Caught up with Dr Lloyd Walker today. He was in at where I work with some 5th year biomedical engineering students he gives lectures to about rehabilitation engineering so he dropped by my office.
We were talking about the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) bid and the desire to engage people with disabilities, and those whom to the CRC will be potential ‘end-users’, as an integral part of the CRC operations. Blogging and emerging citizen publishing and communication mechanisms is expected to play a big part. However the bigger question is what are the barriers for participation and being involved? What stops the conversation?
The goal is to get input from the end result – lets call it ‘5‘. However this requires enabling those you are wanting results from to be at a level of ability – this end result – this ‘5‘. But not all will be. Sometimes they’ll be starting at ‘3‘ or ‘2‘ or some even ‘1‘.
Empowering the people with technical and even moral support that goes beyond (or even behind) the actual end result that is trying to be achieved is a huge part of enabling the conversation in my thinking and experiences.
There are some things you can’t get straight at. Sometimes you cannot get ‘second‘ things simply by seeking them. Often you have to do ‘first‘ things first. Even further than that, some things are only ever a RESULT of doing ‘first‘ things first and ‘second‘ things evolve naturally as a result of those actions.
Now Lloyd and I totally agree we need this. But the question we were pondering is how do we show or put up a good case that investment in the arena of getting from ‘1 to 5‘ is worthwhile and neccessary?
How do we do this so we can agrue that the CRC bid includes funding for those activities?
It concerns me that CRCs are so ‘output‘ focused that those ‘inputs‘ required that are sort of ‘outside’ the scope of what would traditionally be seen as ‘core’ business, will be overlooked. Or it might be argued that it’s ‘easier’ or more ‘efficient’ to bypass such empowerment and building.
This would be such a waste, both in terms of the potential of the relevence of the ‘outputs‘ from the CRC but also in the lost opportunity to build the ‘inputs‘ – the real people’s skills and abilities and talents and self, to be raised to new levels for the long term.
What we need is someone like Seth Godin onboard to challenge the ‘traditional’ thinking.
While it might be seen as a different context, I see similarities to what Doc Searls’ termed the ‘Intention Economy‘. Doc says …
The Intention Economy grows around buyers, not sellers.
We have an intention for a CRC to build technology for independent living to improve people’s lives. In effect we have people saying ‘build us widgets so we can have a better life with this disability’. The ‘buyers’ here are the people and organisations who will use the technology.
The ‘sellers’ will eventually be the companies formed out of the CRC endeavours, but at this bid stage the selller could be considered as the CRC.
Doc also outlines that …
The Intention Economy is built around truly open markets, not a collection of silos.
The whole CRC concept is about developing and growing a ‘market’ around disability based on research outcomes. The crafted mechanism to deliver that needs to be driven by those it is intended for -and to do so it must include them! To come at it from the other direction, the traditional way, is to build a silo. And we all know what silos are used for – to store stuff – not distribute it!
For the CRC to build and grow the market it aims to, it must engage all the ‘buyer’ groups and individuals in its’ ‘economy’, and it must do it in an environment and ‘spirit’ of openness – in an ‘open’ (not merely transparent) way.
The CRC should be all about the people in a holistic sense, not just about ‘outputted’ technology.
People-centric not technology-centric.
[tags]crc, lloyd+walker, intention+economy, disability, disabled, independent+living[/tags]