Chapter 11

R&D for New Social Systems

Perhaps the most important reason for developing common business model language across public, private, nonprofit, and for-profit sectors is that transforming our important social systems (including education, health care, energy, and entrepreneurship) will all require networked business models that cut across sectors. We need new hybrid models that don't fit cleanly into today's convenient industry sector buckets. We already see for-profit social enterprises, nonprofits with for-profit divisions, and for-profit companies with social missions. Traditional sector lines are blurring. We're going to see every imaginable permutation and will have to get comfortable with more experimentation and ambiguity. Economic prosperity and solutions for our big social system challenges requires business model innovation across sectors. Transforming social systems won't happen by actions taken independently within public or private sector silos but by reimagining and experimenting with new social systems that cut across both in order to deliver value to the patient, student, citizen, and consumer.

Just like organizations need to do R&D for new business models to remain competitive in the twenty-first century, communities also need to learn how to experiment with new social systems. Countries, states, and local communities should create the conditions to enable new social system experimentation. Every community should have a business model innovation factory. ...

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