Exploring the intersection of innovation, storytelling, and community empowerment, the "What If Instead" podcast unveils transformative solutions to global challenges.
Guests:
Alejandro Juárez Crawford, Co-Host of What If Instead? Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/alejandro-juarez-crawford
Miriam Plavin-Masterman, Co-Host of What If Instead? Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/miriam-plavin-masterman
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Host: Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast & Audio Signals Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
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Episode Introduction
The landscape of innovation and storytelling is vast and varied, a realm where pioneers are constantly on the lookout for new ways to solve age-old problems. In a recent episode of the Audio Signals podcast, hosts Marco Ciappelli, and his guests Alejandro Juárez Crawford and Miriam Plavin-Masterman, dive into the rich territory of the newest venture on ITSPmagazine: the "What If Instead" podcast. This new podcast promises to explore the power of speculative thinking and problem-solving in confronting the world's most pressing issues.
The Genesis of "What If Instead"
Alejandro Juárez Crawford, co-founder of RebelBase, and Miriam Plavin-Masterman, an Associate Professor of Business Administration, use their platform to ask pivotal questions that drive the essence of innovation. Their journey on the "What If Instead" podcast is about more than just generating new ideas; it's an exploration into how we can empower individuals to see themselves as agents of change, capable of writing their own heroic narratives.
Refocusing the Antenna on Unsung Heroes
The conversation highlighted the podcast’s ethos of shifting focus away from traditional heroes of innovation to those enabling others to become protagonists in their own right. This involved repositioning the metaphorical antenna, concentrating not on known narratives but on the untold stories brewing in every corner of the world. It's about setting the stage for unsung heroes to redefine what's possible in their communities.
Empowerment through Local Problem Solving
Miriam Plavin-Masterman emphasized the significance of "For Us, By Us" topics. The podcast aims to spotlight individuals around the globe who are not just solving problems but enabling communities to discover solutions organically, rooting innovation in local dynamics and cultures. This approach challenges the convention of parachuting solutions into communities, instead encouraging a bottom-up method where insights and innovations are homegrown.
Tales of Global Impact
Guests on the "What If Instead" podcast span a wide array of backgrounds and disciplines, from Ghanaian entrepreneurs to technology innovators in South Africa and social activists in Kyrgyzstan. These stories underline the universal appeal and necessity of creative problem-solving, spotlighting both the diversity and unity in tackling global challenges.
Who Is Listening?
The podcast caters to a burgeoning convergence of listeners drawn from various sectors, united by a common interest in social innovation, climate change, and the transformation of societal systems. This audience is keen on hearing how individuals, often working with limited resources, are crafting solutions that promise a more inclusive, sustainable future.
The Art of Storytelling in Innovation
Towards the end of their conversation, the trio touched upon the crucial role of storytelling in innovation. It's through compelling narratives that innovators can connect with a broader audience, garnering support for causes and solutions that might otherwise remain in the shadows. Storytelling, as suggested by their discussion, is not just a tool for engagement but a vehicle for inspiring action and change.
Conclusion
The "What If Instead" podcast, hosted by Alejandro Juárez Crawford and Miriam Plavin-Masterman, stands as a beacon of speculative thinking in a world often constrained by conventional wisdom. It pushes the envelope on what it means to innovate, inviting listeners to ponder, "What if?", and more importantly, "Why not?". This evocative call to action encourages us all to tap into our latent potential to be not just spectators but active participants in the stories of change unfolding around us.
By tuning into their discussions, we are reminded that every individual is capable of being a catalyst for transformation. The "What If Instead" podcast is not just an exploration of ideas; it's an invitation to join a movement geared towards a more equitable and innovative future.
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Resources
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For more podcast stories from What If Instead? Podcast with Alejandro Juárez Crawford and Miriam Plavin-Masterman, visit: https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/alejandro-juarez-crawford and https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/miriam-plavin-masterman
For more podcast stories from Audio Signals: https://www.itspmagazine.com/audio-signals
Watch the video version on-demand on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnYu0psdcllQvnJ8eHUlVX8AuyhehtexA
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New Podcast | Unleashing Innovation through Storytelling: Insights from "What If Instead" Podcast | A Conversation With Hosts Alejandro Juárez Crawford and Miriam Plavin-Masterman | Audio Signals Podcasts With Marco Ciappelli
Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording, as errors may exist. At this time, we provide it “as it is,” and we hope it can be helpful for our audience.
