Posts by Bob Lamb, CEO & Co-Founder
[Cases] Climate Action Model: Agricultural Pilot
THE NEED. The ministry of agriculture of a large democratic country wanted to incentivize farmers to adopt sustainable practices—but couldn’t figure out why prior efforts had failed or backfired. OUR APPROACH. The minister’s consultant hired us to make sense of the problem’s complexity. We incorporated the perspectives of policy makers, industry executives, activists, and scientists…
Read More[Cases] Climate Action Model: Proof of Concept
THE NEED. The climate debate is highly polarized. The more advocates inform, the more opponents deny. The more some push for action, the more others oppose action. Current approaches are not always effective—and sometimes backfire. OUR APPROACH. We brought together cross-disciplinary experts in the tools of science, story, simulation, and strategy. We facilitated experiments in…
Read More[Cases] Catalyzing Collective Insight: Advocacy Coalition
THE NEED. A certain industry’s practices were putting communities at physical risk, and a global coalition of advocacy groups devoted to solving the problem had not found a way to mobilize change. The movement was fragmented, demoralized, and directionless. OUR APPROACH. We held semi-structured conversations with core leaders and observers to gather individual stories and…
Read More[Cases] Getting Stakeholder Buy-In: Economic Opportunity
THE NEED. Top leaders in a post-industrial city were willing to invest resources into economic development—but had competing visions and plans. The barriers to progress were complex, and collective progress was slow. OUR APPROACH. We engaged well-positioned corporate, foundation, and nonprofit CEOs in interactive and tactile exercises to demystify the complexity and unify their goals.…
Read More[Training] No Data, No Problem: Extracting Insights from Data-Poor Environments
It’s an article of faith among social impact leaders that you need good data if you want to build models or design programs that solve hard problems. For many of the most challenging problems, however, there simply is no data available, or at least not enough of the kind of data needed to plan or…
Read More[Training] Systems Change for Social Impact: Sustainable Results and the Social Action Life Cycle
Large-scale social change is so hard that few people working for social good can focus on more than a small part of the bigger problem. The result: year after year, the problem persists, root causes are never fully addressed, and people working to solve it resign themselves to short-term fixes and partial solutions. In this…
Read More[Training] Getting Over Ourselves: How Our Own Systems for Aid and Impact Hold Back Success
The world’s greatest challenges—climate change, social conflict, species extinction, human trafficking, homelessness—are caused by what scientists call complex systems, where a large number of interacting components (social groups, emotions, technologies, beliefs, money, natural resources, etc.) make it very difficult to find lasting solutions. But even when people take that complexity seriously enough to identify promising…
Read More[Training] Zoned Out: Hidden Risks for Communities and Investors in Opportunity Zones
Opportunity Zones, created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, are touted as a win-win: in return for generous tax breaks, investors finance community-development projects in neighborhoods facing economic challenges. There is already some concern, however, that wealthy investors will end up with convenient tax havens without actually improving the lives of lower- and middle- income…
Read MoreWe Built Momentum in 2018
Happy new year, everyone! This past year has seen us build momentum on a number of fronts: We’re very excited that Arpitha Peteru became the Foundation for Inclusion’s President and cofounder, bringing with her years of experience in consulting, coalition building, and philanthropy focused on social justice, hate speech, and violence prevention, among other talents. We…
Read MoreWhat Problem Does FFI Solve?
Along with “What exactly… IS the Foundation for Inclusion?” the question of what problem we solve is one we get asked a lot. It’s sometimes hard to explain, because the answer isn’t quite as simple as “mass incarceration” or “sex trafficking.” Those are social problems we help other organizations figure out how to solve collectively,…
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