Addressing complexity and societal turbulence with Collective Intelligence

“We can’t entrepreneur our way around bad policies”, said Rwanda-based Jon Stever when recounting the story of the co-creation of Nigeria’s first Startup Bill. How do you involve the concerned parties in such a complex problem as the overhaul of public policies in Nigeria affecting entrepreneurs? Jon Stever’s story shows to what extent the principles of collective intelligence (CI) underlie democratic innovation and citizen participation, thus producing better legislation. This story traces the journey over five years of a public policy thanks to the “ADDIS Process”. This is a collective intelligence framework developed by the pan-African Innovation for Policy Foundation (i4Policy) and developed through participatory practice in more than a dozen countries to date.

Read the story in?The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intelligence for Democracy and Governance:

When bottom-up and top-down meet, by Jon Stever

This story illustrates several of the drivers of CI employed in the ADDIS Process, namely:

1. Motivation: “The room was buzzing with ideas and enthusiasm all day, and we pretty much had to be stopped, or we could have kept going into the night”. Well designed, participatory processes generate the enthusiasm necessary for people to contribute well. The i4policy (innovators for policy) hub and network in Kigali (Rwanda) is a coalition of 25 innovation community centers across Africa. These third places are community spaces outside of home and work where people come together to share ideas, and collaboratively develop new skills, ventures, and social actions. They foster ideation and collective intelligence and contribute to motivate citizens to come together. They provide a space from which to engender new collective actions and to put new policy reform ideas on the table. It is such a hub that led to the birth of the efforts for entrepreneurs told by Jon Stever.

2. Cognitive diversity: In the process of involving citizens in drafting a new bill to foster startup environment in Nigeria, i4policy launched policy hackathons gathering hundreds of citizens from different backgrounds, with the following consideration in mind: “What would happen if you could get entrepreneurs, students, and business support providers to step into the shoes of policymakers for a day?” The process allowed participants to have an equal say, no matter their wealth, education, or social status.

3. Quality deliberation and information: Decision-making should involve a process of deliberation where individuals engage in open, respectful, and informed dialogue with one another. Hackathons such as those organized by i4policy are opportunities for citizens to appreciate the amount of work that goes into making policies, and to expose them to a variety of perspectives that help them better appreciate issues and possible solutions. People need to have access to a diversity of arguments and opinions, thanks to participants in the CI process and to the information they are provided with.?