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[00:00:00] Alejandro Juárez Crawford: I'm Alejandro Juarez Crawford, and I'm the co founder of RebelBase, which is a SaaS platform that enables people around the world, when confronting Tough problems and broken systems to create their own experiments to solve them. Um, I'm also, uh, Chair of the Global Certificate in Sustainability and Social Enterprise and Professor of Entrepreneurship at Bard's MBA in Sustainability.
Um, and I'm very happy to be here on Audio Signals. Thanks.
[00:00:30] Miriam Plavin-Masterman: Hi, I'm Min Plavin Masterman. I'm an Associate Professor of Business Administration at Worcester State. And I teach classes in management, organizational culture, and innovation. Um, I'm also excited to be here because Alejandro and I have lots of fun things to talk about in the podcast we're working on.
[00:00:47] Alejandro Juárez Crawford: Perfect. We're here for fun, Marco, just to be clear.
[00:00:49] Marco Ciappelli: And you know what? To make it fun, you just gave a huge gift to my audience because they usually listen to me blobbing for about a couple of minutes before I introduce the guests. And you guys just jumped on it. So everybody's happy. Everybody knows who you are.
And now I'm gonna say what we talk about here because on audio signals, as I lately say, I've repositioned the antenna to capture stories about storytellers, uh, that are behind the stories. And, uh, stories is everything. As I like to say. We are all made of stories. And that can be a podcast, it can be a book, it can be music, it can be. Painting, photographer, we all have stories to tell and here I'm happy because I'm actually giving you the welcome for the new show on ITSPmagazine, which is called, what if instead, uh, with a big question mark and it's honestly one of my favorite. question. Either we're talking about hacking and changing things the way they are and questioning what if the moon wasn't there, what happened to the planet and so on.
Um, I am so excited to have you on. Alejandro, you've been here on my show before and we talk about crazy stuff like renaissance and so on. Mim, so much for being here. Welcome for the first time. I'm sure it's not the last. So, um, thank you for the introduction. And, uh, let, let, let's dive into that. Alejandro, I know after our conversation, I said, I really loved it.
You should have a podcast. That's what it was a while back. What happened since and why now you have a podcast?
[00:02:25] Alejandro Juárez Crawford: Well, you cursed me, Marco. You know, those famous words, you should have a podcast. They can really derail a life, which is what's happened to me. But seriously, you say, you mentioned talking about crazy stuff.
And I love that because two of the things you said in your introduction are actually absolutely true. Perfect segues into what we're working on. One of the, one is this wonderful image of repositioning the antenna. And of course, I congenitally watch metaphors like cartoons. So when you say repositioning the antenna, I'm seeing, hearing the sound effects, the whole antenna repositioning itself.
And so in my mind already are, where was the antenna focused? Who is it now focused on? And then you use the second phrase that we are all made of stories which I really love because one of the discoveries Mim and I just made in recording the first few episodes with guests from around the world, episodes of What If Instead, was that guests were commenting, you know, the stories I most want to tell are ones that I'm going to think of right after this podcast.
So we have started actually to prompt them. One of the things that we are really trying to do that connects these two ideas of repositioning the antenna and being made of stories is to interview our guests. It's less about the story that they're the hero of, and more about their efforts to enable other people to become heroes of stories yet to be told.
And so, our way of repositioning that antenna is to talk to the guest about how they do that. So we've started to actually ask them, before each interview, to think through the hero's journey. What got you out of your life in the shire if you're Bilbo Baggins? What monsters did you face? What magic objects did you use?
Who helped you along the way? What strange creatures helped you? We started to ask them to think of those things less for themselves and more for the people that they're enabling to ask, what if, instead?
[00:04:38] Marco Ciappelli: Anything to add, Mim?
