I love Dr. Seuss. His books are creative and zany. He made great social commentary. “If I Ran the Zoo” is a story about innovation and re-invention*. The hero, Gerald McGrew, is a young a boy who re-imagines the zoo. In his vision for the new zoo, he travels the world to find cool creatures that no one has ever seen. He brings them back to showcase in his “new zoo McGrew zoo,” which is dynamic, flashy and exciting.
McGrew’s new zoo looks a lot like today’s world of development sector innovation and “innovation for social good.” Great ideas and discoveries; fresh things to look at, play with and marvel at; but also quite laden with an adolescent boy’s special brand of ego and hubris.
See, most of our institutions have been basically like this for a while:
But over the past decade, we’ve been hearing quite a lot of this:
People inside and outside of the development and social sectors are innovating really hard to come up with new and cool things. Silicon Valley is putting in its two cents and inventing “life-changing solutions.” People are traveling all around and looking for “local” innovation, too. Some donors are even are supporting what they like to call “reverse innovation.” It feels a bit like the days of colonization are rolling on and on.
We see people with resources exploring and looking for opportunities, amazing ideas, and places to invest in or extract out value (BOP anyone?). These new ideas and innovations are captured and showcased for donors, investors, and global development peers.
The most innovative are applauded and given more resources. Those who “win” at innovation are congratulated on Ted stages, like McGrew is for his cool new flavor of exotic creatures.
But it’s fairly safe to say that one of the biggest problems in the world today is inequality. Many believe it’s the development model (in the small and the big sense) itself that’s the problem. Yet most of this “innovation for social good” is being stimulated by and developed within the capitalist, colonial, patriarchal models and structures that entrench inequality in the first place.
If I ran the zoo, I’d take innovation in a different direction. I’d try to figure out how to dismantle the zoo.
*****
Fun fact: Many people credit Dr. Seuss with coining the term ‘nerd’ in this book.
(Screenshots from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=20&v=BLQpqkbsrr0 and https://books.google.com/books?id=fdX3xUSbriIC&pg=PT57&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false. Book by Dr. Seuss from 1950)
Wait... What? 