Interesting article on Fast Company by Continuum's Brian Gillespie. My feeling is no, we don't need to be afraid of this in the narrow sense. In a general sense, though, my observation is that MBAs and business people reduce the processes of incorporating innovation and creativity into a formula that they call "Design Thinking."
At the HarvardxDesign conference in January I saw this firsthand in practically every session I attended. The presenters often included a definition of Design Thinking and then a "How can you be like Apple?" sub-topic. What no one talked about was that Design Thinking -- whether you are for it or against -- is a messy and looping process that doesn't *ensure* innovation but simply provides a context for it.
Breaking Thesis News: EBT funds are untapped resource for urban farms
Revising thesis focus day by day:
Maximize the food benefit usage among Baltimore's urban farms at their individual farm stands.
Last year only 35% of funds allocated for the Farmer's Market Nutrition Program vouchers were redeemed by qualifying consumers. (These funds were distributed by the Maryland Department of Agriculture to Baltimore seniors and WIC recipients). This equates to missed income opportunity for these farms -- an immediate economic bottom line for sure. I'm planning to work with the Farm Alliance on this.
1) It's an opportunity to gain credibility with Baltimore urban farms and the Farm Alliance by working on a useful project that has immediate need.
2) It's directly related to economic sustainability.
3) It's low-hanging fruit. These subsidies already exist, but aren't being taken advantage of. Further, and perhaps most importantly, this is money that people in the community can use NOW that will give them immediate access to healthy foods at their doorstep.
The challenge is figuring out why this money is going unspent -- most likely, people in the community are unaware of the funds, or don't want to buy those particular foods, or a combination thereof -- and how an intervention could be structured to address this.
My long-term goal -- beyond thesis -- is still to see if I can work with urban farms to create a more viable system that can pay a farmer and his/her workers a fairer wage. Think fair trade (not so much the label, but the mindset), but for our local farmers. Everyone I've talked to so far has said, repeatedly, "no one makes a living wage in urban farming." These subsidies are just one piece in the larger puzzle. It's a tough nut to crack (to use a metaphor from Maya Kosov), but one I hope I have the opportunity to work on over time.
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*From Wikipedia: Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) is an electronic system that allows state welfare departments to issue benefits via a magnetically encoded payment card, used in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Common benefits provided (in the United States) via EBT are typically of two general categories: food and cash benefits. Food benefits are federally authorized benefits that can be used only to purchase food and non-alcoholic beverages. Food benefits are distributed through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly the Food Stamp Program.
Through EBT, a recipient uses his/her EBT card to make purchases at participating retailers. Food stamp benefits can only be used to purchase food items authorized by the USDA's SNAP program. Cash benefits may be used to purchase any item at a participating retailer, as well as to obtain cash-back or make a cash withdrawal from a participating ATM.
State agencies work with contractors to procure their own EBT systems for delivery of SNAP and other state-administered benefit programs. In the United States, all SNAP benefits are now being issued via EBT.
**This number is projected. Verified numbers will be obtained shortly.
"Collaboration can only deliver if we are prepared to accept some level of unpredictability. ... A possible definition of social design – that of directing the unpredictable – hides a suitable way of thinking for the new situation. Behind the Occupy idea where one can simply not accept that the system comes before us and it cannot be changed, lies plenty of stored energy ready to come into motion. It is here, in the growing horizontal structure of relationships created by a growing global connectivity that we find a business model for necessary interaction. Thus the creativity that was until now largely wasted is being given a better chance."
Thinking out loud on the whiteboard: Sometimes you need a little help from your friends. Ultimately, I decided to dead-end this area of focus -- creating a local food movement -- in favor of looking at strategies for economic sustainability in urban farming.
Baltimore is known as a pioneer in the urban agriculture movement and has a growing number of farms, farmers markets, community interest groups and even a city office dedicated to sustainability and issues of food access. My thesis seeks to address the question of how urban farms can access a system for knowledge sharing that can clarify communication and best practices between urban farms across the US.
Reaction:
Over the break I wondered a great deal about whether I was asking the right question(s). I'm still not sure, and am hoping to winnow that down after conducting some site visits and one-on-one interviews with stakeholders in the urban agriculture space.
Urban farming itself is simultaneously trying to address issues of community engagement; equal access to healthy and sustainably grown foods; and environmentally friendly farming practices. While many of the people I've spoken to agree that sharing information is a challenge, other issues have cropped up during conversation and so I am stalled a bit while I figure out which question I want to address:
- How can the urban farm be more accessible to its neighbors without having to provide more staffing?
- How can urban farms become a more likely avenue for employment when the current model does not generate a livable income for the farmer(s)? (In other words, the instability of urban farming revenue is a barrier for entry for those who don't have current economic opportunity)
- How can city governments develop urban farm-friendly zoning and other related policies?
- How can urban farms work with city governments to encourage and enable development of urban farm-friendly zoning (and other related policies)?
I think each of these questions is compelling, but I am not yet sure which one provides the greatest opportunity for me to develop an intervention.
For me, the biggest challenge so far is breaking down the problem into a piece of appropriate size for the thesis itself. I want to work on something that my organizational partners and I both care about, without getting bogged down. At the same time, I want it to be relevant and meaningful so that it does have potential for positive impact.
"Why are design problems indeterminate and, therefore, wicked? … The answer [lies in] … the peculiar natures of the subject matter of design. Design problems are 'indeterminate' and 'wicked' because design has no special subject matter of its own apart from what a designer conceives it to be. The subject matter of design is potentially universal in scope, because design thinking may be applied to any area of human experience. But in the process of application, the designer must discover or invent a particular subject out of the problems and issues of specific circumstances. This sharply contrasts with the disciplines of science, which are concerned with understanding the principles, laws, rules, or structures that are necessarily embodied in existing subject matters."