[00:04:39] Miriam Plavin-Masterman: I guess I would say one of the things that I think my, my training and my background as a sociologist helps me ask is, what are we doing?
And why are we doing it this way? And so now what if instead is really picking up on that question and saying, well, it doesn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to stay this way. We can make it better. What if instead we try something else? And so I just feel like our backgrounds kind of intersect in a nice way to set up all these questions for people.
[00:05:06] Marco Ciappelli: Absolutely. And, and I mean, that's why Alejandro and I are back together on a show. Cause you know, Campbell, the, the journey, the hero journey, um, beautiful baggings. I mean, you couldn't take the baggings. More, uh, pleasant story that I really love, uh, like the, the Shire and everything that happened there, but also this, this idea of questioning things, right?
If there is one question that I like, it is, like I said, the beginning is what if instead, or why is light there? Like a kid, like, why, why, why the sky is blue? Why, why these and that? And the thing that I Like the less is when people answer all this done. We have always done it this way. Like, that's a reason not to change.
So let's talk about that.
[00:06:01] Alejandro Juárez Crawford: Well, one of the interesting things about that tension, we've always done it this way versus what if instead it worked this way is that if you just ask people, do you think of yourself as an entrepreneur or as someone making change? Not everybody thinks of themselves that way, but if instead you ask folks, What should just work differently?
What's backwards the way it works? No matter your age, you're part of the world. We've now asked these questions to people in 20 countries, five continents. Your background. I have yet to meet a person who doesn't just rise to that question and come alive to that question, but doesn't really become fired up by the process, the difficult process of attempting to develop an answer in practice.
And that's been a revelation to me. So when you talk about folks who, well, it's always worked that way. It's worth asking who's saying that, right? Who are the, are we? So we had a conversation recently. I was interviewed by a journalist at Wired Magazine with my colleague Sebastian Crowe last weekend. And he said, well, yeah, this is true, everyone, but our VCs, I had given a TEDx in the fall about ways in which we need to change venture capital.
And so, The journalist asked us and said, well, but are VCs really going to listen to this? They, it's worked this way for a long time. They expect their hockey stick. They expect everything to be, you know, typical, I don't know, the next Bitcoin type model, right, that becomes a trend. What
I tried to respond with was, hold on, aren't those the incumbents? Aren't those the same old folks who are plugged into a certain way of doing things? And what if instead we ask people, Who have answers and also have resources. I think the biggest mistake we make is to assume that the existing resources and those determining how they get used and which experiments they get invested in have to say the same.
If instead we say, wait a minute, most of the value, most of the resources, most of the ideas are not even being tried or not even being applied. Then we can connect those things and Enable folks who aren't incumbent because it is an incumbency dynamic when someone says because it's always worked that way.
That's because I'm in a role, in a sinecure, in a role where I've just kind of settled into it. But if instead we turn our lens toward people who aren't Something radically different can happen, right?
[00:09:08] Marco Ciappelli: And Mim, to, to go a little deeper into this, I was reading on your bio that you, you focus on organizational culture and innovation, and it was kind of funny for me, not really funny, but culture and innovation, sometimes people perceive it as opposite.
Because culture is what it's been, always been the culture of, you know, tribe or the, of the population of a country, whatever it is. And it's almost like the tradition. A lot of people interpret culture with tradition, but then you put innovation right next to it and how culture sometimes take time to adapt to innovation.
So I would love for you to explain me how you put these two together.
[00:09:53] Miriam Plavin-Masterman: Sure. So, um, It's not my framework, but it's one that I use regularly. It's a framework by Cameron and O'Quinn that talks about cultural values. And our organizations are always trying to balance competing cultural values. Do you make your employees happy?
Do you make your customers happy? Do you plan for the longterm? Do you plan for the short term? Do you care about the process? Do you care about the outcome? Do you care about the people? And they're always trading off these questions. And so ideally there's an intersection where you care more about, let's say people and long term and process.
And so you land in the particular cultural values quadrant. And for that quadrant, how you do innovation will look very different than if you're a quadrant that cares about the outcome and the short term and making customers happy. You'll still do innovation, but your focus will be different internally.
