By Jean-Sébastien Bouchard and Philippe Dancause Facilitators, www.grisvert.com
There is no magic in QSS. Well, a little bit of it but most of the success of the approach can be tracked down to a couple of elements. Briefly, we can summarize these elements to the following equation: Open innovation + Social technologies + Regional leadership = Transforming a collection of intelligences into a collective intelligence.
But how can we adapt this success to other contexts? Here are the paths we are developing right now.
1- Problem solving for a single organization Many public and private organizations face problems which have a high social complexity. To address this type of problems, we need to engage the stakeholders, not just the experts. The QSS approach, with the broadcasting of problems, can be useful in these conditions.
In May and June 2012, the city of Baie-Comeau, in the province of Quebec, Canada, will run two events named «Baie-Comeau en mode solutions». The focus of these events will be 8 problems associated with what is called in French the «panier de services» (services basket). These problems have a direct effect on the quality of the services to the citizens and on their tax bill.
The first event, on May 21st, will bring 120 employees of the City together with the objective of identifying solutions. They are all citizens and the process will bring them to change hats during the day: the city worker hat and the citizen hat.
The second event, on June 9th, will invite all the citizens of Baie-Comeau to seek solutions to these problems. The mayor and most of the municipal council will also participate on the two events.
A similar process could be used to find solutions to problems faced by most organizations. First, mobilizing the team, then the larger ecosystem.
2- Problem solving during events and conferences
On many events and conferences, there is an impressive gathering of experts on a particular domain. Why not using the intelligence, expertise and experience of these experts to solve some problems? This is what we will do in Barcelona on June 19th, 2012, for «ISPIM seeks solutions». Using a simple website (a Wordpress blog - ispim.seeks-solutions.com), a call for problems have been broadcasted on May 1st. As of today (May 19th), 8 problems from around the world have been submitted! A committee composed of ISPIM members and core QSS players will select 3 or 4 problems at the end of May. These problems will be broadcasted using the ISPIM LinkedIn group, mailing lists and websites. During the ISPIM Conference in Barcelona, a problem solving session will allow the conference participants to experiment a collective intelligence process (90 minutes) where they will work on the selected problems.
We think the QSS approach could really put more life and meaning on most of the major international conferences. Why not use these conferences to tap on the potential of all this expertise and change the World one conference at a time?
3- Regional development: from polarization to co-construction
Many regional development projects are creating an important polarization between stakeholders: economic - politic - civil society and NGO's. In Quebec, we see this polarization on many projects: mining, gas, wind power, transport infrastructures, etc.
We think that one facet of the problem is that most of these projects are designed with only the economic and political players before consulting the civil society part of the ecosystem. What if the project leaders - those who have money to invest - were sending an invitation to all the stakeholders to co-create around a potential instead of consulting them on an already designed project? We think that it could be an effective way of creating a better future. The Seeks Solutions approach could be used to generate innovative ideas and create more socially, economically and environmentally acceptable projects.
This third track is more experimental but we have confidence that we will find contexts to experiment it in the near future.
As you can see, we are on the beginning of a very interesting adventure that could bring a new light to old - and new - problems!