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Adas List - Innovation Stories 2015
- 4. @adaslist #innovationstories Pursues a common political agenda or ‘common cause’
- 5. @adaslist #innovationstories Has a visible constituency or membership base
- 6. @adaslist #innovationstories Involves members collectivised in either formal or informal organisations
- 7. @adaslist #innovationstories Engages in collective actions in pursuit of the movement’s political goals
- 9. @adaslist #innovationstories Uses a variety of actions and strategies
- 11. @adaslist #innovationstories Retains some continuity over time
- 13. @adaslist #innovationstories What if all you need is an internet connection?
- 14. @adaslist #innovationstories “As a founder based in semi rural Yorkshire, I don't have much of a local network, so Ada's List is my main route to tips, news, opportunities and discussion.”
- 17. @adaslist #innovationstories “ Though the building is now long gone, it reminds us of ways very big problems often get solved—with collaborations from many disciplines and a willingness to break some rules.” Brian Bergstein, Deputy Editor, MIT Technology Review September 2014
- 18. @adaslist #innovationstories “My lovely little group Just for Founders debuted on Ada’s List with (X) sharing her story. The group has developed and grown and relaunches in September with 3 workshops for bootstrapping founders. I learn so much by listening to others share their stories, with the fails included as well as the good, and wanted to broaden that to the group. It’ll be a podcast launching in the fall.”
- 20. @adaslist #innovationstories “…..they have to engage in the battle of ideas to influence public opinion.” Peter Dreier, E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics & Chair of Urban & Environmental Policy Dept Occidental College
- 21. @adaslist #innovationstories …in order to create Change at Scale
Editor's Notes
- I’d like to start by speaking about social movements, a subject which I actually quite enjoyed when I was at university. Defined as ‘an organised set of constituents pursuing a common political agenda of change over time’, social movements have existed for centuries, with the most well-known including the civil rights movement, women’s liberation and the environmental movement.
- A key part of social movements is collective action - getting together to work towards a common goal. Collective action is of course expedited today because of technology - Facebook, change.org, Twitter, you name it. Politics is a big part of it - Obama’s 2008 win was very much a result of the collective action of a group of people who believed in him, one of whom was actually a co-founder of Ada’s List, Merici Vinton.
- Defining features of a social movement, adapted from ‘Changing Their World: Concepts and Practices of Women’s Movements’, ed. S. Batliwala (2012)
- Ada’s List is therefore really, in essence, a social movement – which perhaps came in at just the right time, which spurred our growth simply by word of mouth.
- Ada’s List started in 2013 on Ada Lovelace Day by 4 of us, as a small group of women who wanted to create a community for other women like us, women broadly working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We strongly felt that in as much as there were some brilliant organisations already existing that put on events to elevate the profile of women working in technology, we’d benefit from an online space to stay connected, swap stories, and grow as individuals and professionals. Very often men do this down the pub - women do too of course - but sometimes *where* you are, geographically and also metaphorically speaking in life - means that you miss out on opportunities or the chance for a chat. Perhaps you live in northern Scotland instead of Shoreditch, or you have children or parents to care for. Why should you be denied opportunities that you shouldn’t, especially if all you really need is an internet connection?
- What began as the 4 of us inviting about 20 or so women we knew in London to a Google Group has grown to over 1200 women all over the world. London takes a huge chunk of the area represented, but the rest of the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Thailand and many countries in Western Europe all make an appearance. So we’re talking about making things possible that actually might not have been before: the cross-fertilisation of ideas across disciplines and geographies.
- And cross-fertilisation of ideas with collaboration of thought, in my opinion, is how innovation happens. Some of you will be familiar with the story of MIT’s famous Building 20, which was also referred to as ‘the magical incubator’. Part of the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it was always intended to be temporary, so never had a formal name, and was originally built during World War II to house the Radiation Laboratory (or "Rad Lab"), where electronics and physics disciplines resulted in some great work - in fact at one point it housed more than 20% of the physicists in the USA, including 9 Nobel Prize winners. When the war ended, it was a space for multidisciplinary practitioners to get together till 1998 when it was demolished.
- For us at Ada’s List, the last couple of years or so have truly been a crash course in how collaboration and innovation happen in a very similar, if digital, way.
- Most important, perhaps, are the intangibles, the multiple connections that are made that make each of us stronger individually as much as together. This is one of my biggest grouses with the industry’s approach to innovation - the marketing and advertising industry in particular. Everything doesn’t need to be a massive project. It could be a small partnership, a relatively small structural change that results in significantly increased efficiency, or a new way of conveying a very simple message. From Ada’s List’s perspective, these multiple nodes are often not necessarily the shiny things to shout about, but we value them immensely.
- I spoke about social movements in the beginning, and I want to conclude by speaking about why it’s important to engage in what Ada’s List calls Change at Scale: changing structures, political process, work culture – by doing what we do for women in tech, we want to change things for everyone. Whatever you do in your day-to-day, working with brands – or not – creating change at scale through communications is I think what we should all aim for.