If you're an internally focused company, it's how do we innovate the process to make our employees happier? So they in turn make the customers happier. If you're an outcome based company, you're like, well, let's just make the outcome work better because then the customers are telling us they want something different.
So like what's driving the innovation is coming from a different source, but it's still around doing something better. And I guess I would say it just sort of reorders or, or variably weights who gets first priority for whose needs get met first, if that makes sense.
[00:11:13] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah. It's kind of like you, you, you change, you keep it balanced, but you change
[00:11:20] Miriam Plavin-Masterman: That's right, because you can't make everybody happy all the time. You can't, right? Right. And so you're somebody has to come first. And so, and this isn't saying that one set of values is better. It's just saying that they're different. And so,
[00:11:32] Alejandro Juárez Crawford: but maybe what is better is to be shifting who comes first.
Because if it's always the same folks who come first, that's what I meant by incumbency earlier, then unfortunately we get these, this lack of mobility, right? This, this, um, uh, self confirming phenomena. There's a quotation by James G. Hirsch, an organizational theorist that I often think of. And he says, homogeneous groups.
Are very good at doing what they already know how to do well, but become progressively worse at investigating alternatives. And that is so different from the way we usually think about when you hear people talk about diversity, right? It's almost like, oh, we need to help you poor people who are underrepresented to be part of things.
I think of it from the opposite point of view. I think if it's no new blood, if it's the same folks with the same biases and the same assumptions, who are always doing things, and you don't change who's first in the way, Mem, you've described, then we end up with the kind of decrepit, ideas, the kind of, um, ideas that are increasingly unresponsive, which is what MEMS in my book is about, that we're dealing with today.
[00:12:57] Marco Ciappelli: And that makes me think about generative AI, which is feeding on the same, but Let's not go there. I have to say AI because you know, it's a drinking game. You say AI, you have a shot, I guess, but we're not going to go there. What I want, what I want. I'm a
cyborg, so I can't really do shots, but I have a pretty good, it looks like I'm getting drunk.
It's not bad, actually. We're tweaking it a little. You're saving money too. That's, that's good. Um, let's, let's talk about the, the podcast. So at this point, People are listening to this. There's already the first episode out and you mentioned you already have a few already recorded as well. So what
do you focus on?
Um, and how do you apply the things that we already talk about, right? Storytelling, democratizing, innovation, giving chances, maybe to the one that don't have a chance and, and who are the people that you're bringing on to, to tell these stories? And Mim, you want to?
[00:13:57] Miriam Plavin-Masterman: So, so one, we've, our first several episodes involve people from
across the world, people from, from Ghana, from, um, South Africa, from Kyrgyzstan.
And actually somebody from the U S I'm not sure in what order they're going to air, um, right now, as we're saying this. Um, but when, when we talk to these people, we're looking for people who are problem solvers. So even if people don't think of themselves as entrepreneurs, they think of themselves as helping people solve problems.
And so we're looking at multiple levels of society, people who are working across large groups of people, helping them solve problems, people who are working in small communities, helping them solve problems and hoping that that cascades out. And so we're always looking for people who are finding new ways to connect to people who have been left out.
And with the goal of amplifying their voices to help them solve their own problems. And this is another piece of it too, of getting people in the mindset of helping them solve their own problems versus we'll come in with a great solution and solve your problem for you. And then we're all done and we pack up and we leave.
[00:15:00] Alejandro Juárez Crawford: That
point, excuse me, Mim, is essential, uh, where you talk about cascading effects, right? If we parachute in, show you the way we figured out the best way to do things, right? Whether we're a management consultancy or a global NGO, then you haven't, Built. It's not just capacity, right? That's just part of it.
You haven't solved problems in a way that's organic to you. Um, in Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Jane Jacobs does this incredible, um, description of how economies get built. And I like to think she cracked the code in ways that macroeconomics would be too threatened by if it tried to assimilate it.
Because she said, look, it's always. Starts with either innovating something new as a way of meeting needs and solving problems or finding your local way of meeting a need or solving a problem that you used to have to bring the solution in. And that's the opposite of this parachute in, solve the problem.
