Part 1
Restructuring Institutional Norms
The institution in these chapters refers to an institution of practice. The practice mostly involves those that limit personal or economic freedoms and encourage and support traditional thinking that stifles new and creative ways of relating to the ever-evolving world we live in. As the world progresses ever more rapidly, why are human rights, economic rights, and ecologic imperatives lagging so far behind? Why are so many institution and industry norms still responsible for marginalizing huge portions of the world's inhabitants, and how can we provide or create access to opportunities that would add value to the lives of those who are discriminated against and disenfranchised?
In re-creating an established societal or cultural norm as well as an industry practice in some way, shape, or form, each of the Fellows in this section asked those big audacious questions. They were able to channel their indignation, disappointment, sadness, or anger into a response that satisfied their sense of equality and fairness and fueled their transformation into global citizenship.
Here are four examples of industrial, institutional, and age-old practices that got rethought, reinvented, revamped, and ultimately validated as a new way of doing business.
Why is it so difficult to change social and institutional norms? It's because no one recognized a problem as an opportunity—as in the story of the Rickshaw Bank in Chapter Three. It should be relatively simple to make change in such cases, but not always. More often, someone benefits from keeping the situation the way it is, and the best approach is negotiation—figuring out how to share some of the benefits of the change. For example, in Chapter Four, Women's Human Rights, when a woman's husband dies, she becomes available for other people to take advantage of—whether as her mother-in-law's servant or her brother-in-law's de facto sex slave. But these are circumstantial situations: Any woman could become a widow; any man could die and leave his wife as a widow in the same dire situation. Getting people to see the situation from a different point of view is key—whether from the point of view of society as a whole, or from the point of view of “this could be me.”
And then there's the situation where some people actually do benefit, persistently. There again it's a question of negotiation, pitting the interests of a larger number of people, or of society as a whole, against those of specific groups or individuals. How can you share the benefits of the change? The allocation depends in part on who has power, and in part on fairness. Of course, outsiders may differ on what is fair. We are operating in the real world here.
So, in the end, the challenge is deeper: We need to change how people think: not just what they notice, which is hard enough, but also their perceptions of justice and propriety. In many cases, such as ineffective education, few people benefit from the current situation, but they just can't imagine things any other way. They think that the current order of things is the right order of things. I call that the haircut problem—a well-known phenomenon in certain segments of certain societies. Tell someone that you like their new haircut, and they immediately think: “I must have looked horrible before or they wouldn't have said anything.”
Anytime you prefer a new haircut to the old one or anytime you ask a society to change, you are implicitly criticizing the way things used to be. People don't like being told they are not perfect—especially by outsiders. If you call their basic assumptions into question, you are telling them that they have been wrong or unjust, prejudiced or ignorant. The trick is to honor the past (or the present) while talking about the benefits of the new arrangement. That can be hard to do. It takes not just cleverness but also courage—even as you lead. The people in this section have that courage.
Esther Dyson is a former journalist and Wall Street technology analyst who has created several well-known publications on technology, along with the successful PC Forum conference. Dyson and her company, EDventure, specialized in analyzing the impact of emerging technologies and markets on economies and societies.