is interested in learning more, please send me a message via Social Edge."

Unheralded gems making a change in Indian society

To commemorate 60 years of independence, Mint (Mumbai based newspaper in collaboration between Hindutan Times and Wall Street Journal) has come out with profiles of people who have done really good work in bringing about a change in our society and country.

You can find these profiles here
Such people reinforce the belief that you need not be a millionaire or a political hotshot to contribute your bit.

Two links from The Hindu dated 4th October 07

Persuasive messiahs of light in darkness

Counselors of LV Prasad Eye hospital, stationed at various hospitals. They try to convince the relatives of kin of the deceased to donate eyes. I think we can all understand how tricky this situation is and these volunteers themselves confess that they have been attacked at time.


Now ‘straight spine syndrome’

A profession-related disease, esp prevelant among software engineers who spend long hours in front of the computer.

Civil Society - online resource

This link was passed on to me by Shabnam.

http://www.civilsocietyonline.com/index.htm

Instead of telling you what they are about, you can have a look at their vision HERE