How can tech employees steer innovation in the private sector to benefit more people in need? - KeynesYouDigIt/Knowledge GitHub Wiki

Working Executive Summary

LOL this question is TOO BROAD

I use "people in need" primarily to refer to people without financial resources, but keep my mind slightly open to serve people according to the findhelp mission (my current employer).

... to connect all people in need and the programs that can help them (with dignity and ease).

Thiel's famous question - "What important truth do very few people agree with you on?" - The answer to this question might be the same as the answer to this page's Title.

"The access story is finished, the use story is just starting to begin"

General principles applying to all answers

  1. Beware bureaucracy!!
    1. Assuming some kind of change is actually needed, be it attitude, tech, resource allocation, etc, bureaucracy and anything else that protects entrenched thinking may be your enemy!
      1. see zero-to-one, The Innovator's Dilemma,
    2. ((Nepotism is not absent in the private sector - shared meaning can fight it and make you a better company.)) (examples)
  2. The poor will pay for what they value (see Poor Economics)
    1. BUT people in need are not rational consumers: they wont always pay (see Poor Economics) - what other customers
    2. By definition, the poor might not have the purchasing power they need to buy things the do or should value.
  3. Humility, creativity, and optimism are all required
    1. https://github.com/KeynesYouDigIt/Knowledge/wiki/Zero-To-One#the-founders-paradox
    2. Zijek and Hegel's beautiful soul - kinda like a cocky SJW.

Possible answers, not necc mutually exclusive

  1. Control the next step of innovation before we get there

    1. We can do this in existing, non-existing, and kinda-existing markets all around! but we should be clear which it is.
    2. What and why is the next step?
    3. Value Creation, not Tech Creation, is what matters here (see Red Ocean Traps)

  2. Prove that you can actually monetize better if your kinder to people in need

    1. Prove the product is made better when more people use it
    2. Present a wider use of a service as an alternative to "solutions looking for a problem"
      1. TAMs are bigger when we find a way to help people are harder to help
      2. "A strategy that involves turning an industry's non-consumers into consumers means saying no to incumbent customers. "
      3. see Red Ocean Traps, The Innovator's Dilemma
    3. This is the BEST way to win the "mission" issue if you can get everything else inline. Mission is important. (OR DOES IT? read arguments on both sides here....)
    4. Being collaborative can help you win the market, but markets have a natural eroding effect on social cohesion R Wolf
      1. Being the first in the market to increase cohesion creates new markets
      2. Show what could be
    5. While quantitative measures look nice, they are still an abstraction - see Zijek on commodity analysis being like dream analysis. Can we manipulate this in a positive way? Numbers are abstractions!
    6. EMPLOYEE RETENTION. read anything about burnout - meaning is key. WHY is key. (sinek et al)

  3. We can't

    1. Value Capture will always sometimes/often mean a tax on those in need
      1. See general principle 2.2
      2. findhelp is a counter example

  4. Pivot to (or leave and build) products that...

    1. make wealthy customers sponsor something that should be free
      1. Purchasing power is low from most people in need
        1. See general principle 2
      2. People not getting something they need effects broader stakeholders
        1. Insurance companies
          1. Past increases in the prevalence of chronic disease accounted for an estimated $211 billion of the $314 billion increase in healthcare spending in the United States between 1987 and 2000, and thats just one small example, and the same source states "A large proportion of the chronic diseases of concern are preventable... Taken together, the potential leverage of prevention in calibrating the morbidity and costs associated with chronic disease is substantial, potentially averting 70 percent of such cases" ((NOOM should be like... completely free at this point))
        2. Gov'ts
    2. affordable products that increase income
      1. IDE is a pioneer here .... but how are ops going these days?
    3. make complex decisions easier, make managing risk easier,
      1. see Barefoot Hedgefund Managers in Poor Economics

  5. Build platforms that anyone can use to make or do what they want

    1. Seems cool, but seems hard - theres already a ton of OSS out there that could be used for this, but poor people often lack resources to build the skills to take advantage of this
    2. Free code schools are awesome. More software developers from under-served backgrounds is monotonically good, will inform how technology develops (see ODK)

  6. Bust the BS jobs by opening up risk taking

    1. fear of waste produces waste - leading to the BS jobs that are not focused on risk taking and innovation, but rather reporting data that was barely useful before and not useful now.

Brain Dump

Theres a tension between "helping people in need in developed nations v abroad". BUT is there also a SYNERGY? LOOK AT PDD. will solutions out of the """""Developing"""""" world better address the entire population in developed world, rather than having a wealth bias?

Splitting the world into "developed" and "undeveloped" implies that society has reached the end of the future

Microinsurance driven by Mutual aid societies owned by the communities that pay a dividend when successful.