What’s missing here? Tech ≠ Jobs in and of itself
Two of the greatest ‘unicorns’ we hold up as examples of awesome startup success stories lack real lasting social value – and quite the opposite:
Facebook long ago abandoned its ‘democratisation of media’ roots to evolve into a pure advertising company. Innovation poster-boys Uber say they ‘help people earn extra dollars’, but pay drivers far below fair value, with an end game of eliminating drivers completely.
Zero-cost replication in tech often means huge returns for some, and precarious returns for increasing numbers in our community, highlighting what can sometimes be an uncomfortable relationship between tech and social innovation. ‘Tech’ startups at face value – are not the solution to jobs creation. In many cases they do the opposite, creating short term jobs before offshoring said jobs and profits (of course there are exceptions..and many are local).
How? They have growth and exit strategies that involve IPOs or acquisitions to.. elsewhere. The founders of these successfuly exited startups do well, and some of them may give back, but the bulk of the money and jobs will also largely go ‘elsewhere‘.. leaving exactly what for our state? This is not a tech startup bashing piece. Tech innovation is a great thing, but we must also be mindful of long term social impact.. it is all about a startup’s intent.. and that’s where social business startups fit in.
The startup trail is littered with examples big and small of startups who want to ‘disrupt’ a system.. only to become part of the same broken system themselves down the track – a system that accelerates wealth concentration and inequality.
Back to the State Budget
A search of today’s Budget papers yields NO result for Social Impact, Social Innovation, Social Impact Bonds or Impact Investment…
There are lots of winners and losers in the budget, but after signalling an intent to “Expand the innovation agenda to broaden its focus from simply technology…social innovation, impact investing” (Treasurer Ben Wyatt at the CEDA Leaders Debate 9 Feb 2017) .. the muted result 6 months later is a little disappointing.
Where does this Budget leave social innovation and impact investment? It leaves WA behind every other state (again) in this crucial policy area..
At last year’s impact investment summit every state was represented and had substantive policies to speak of. I thought a change of government meant our state would finally catch up. Instead, we’re now about 10 years behind the leading states in this space.. and counting.
Hopefully there are some govt policy signals of the social innovation kind still coming after this budget..because..
No government has the answers to fixing our communities’ biggest problems, and the sooner it incentivises business to be part of the solution to these social problems, the better. AND..
If we want our ‘new economy’ to truly disrupt the old system we must look beyond creating digital replications of the same exploitative and exclusionary ‘old business’ systems we are trying to disrupt.