Excerpted from "Wicked Problems in Design Thinking" by Richard Buchanan, Design Issues, Vol. 8, No. 2, Spring 1992
What innovative farming technique isn't being used here? Using an abandoned industrical building for vertical gardening; tilapia farming; using tilapia waste to fertilize the plants, then using the plant-cleaned water to go in the fish tanks; spent grains from brewing beer to feed the tilapia; reclaiming 80% of the original building's materials ... I could go on. Simply amazing.
"As marketing mechanized the process of relationship management, the consumer got less emotional value out of the relationship. ... These companies are not bad but they are sort of culturally autistic. By remaining unable to engage with consumers as human beings with rich cultural lives and complex social environments, businesses were unable to communicate. Thus, they tended to scream and become abusive the more they craved and needed consumer attention. We see the results of cultural autism on our screens everyday: persistently aggravating advertising sending manifestly corrupt messages into our homes."
Jane Jacobs changed the way we think about urban environments
I doubt I'll contribute anything groundbreaking in a reflection on "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," because quite frankly, I'm late to the Jane Jacobs bandwagon, but here goes.
I'm only a few chapters in to this book but already appreciate how Jacobs can describe what makes a neighborhood tick without always resorting to anecdote. I am wary sometimes of her enthusiasm for one particular point of view -- for ex, that all urban planners and architects methodically design public spaces and buildings with complete disregard for people's wants and needs -- in that I don't want to fall down a rabbit hole of citizen architect pseudoscience. (I haven't done due diligence with countering viewpoints to argue either side of that.) On the other hand, her ideas seem to have stood the test of time seeing as her book was published in 1961 and people are still devotees.
The questions I've posed for my thesis exploration relate to how people interact in public spaces and/or interact with the environment. For the former, Jacobs writes extensively in the opening pages of "Death and Life" about how the design of our public spaces impacts us and our ability to engage with strangers and the natural world. Wide sidewalks, diverse retail activities and kids playing games in the street (supervised as needed, importantly, by unpaid non-family members) all contribute greatly to this. When I look around at my neighborhood, suburban-urban as it is, I can see right away which aspects of its design work towards this, and which don't.
As for urban farming, I haven't yet run into a particular chapter devoted to this, but I see the overlap nevertheless. Urban farming is the antithesis of the perfect urban city space (as dictated by city planners of a certain period), but one that has potential (I think) to change the economic model that cities rely on, post-industry and post-manufacturing.
Projects/initiatives that inspired my thesis exploration questions:
1. Lack of trust in the public space
Pie Lab - What I love about Pie Lab is how it merges shared community space, comfort food and economic revitalization all in one neat package. It evolved from a very simple idea -- create a positive social interaction with homemade pie as the vehicle -- and became a community-based project that now offers job training opportunities and an inspiring space for people of all races and economic status to come together.
The Downtown Project in Las Vegas - This might not be considered a socially driven project per se, but the process is community driven and has the intention of creating prosperity for many, not just a few. I was particularly captivated by Hsieh's use (and possibly invention?) of the term R.O.C. - Return on Community - as a substitute for the over-used business speak of R.O.I. (Return on Investment).
2. Urban Farming
Popup gardens in Philly and video -
Beet Street Gardens - This space is still in process, but the premise is that a community garden can be a transformative space. Beet Street wants to teach people with employment challenges how to farm, among other things.
3. Community gardening
An abandoned airport becomes a community garden - Really cool use of an unused space with lots of inventive items out of reclaimed materials.
The following questions are initial explorations into possible thesis topics. Feedback and links and/or leads welcome.
1. Lack of trust in the public space
How can trust be increased in the public space of a diverse neighborhood?*
How can we create and encourage positive interactions between people in diverse neighborhoods?*
How can we increase diversity in suburban neighborhoods while also increasing a sense of trust in the public space?
Preliminary brainstorm questions:
What keeps us from living in true integration?
How can we better integrate our neighborhoods?
How do we interact in integrated neighborhoods?
What factors contribute to lack of trust in the public space?
Why don't we have truly integrated neighborhoods?
*My initial findings from the Neighborhood Survey that I distributed to peers and colleagues indicate that the more diverse the neighborhood -- socio-economically and culturally -- the less people seem to comfortably interact with each other.
Reference materials:
"The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs
"The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class are Undermining the American Dream" by Sheryll Cashin
2. Urban farming
How can innovative farming techniques be used to reduce poverty and enhance community in urban environments?
How can innovative/new farming techniques be integrated into urban communities?
Preliminary brainstorm questions:
Can a farm anchor a community?
How can we change the perception of farming in the community?
How can farming be integrated into an urban community?
How can we leverage existing networks of regional farms into urban environments in order to improve access to local, sustainable food?
3. Community gardening
How can a community garden sustain a higher quality of citizen engagement and retention?
How can community gardening rely less on citizen engagement and still provide a high-quality experience for communities/neighborhoods?
For reference: Urban Gardeners Grow Everything Except Gardeners
Last week one of our assignments was to distill information (of our choosing) from DETAILS, a social enterprise deconstruction company, into an infographic. I decided to work on the cost comparison of deconstructing vs. demolishing a home. V1.0 (left) was generally well received during the critique, but feedback suggested making the cost breakdown comparison more direct. The inside of the house looked cool but didn't really do anything for the information itself; rather, it detracted from it. Here's hoping V2.0 (right) is more successful. Further feedback from the peanut gallery? Send it over.
Look the other way to change direction @mazarm - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
