Giving ratings to social inventions

Roger Knights

Adapted extract from a letter to the Institute

The Institute for Social Inventions should rate all ideas for reader-convenience (eg, under each item's title line) on several attributes, to make it easier for reporters, politicians, think-tankers, and bureaucrats to scan quickly through its publications to find the items of most interest to them. Even the ordinary subscriber would find them helpful in deciding what to read. I suspect that most readers pick and choose the items they read, and that they'd appreciate more clues to help them choose than just a title and an eye-catcher quote. In cyberspace, such quick abstracts are more necessary, since the reader may be paying for connect time, and since eye-catcher quotes are not provided. (Among other reasons.) Abstracts could be used like keywords to assist in Boolean searches and gatherings - eg 'gimme all items that have these attributes OR these attributes.'

I list below the attributes I think should be rated. (A combined or overall score might be computed from them, but its exact formula needn't be considered yet.) Readers could critique evaluations in the Institute's annuals, allowing them to be corrected before going into a subsequent encyclopaedia or electronic databank. Ultimately, voting on all attributes, not just on an overall evaluation, might be done by online readers too.

In creating my list below, I borrowed from the criteria list on page 337 of the Book of Visions, and also from 'Diffusion of social inventions' (Book of Visions page 226): 'absence of incompatibility with society's attitudes and mores ... meeting people's immediate and particular needs, being easy to try, and with good availability and clearly observable results'. (The last corresponds to Measurability below.) Five attributes I invented, namely 1 to 3 and 12 to 13. (12 overlaps a bit with 2, and 13 a bit with 3, so some tightening-up may be needed.)

The two attributes immediately below come first because items that pass them often needn't pass the remaining tests. Ie, if an item is sufficiently ingenious, humorous or stimulating (and not too long), impracticality or costs can't bar it. Likewise if an item doesn't need an official OK or funding, but is personal or social, remaining tests are often moot.

Ratings

(1) Ineffable qualities bonus?. Based on intangible factors, such as cleverness, humour, provocativeness, etc. The ingenious 'sequential size boycott' (Book of Visions, page 285) was one such scheme. Some readers are most interested in such striking items. (My favourite nifty intangible is 'Judo'; it uses one egoism against another to counter social ills and promote common goals. Judo-based reforms are self-sustaining and self-correcting.)

(2) Governmental involvement (degree of). Nil' for items that are purely personal (such as the 'Subgenius' and 'Mental strip poker' items in Social Innovations)

Costs and benefits

(3) Risky? Are there unanticipated side-effects, like Constantine's rule that confessions were required to be able to convict? (See Re-Inventing Society, page 266).

(4) Costs Initial / Operating)

(5) Benefits. This incorporates Book of Visions items 2, 6, and 7; ie, Life quality, Lasting results, and Large number benefited, as well as a new item, Size of benefits.

(6) Self-sustainable? (when?) (Soon / Maybe / Mid-term / Never).

Success - how likely / measurable / speedy?

(7) In use already? Eg, is it standard in a pilot project or foreign country? (These might be the most acceptable to mainstream bureaucrats, think-tankers, etc)

(8) Easily Testable? Ie, are cheap pilot projects or neighbourhood scale experiments possible, and/or is incremental implementation no problem?)

(9) Measurable? Can the benefit be quantified, especially in cash terms?

(10) Fast-acting?

Approval - how likely (scoffers vs. boosters)

(11) Blockages penalty. Bureaucratic/legalistic entrenched impediments that must be modified or removed to allow use, or even trial.

(12) Carrot-and/or-stick indicator. This indicates whether an innovation relies on rewards (the marketplace) or rules. Presumably, free-marketers and 're-inventing governmenters' would be attracted to carrot-flagged items.

(13) (High-minded-but-) Soft-headed penalty. This applies to many hopeful/earnest items.

(14) 'Offensiveness' penalty. Proposal provokes thoughtless 'naying' or knee-jerk rejection or cheap laughs among certain groups: disgruntled grundys, or PC-people of all stripes. