Sometimes they are systems, like new ways to help prisoners in jails receive an education or re-enter society. Sometimes they are very simple ideas. For example, some movie theatres in Boston and New York have recently started implementing a social invention to solve the problem of babies crying in movie theatres. To accommodate parents with babies, who would like to keep up with current movies, some theatres now offer special “mother’s hours,” a daytime showing of a film in which they are free to bring babies or young children. The lights are not turned down as low so that they can keep an eye on their children while they watch the movie.
The idea of social inventions or social ingenuity has become so popular in recent years that “Idea Banks” of social inventions have shown up on the World Wide Web, books have been published on the subject, and Institutes have been founded. The Institute for Social Inventions, based in London, connects think tanks and idea banks throughout Europe. It has a website that invites ideas from anyone and that I’ll write here on the board: www.globalideasbank.org. You can search this website by category to see the types of ideas that ordinary people come up with. Looking at a wide range of them gives you some sense of the extent to which people desire to make a difference in our society and not remain powerless. |
