In my last post (Part 1), I raised some questions about the theory that social programming should be premised on scientific evidence.  I raised the concern that erecting a science barrier around resources could threaten innovation, because only “proven” programs would receive funding, leaving potentially valuable ideas undeveloped, and resulting in self-fulfilling prophesies in which well-funded programs succeeded because of the resources garnered and the continued investments in developing and proving efficacy.  I also raised concerns about the cost of “proving” social strategies with scientific experiments, and pointed out that policymakers would still have to allocate scarce resources (in the absence of scientific evidence) to determine which competing program models to investigate.  I suggested that major firms would have an incentive to validate only a few models and then restrict innovators from the field, hording available public and philanthropic resources.  I questioned how it would be possible to prove that a particular model was more efficient than all the others without having tested all the competing models.  I raised questions about the feasibility of generating valid and stable scientific knowledge about highly fluid, evolving social situations in which the placebo effect and observer bias are difficult, if not impossible, to eradicate.   Finally, I suggested that there are cases (for example, information technology) in which significant, valuable innovations have evolved without resort to expensive, scientific investigations of efficacy.

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Greetings.  I am surprised to discover that my blog on the Politics of Innovation has become a kind of expedition.  That is to say, we have covered some ground, and it might be getting harder to understand where we are now without knowing where we came from.  So for anyone diving into the middle, I will offer a brief recount of the journey so far. 

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Hello again!  This is part 3 of a series laying out some ideas about the politics of  social innovation.  In part 1, on October 20, I described some differences between the fundamental ideological frameworks advanced on the Right and the Left.  In part 2, on October 23, I worked to get inside the worldviews of the Right and the Left, describing their differing perspectives on concepts like freedom and equality, and how those perspectives affect the boundaries they place around proposed social strategies such as those involved in health care reform.  Today, I’m going to imagine what it would be like to transcend these competing paradigms.

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The entry builds on my last, “Opening Ideas” (10/20/2009), in which I laid out the certain elements of the competing ideological frameworks on the Right and Left in American politics.  My general thesis is that these competing frameworks are stifling innovation.  Today, I look more deeply into the similarities and the key differences between the worldviews advanced by each party, in an effort to explore ways to transcend the battle. 

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So according to webopedia, a blog is a publicly accessible journal that often reflects the personality of the author.  Supposedly updated daily!  Now that takes discipline. 

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