When we do that, it's no different from, you know, helping a bird out of its shell, right? Or maybe that's too much of a, sort of a parental, uh, metaphor. It's no different from. Anyone who is doing something, often something better than I would have thought of, and if I go in and start telling them with my confidence and my credentials how they should do it, then it's not just the capacity that's lost, it's the solutions that they understand that I don't.
And that people in the institutions that I have access to don't. And that's where we get this narrowing of thinking and this sort of eviscerating of the kinds of models we're bringing to human needs and civilizations. So MIM, when you talk about enabling the problem solvers, it's important that the emphasis is on that cascading effect where we're looking at much more interested in how the Any of our guests enable other people to develop solutions, even when their solution doesn't get used to be in a process of experimentation and iteration.
Marco, as we've been talking about since we met, that's far more important than some solution that is, you know, the flavor of the month internationally.
[00:17:23] Marco Ciappelli: And what about the fact that the people that are really living a certain problem, a certain situation are the one that can see it? And really understand it instead of again parachuting from the outside and say, yep, we got you.
No, you don't got me anything. He doesn't really understand What we're dealing with maybe we're missing some Technology, maybe some instruments some financial problem that we can address if we have those right?
[00:17:54] Alejandro Juárez Crawford: That's just it. Uh, Andy Um, one of our guests who will be the interviewee in our first episode You Does this wonderful thing where he says, even when it's a technology based solution, the bulk of the solution is what works with local dynamics.
Right.
Just a part of it is the stuff that may be borrowed from elsewhere. That's a reverse of the 1090 or the 8020 we think about, right? Even, not that we need to reinvent every wheel, Sebastian Groh, who's a guest we're going to have on in a few weeks, He talks about, he gave an incredible speech at the pre COP conference, um, where he said, we need to build an army of climate entrepreneurs in the global South.
Now, full disclosure, I co wrote the speech with him, so I'm not a neutral party here, but the, the idea that he has been so successful in getting out there since is that, Marco, just as you said, if we don't go to the folks that know the lay of the land. Right? The resources, the practices, the culture, the technical constraints, then we will fail to generate the solutions that we need.
And it goes beyond the wonderful work that Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble did on reverse innovation, which is important work, to say this isn't the reverse at all. This is actually where it starts, and it's not just about the multinationals.
I was noting that the wonderful work on reverse innovation that Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble has done has already established well, the constraint driven innovation that can happen in low resource situations, contexts, but it goes even beyond that. We argue to the.
Fact that innovation needs to start to go forward from not just the large organization finding the small innovation, but actually we need to flip it on its head and have millions of experiments. We need to enter an era where it's kind of like the old long tail idea from broadcasting, right? Chris Anderson's idea.
Um, but this has to apply to a process of Mutation and natural selection, where millions of things get tried, and we need to do that in this decade if we're going to address the need to change our industries and our civilization for the human future in the era of climate change and beyond.
[00:20:33] Miriam Plavin-Masterman: So I would say I agree with all of what Alejandro said, um, but to, to bring it back to initially what we talked about with stories and we're all made of stories in the hero's journey, I think there's a couple things.
One is we are looking for people who are trying to get Local community members, problem solvers, to think of themselves as the hero. That's the first thing. Versus you're a reader in a story about somebody else's heroic journey. No, you're the hero. You're making the journey, right? So that's the first thing.
Even if your journey is not that far. You're making the journey. And then the second piece is really this important cultural values piece of the person who's telling the story from a particular time and place, they kind of know the beats the story has to hit in ways that somebody coming from outside does not.
And so there's a, there's a local flavor that has to be, you know, the story has to go this way. The story has to proceed in this way, whatever that structure is that makes sense for the culture, that's how they have to tell the story. And so I think that that thinking about those are the kinds of people whose stories we elevate here.
[00:21:41] Marco Ciappelli: I think you mentioned in the description of the, of the podcast, this power discovery, right? So can you ma'am, can you go a little bit deeper into into that? Like, what, what, what is this kind of power that people can discover throughout the journey?
[00:21:58] Miriam Plavin-Masterman: Well, sure. So some of the examples that we've, we've learned and actually all of the people that we've interviewed have this through line of empathy.
