In Newsroom last week there was an article on the speech which Sir Paul Callaghan gave 10 years ago challenging our society to reform and to accommodate new approaches towards how we address our challenges.
As I read the article, I wondered how we could apply this to our City and for Greater Christchurch. How can we encourage innovation to become the norm, instead of the exception? The article included:
“To solve the massive crises facing us, we must be innovative — we must use collaborative, mission-oriented thinking while also bringing a stakeholder view of public private partnerships which means not only taking risks together but also sharing the rewards,”
“We need to think bigger and mobilise our resources in a way that is as bold and inspirational as the moon landing—this time to the most ‘wicked’ social problems of our time.”
Doing this means fundamentally restructuring capitalism “to make it inclusive, sustainable, and driven by innovation that tackles concrete problems”
“That means changing government tools and culture, creating new markers of corporate governance, and ensuring that corporations, society, and the government coalesce to share a common goal.”
In the article there was the “Five criteria for missions” and I wonder if we could challenge the elected Councillors if they could utilise this for all decision making. From this article we could ask:
- Is this decision bold or inspirational?
- Does the decision require a targeted, measurable outcome which has a time deadline?
- Does it have a scientific base which is ambitious, yet realistic?
- Does it bring different sectors together who might not normally be working in unison?
- Does this policy promote bottom-up solutions?
It’s not a bad check list. Anybody at the elected table interested in picking this up?
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