Disruption: Sounds Good, But is it Effective in the Social Sector?

I moved to the Bay Area in 2000 when the hype around the “dot.com boom” was inescapable, and I loved it.?

I had no desire to join the tech sector but I loved the impact throughout the region. Terms like innovation, disruption, fail fast were seeping into all fields and there was a sense that anything was possible. I still like the spillover sentiments from tech—there is so much to learn from that boldness and creativity. And lately I have been thinking a lot about the ways in which taking these approaches wholesale into the social impact space creates dissonance and frankly, in some cases, lowers positive impact.

For example, is disruption always the right approach in social change? Or would we benefit from leaning into existing systems for evolution of new and promising practices? Turns out, there has been some studying of this already. In a recent study done with 227 systems-change focused organizations, the data show that organizations who leverage existing infrastructure are more effective than organizations with a strategy to disrupt a system from the outside. Specifically, Jim Bildner and Stephanie Khurana help us understand that organizations who leveraged existing systemic infrastructure:

• Had 3x impact with 15x less cost
• Were proven to be more resilient
• Had effectively de-risked the solution, allowing for wider adoption
• Did not need to demonize any system or anyone in the system

I have experienced this myself as a leader in three different social impact organizations. In my time at Revolution Foods , I learned the hard way. It became clear fast, that demonizing the food served at public school districts led to a closed door when we wanted to move from serving charter schools to districts. That made our transition much more arduous, requiring repair before collaboration. Plus, when charter systems closed down, our entire regional business was at risk.?

Now at Tilting Futures , we are working to do this differently. Instead of living outside the system entirely –? in the space of what many refer to as a gap year – we are now available to young people in a gap year and in the beginning of their higher ed journey. This shift allows for us to partner with higher #education and figure out how together, we can get their students the transformational learning we know is possible. We are no longer existing only outside of the higher ed system, but instead finding a way to exist within it. This shift enables us to leverage the incredible resources, knowledge base, and aligned interests that the higher ed system contains. It also allows for them to use and adapt our unique model, which unleashes the positive impact at a much larger scale than ever possible through our own direct programming.?

When a gap year program focused only on direct impact programming, we were destined to keep our impact deep, yet precious. Now we have the potential to have deep, lasting and widespread impact well beyond what we could ever accomplish alone.