For the people that they're trying to help, even though they're putting these people in what to us would seem like very challenging situations, that process, the process of presenting your idea, refining it, being challenged. That's a process of discovery that all of the people that we've been interviewing are doing for others.
And there, so they're combining this challenge, but with this empathy, this it's, the goal is to help people sort of transform themselves.
[00:22:32] Alejandro Juárez Crawford: And it goes back also to We were joking about Bilbo Baggins and the Shire at the beginning of this, with that Hero's Journey. The reason those books, I think along with the Harry Potter books are the books that human beings have chosen to read most in all of history, right?
So the exceptions would be like books that are religious books or books by Mao, right? But the books that people have read on purpose and for fun are books that are that are about unassuming people. They're not about the powerful wizard, really. They're not about the great fighter, really. They're about the little hobbit.
The person, the reason we love those stories, I would argue, goes way back into how value has always been created by human beings. And I think there's a risk that That we forget and we say, Oh, we're going to try something totally different and we're going to see what happens if it's not the usual suspects who are creating the future.
Wait a minute. The good stuff has always been created when we went beyond the usual suspects. And if you think about, um, the work that Acemoglu and Robinson did in Why Nations Fail, the greatest risk now is that we start to narrow that because we forget where it came from in the first place.
[00:23:56] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah, it's, it's definitely the, the origin story that changed when he's the underdog, the one that you don't expect to.
Because I feel like everybody feels like that, you know, like everybody may feel like the opportunity hasn't been given to them. So, um, are you focusing on specific topics, specific industries, or when you have this conversation, or? Are you going to touch many, many different aspects? I'm talking about environment.
I'm talking about education. I'm talking about, I don't know, what, what, what is your, what are the, the, the topic that you're going to touch throughout the podcast?
[00:24:41] Miriam Plavin-Masterman: So we have clusters of different topics. Um, the first set of topics is called For Us, By Us. So it's really these people enabling the local problem solving to seed and take root.
Um, But we also have topics on climate and remaking the future. We have topics like climate and the public health crisis. So we're really getting into things about the environment and the impacts on people. Um, we're talking about leaders beyond the usual suspects. So really diving deep into these different pieces of the puzzle, but the goal being you don't have to listen to kind of each set to get an overall sense, but you could pick up sort of a set of leaders beyond the usual suspects and get a flavor of the kinds of change that we'd like to make, for example.
But, or you could pick up climate and public health crisis and be like, what do I do now? And then hopefully listen to leaders beyond the usual suspects and be like, see, there's an answer. Like, we're not just going to scare people you. I think the podcast is actually quite optimistic, um, even though we deal with some weighty topics and some relatively like frustrating or difficult topics.
[00:25:49] Alejandro Juárez Crawford: Agreed.
[00:25:50] Marco Ciappelli: Good. And how about the audience? Because I always, I always think like when you're writing a book, even if you're writing it, the story for yourself or you're painting something for yourself as a true artist, right? Like you don't, you don't worry about is it going to sell? But nowadays, You know, even if it's not something you sell, there is social media.
There is, you know, you, you wanna please someone, but hopefully you stay honest to, to what your art is. So turn that into a podcasters or storytellers like you guys. Uh, who are you thinking your. Ideal audience is going to be and I know everybody wants to everybody. I want my But starting with what you have in your mind who are you doing this for mainly
[00:26:42] Alejandro Juárez Crawford: we've actually put a good bit of thought Into this and the first thing I would mention is that there is a ton of data about The growing interest in everything from social innovation all the way through to, um, changing the way things work to avert the climate disaster.
And we are addressing Not a made up hybrid audience, but a burgeoning convergence. There's a mouthful. The burgeoning convergence. We are addressing several things that are coming together very rapidly. Where, for example, you have majorities of young people around the world who are now saying that their greatest concerns are climate.
You have rising generations that are saying, Wait a minute, we don't want the old career ladder. The way I interpret it is you handed us broken systems here. We have in every industry and in communities, companies, schools, you have this burgeoning interest in social innovation and entrepreneurship. This awareness.
