Seeing People, Building Resilience: How SecondMuse is Encouraging Humanity-Forward Economies
It is becoming more widely realized that putting people and the planet first does not have to hurt financial prosperity. In fact, it’s been proven it can do just the opposite. This for-good model is sweeping the world and fueling the mindsets of entrepreneurs, organizers, and leaders, creating an imperative to put the wellbeing of humanity at the forefront. “If you’re truly going to get the economy working, you have to be more inclusive,” says Carrie Freeman, co-CEO of SecondMuse, a global accelerator that works to build economies that honor people and community.
In many ways, Freeman is at the head of this charge. She and her team at SecondMuse cross the globe (more virtually, these days) to collaborate with “innovators,” as Freeman refers to them, start-ups, and organizations—including the likes of NASA, The World Bank, and Melinda Gates’ Pivotal Ventures. The ethos of SecondMuse, which is inspired by the Bahá'í Faith, seeks to build systems that engage all people. Their work is as compelling as it is nuanced. The needs to create a map to inclusivity vary with each project, Freeman says, but the common denominator remains the same: to break the paradigms that aren’t working, and put the focus on the betterment of networks and people.
A Conversation with Carrie Freeman
How do you define a resilient, inclusive economy?
In the simplest terms, it is an economy that works for all people and the planet. So, it really works for the benefit of all.
If we look at some of our modern economic theories that we’ve been working on for the last couple of centuries, they have negative externalities, and that was a design flaw. We shouldn't be sacrificing human dignity and disturbing the planet to benefit the economy. It’s a false dichotomy.
The SecondMuse methodology incorporates various sociological, anthropological, and design aspects. Would you walk us through it?
We have fundamental beliefs, in general, about the world. A lot of it is anchored in the power of really engaging people in helping to solve challenges. Engaging everyone with deep respect and love, but also, we’re also looking at what is the role of collaboration. How do we get people to work together to solve things? We have some really high-level imperatives and some design principles that we go about with all of our work.
We also take approaches and take elements from systems thinking; so, really understanding that these are complex systems that we’re engaging with. We look at aspects of human-centered design. Anytime we’re going in to understand community systems, et cetera, we’re really taking research elements from those disciplines to understand the human element as well as the system element.
And then, whenever we are designing things, we are designing from an element of sociology. Looking at: How do communities form? How do people engage with us? How do we increase social capital such that we have a much stronger foundation of social cohesion? We know that everything works better when we come at a collective and community perspective versus an individualist perspective. So much of our economy is so focused on, especially in the west, the notion of the individual as the center. Our belief is that we need to be coming at things from the perspective that we’re relational beings. The more we can come at things from a community perspective and actually design for that, we’re going to be in a much stronger place.
In considering how to weigh individual needs versus collective needs, your work puts a strong emphasis on community. But how do you account for the uniqueness of individuals, as well as different groups’ varying needs?
All of our work starts with a thorough design process; a research process. We have tools and approaches to unearth and understand those relational dynamics and system approaches that impact humans. At the end of the day, it does come back to humans. We look at where we can see holistic trends. For instance, looking at this body of entrepreneurs, or that women have historically been left out of these types of economies. Really understanding it through different types of personas. And also recognizing that we have approaches that we follow, but we really never do a copy-paste. The reality is, communities, industries, sectors, cities—they all have their own uniqueness. You can apply some standardized methodology approaches, but at the end of the day, that system has to look different for those involved. It’s going to look different possibly in New York City than it would in LA or in Bozeman because there are different needs.
We also never think of it as community over individual, because that doesn’t work either. I would say it’s in concert with. How do we create spaces, tools, and practices so that people’s needs can be met.
We’re doing a lot of work right now in adolescence and mental health. When adolescents are in the developmental stage, there are a lot of needs that they have. They are spending upwards of up to nine hours a day on technology, so how can technology be used for that? There’s never a one size fits all.
What would you say to someone who questions the idea of creating more inclusive economies, or perhaps thinks it is too radical?
I don’t think anyone thinks things are really working, especially right now—even the most diehard of that diehard that might think this is radical and that might not like this approach.
A year ago, this might have been a different question. But there is a pandemic. Racial tensions in the US—everywhere. Sure, the spotlight is on the US in terms of the racial tensions, but the reality is there are power dynamics around the globe. Entrenched power dynamics, whether it’s caste systems, or reducing certain women in different economies. So, I don’t think anyone thinks it’s working, which is the short answer.
What I do think that a lot of people don’t understand is that people tend to put false dichotomies on things: It’s COVID or the economy. Well, no, it’s really not. I say that because things aren’t on the extreme.
In general, when we talk about inclusivity, people don’t know how to actually address it in their organization or their community. What does that really mean? Say I’m fully bought in conceptually: But how do I do that? How do I hire to promote more inclusivity? How do I design my programs to promote more inclusivity? People truly don’t know how to do it very well because there are not a lot of best practices. We’re doing work in gender equality and we’ve had leading corporations say to us: “We’ve tried, but will you just give us a blueprint? Will you just tell us what to do?”
I also think there’s another group of people that don’t see this as high of a priority. They may conceptually get it, but they don’t place as high a weight on it. There are very few people that I think would just flat out say, that’s a bunch of BS, I don’t believe it. The good news is that I don’t think a lot of people truly think it’s radical anymore. It’s just beyond them to actually solve. Maybe I have a very optimistic view of the world, but doing this work, you have to.
To learn more about Carrie Freeman and SecondMuse, visit: secondmuse.com.
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