As the twenty‐first century winds up its second decade, it’s become more and more obvious – nearly to the point of becoming that rarely achieved thing, utter clarity – that innovation is no longer just a Silicon Valley buzzword. It’s not even just a technology buzzword any more. Organizations of all kinds – business, political, educational, cultural, charitable – know the choice they face is to innovate or to die out. Groups that have social good at the center of their missions, which do so much critical work in the world and are always striving to do more, and do it better, have also realized that this kind of evolution is the key to fulfilling their goals. I’ve spoken to countless organizations of this kind over the years that are eager and ready to embrace innovation. They know it will make their urgent work more focused, efficient, and better directed towards problems that truly need solving. They also know that following a Lean Startup–style process of experimentation will lead them to uncover areas of concern that they might otherwise not discover – an invaluable tool when we’re talking about poverty, hunger, health, safety, and so many other issues that need serious attention. There’s no shortage of good to be done in the world, and no one knows that better than the people who are invested in making social impact.
What they haven’t known, for the most part, is how to start innovating. That’s why Lean Impact is such an important book. Most writing on innovation is aimed at the business world, in which different rules and politics are at play. Lean Impact dives headfirst into the work of social good and walks through its challenges and opportunities to explain how to innovate within them. It’s comprehensive, totally straightforward, and illustrated with great stories about people who are already working in this way. Ann Mei Chang, whom I’ve known for many years, is the perfect person to write such a book. She learned all about innovation in Silicon Valley over the course of a twenty‐year career and then made a truly inspiring pivot into nonprofits and government. As the chief innovation officer and executive director of the US Global Development Lab at USAID, she had the awesome job of overseeing the Lab’s work identifying the kinds of breakthrough innovations that have meaningful impact on peoples’ lives, and also bringing in modern approaches and tools, including technology, to help transform the way development work is done around the world. As she says, she knew she had a lot to learn when she made the switch. She learned it well, and now, she’s sharing that knowledge and experience with everyone who picks up this book.
Lean Impact is full of inspiring stories of organizations pivoting to meet the true needs of the people they serve. They’re set all over the world – Indonesia, Liberia, Uganda, Kenya, El Salvador, India, Bangladesh, the United Kingdom, and right here in the United States. They range from a company that helps immigrants learn English based on data from customers about what they really wanted, to one that has so far provided 12 million solar lights to 62 countries and is aiming for more. There’s a story about how a passion for protecting orangutans led to the building of a local health clinic in Indonesia – a solution that would never have been arrived at without using Lean Impact techniques to discover that the real problem was a lack of local medical services. The list goes on and on: an innovation story that begins with something as simple as a soccer game; the evolution of a company that was founded to provide free eyeglasses into a force for political advocacy and policy change; a story about combating youth unemployment in South Africa; one about easier access to food stamps in California; and another about a housing and services network for the chronically homeless.
Along with all these real‐life examples comes a ton of practical information about methods for working in the current system, new funding models, and even ways to start encouraging change from within. Lean Impact discusses the ways organizations can serve their two very different, but equally important, customers – funders and users – a crucial skill set for success in the world of social good. It also pays close attention to funders themselves – foundations, government agencies, philanthropists, impact investors, and donors – offering tools that will help them direct their aid in ways that best support the projects they’re involved in. A book that explains this clearly and compellingly is a hugely important contribution.
I’ve had many conversations with funders who want to know how they can be more useful. More often than not, when I tell them they need to change the way they give grants and donations by funding actual outcomes rather than giving groups a large sum of money and waiting to see what happens at the end of a year (or two years, or more) they rarely call me again. Until now, this idea, and change of any kind, has simply seemed too radical a departure from the way things have always been done. Lean Impact will make it seem not only possible, but preferable. I’m thrilled to see the ideas in The Lean Startup used in these new, incredibly valuable ways, and to see how Ann Mei has developed and customized them to meet the particular needs of social innovation. Value and growth are the main dimensions of Lean Startup, and now a third one has been added: impact.
Impact is a critically important concept when it comes to social innovation, generally used in the context of measuring whether social interventions do or don’t work. But conceptually, it’s very similar to the problem of measuring success in a business before you have profits. That’s why lean methods are so perfectly suited to this kind of work. The only real difference is that instead of talking about maximizing shareholder value, Lean Impact talks about maximizing social impact. An advance party of pioneers, some of whom you’ll read about here, is already doing this, but we need more. This book is a way to help add to their numbers.
Lean Impact is not only transformational for the social sector, though. My hope is that people in other kinds of businesses and organizations will also pick it up and, after reading about the dedicated people and clear strategies whose stories Ann Mei has gathered, think about how the products and institutions they build affect the world. All of us have more to learn about how we make impact so we can move together into this new era.