Even in education as hidebound as it can be that we need to start looking at Not just rehearsing the way things were done yesterday because they're not working But trying our hands together on the way things could be done. So that audience Is it doesn't fit a classic? Here are a bunch of, you know, people between the ages of 33 and 45 who make 120, 000 a year and really want a Rolex, right?
Forget that. This is about a, uh, a number of converging factors around the world that folks are super hungry for ideas on. Um, and that's not something we made up. The cool thing, and we've had the privilege of. being funded to do research around people around the world is that when folks are exposed to what we're talking about, whether they're one of the Nelsons, the people that um, work in the BN Nelson Foundation in one of our, the BN Nelson movement, one of our recent interviews in South Africa, or they're someone studying at a, at American University of Central Asia, another one of our recent interviews in their social innovation lab of Kyrgyzstan.
In either case, You have people who are, when given the experience of saying, wait a minute, let's make something new. They, they don't just rise to the occasion. It's like splitting the atom. All this power is released. Just one other note, to give this flesh, as it were, um, and you'll see that that's almost an unconscious pun.
Today, I got a WhatsApp message. There's a group in Dhaka, Bangladesh, um, that Um, took part in some of this work. They, um, worked with Sebastian Groh, whom I mentioned. They used the RebelBase platform, um, which is the software that we've all developed to enable people to do this stuff. And they created an innovation called RINDCO Leathers, right?
And this is a, um, This is leather alternatives developed using local, um, uh, abundant plant sources and materials. And this is not folks that just said, hey, wouldn't it be great if we had plant based leather, right? This is folks who are busy figuring it out and they just got more funding. They won a competition in, in the fall.
They just got money, um, from H& M and others. And we can have a separate argument. Um, how prepared a funder like H& M is to be part of the solution, but that is folks who through this process are finding their power and I would argue can lead the way for the incumbents and help them change too.
[00:30:56] Marco Ciappelli: Ma'am, do you have the same audience in mind?
[00:30:58] Miriam Plavin-Masterman: I think mostly yes. I think the other thing that we're hoping is just the stories that our interviewers Our interviewees, rather, are telling people are just interesting enough for people to want to learn more about them. So, and to say, Oh, maybe I could do that in my neighborhood, or I could make my version of that work for me.
So that's the second piece of someone who's like, I kind of think I want to fix something, but I don't really know where to start. And I don't even really know what I want to fix. But maybe hearing one of these people talk about a similar problem that they solved, sparked something in someone else who didn't even know that they were a problem solver until they heard it.
So that's, that's my hope too, is that it's not just people like Alejandro talking about people who don't even think of themselves as entrepreneurs until maybe they hear something that sparks.
[00:31:48] Marco Ciappelli: Right, right. So let's take the last five minutes or so to, to talk about the importance of Storytelling, right?
Because that's what I love. I mean, I come from advertising, so even a story that you can tell in, in a headline and a sub headline as a copywriter or, uh, you know, like in a, in a, in a short 30 seconds ads, I mean, you kind of want to tell the full story because it's the difference between Capturing the audience, portraying your brand, or making the sale, ultimately.
And again, either you're selling to change the world, or you're selling a product, right? A consumer product. Your goal is still to convince. Now, one may be a better, more, you know, honorable things to sell than the other, but still, you need to kind of Lever that emotional aspect that, you know, why the Hobbit goes on this journey, right?
What moved them and, and, and what you're moved by that now doesn't need to be a trilogy or it's a sixology or whatever you call it. But, uh, so storytelling, you have a great idea. You need to find founding, you need to convince government, whatever, like, Tell me, what's a good story to move? And that's a question for both of you.
[00:33:16] Alejandro Juárez Crawford: Let me make a segue first with Brian Cole Leathers, right? And I'm going to correct that the funder that just, um, funded their pre seed research is H& M Foundation and Bill Blanco Desch. Those people, first of all, became the stars of the story, right? By creating another vision. But they weren't able to, we talk a lot about doing it, right?
They had to do it. And then they need to find compelling ways to talk about what they're doing to people can who can help them succeed in doing it. Right. The legendary definition of entrepreneurship that I often cite is Howard Stevenson's. It's the pursuit of opportunity using resources beyond your control.
Right. And part of that is being able to tell a story. About why what you're, this experiment you're doing can have an impact and can matter. But there's another side of this that I just want to highlight. There's a wonderful social entrepreneur called Sakhi Ataye, who created Kaj, which is a non profit that has been successfully enabling Afghan women, who are currently prohibited from pursuing education in country, to gain that education.
And one of the elements of Sakhi's vision that is most, um, powerful for me is that the whole point of this is yes, to be able to pursue your education, but it's also about the voices. Of the people that Kaj is serving and enabling because without their voices and their stories, we hear this narrative.
How many times have you thought about the news in Afghanistan recently, right? It was a new story. Now, you're not going to see much about it in the front pages, but the story didn't stop, didn't stop with, um, the, uh, Taliban retaking Kabul. For each of those girls who needs to fulfill her potential, there are people like Saki who are both building and telling.
If I could say it in a nutshell, it's that we've got to cultivate those two things together.
[00:35:35] Miriam Plavin-Masterman: I guess all that I would add to it is any pitch that we would make, any story that we would tell to government is the story of innovation and is what drives countries forward. It just is. And the more we can get people to think about innovating, even in ways that are quite small, the more we build a culture of experimentation and trying, the more we continue to kind of fulfill the promise that our country made to ourselves when we tried to found.
A separate country, right? We continue to move forward. We continue to try to improve to be more perfect. Not perfect, but more perfect. You know, we can do better.
[00:36:13] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah. And let's not forget that , philosophically speaking and ideal is never meant to be rich, right? Because Right. Things change. So we're always on a constant change and, and I think that will feel what drive that is that.
What if instead? What if I could do it better? Maybe not for me, better for me, but also maybe next time it should be better for someone else, better for everybody. So, um, I think with this, I'm going to just invite people to listen to the first episode or the second or the third, wherever you're listening to this.
I don't know. You may be listening three months after that we recorded and there is a ton of what if instead episodes on the podcast and, uh, There will be links underneath here to learn more about Alejandro and Mim, and I just want to thank you both to find the time to spend with me, and I hope we can have more conversation.
Maybe the next one is about your book coming up. You want to, you want to throw a tease on that one, Alejandro?
[00:37:17] Alejandro Juárez Crawford: Let's do it this way. So what we've mentioned, we've mentioned problem solvers. on this call. First of all, we place the focus on them. So, if you're interested in what Sakhi is doing with KAJ, look it up.
KAJEducation. org. It's K A J Education. org. I have no stake in this. All right. If you're interested in what Ryan DeColethers is doing, go on Instagram. And it's R I N D C O. Leathers out of Dhaka, Bangladesh. So first of all, we place the focus on them. And that is the segue into the book that the great Mimpleven Masterman and I are developing, and it's called One Size Fits None.
And it looks at the models that lead us to create unresponsive systems. And that includes frustrating systems. I'm lost in my hospital. I can't figure out how to get somebody to deal with my device. These are just throughout technology and I would argue that we're going further and further into funding systems that treat you as an edge case.
Meaning an afterthought, okay, and we're making a connection between the increasing effort to fund those models, which make nice flywheels and wheels and hockey sticks in one sense, and our failure to create responsive models. What we build, which we think is exacerbating our inability to address climate change so that we as human beings are in love and formulation, like folks with a bomb about to go off in our building, who are standing around talking about.
whether we can have better tea or something like that. The tea part wasn't Hunter.
[00:39:19] Marco Ciappelli: Well, that sounds like a good conversation for my other show, Redefining Society, because it fits technology, it fits, uh, it fits into the societal vision. And of course, with your background, there is no question that it's going to be a great conversation.
So I want to say goodbye, everybody, to stay tuned with Audio Signal Podcast, but also to check The redefining society one and of course the what if instead podcast so stay tuned There'll be much more many more stories coming up to you and meme and alejandro. Thank you so much Bye. Bye everybody.
[00:39:55] Miriam Plavin-Masterman: Thank you
[00:39:56] Marco Ciappelli: Thank you marco.
What a pleasure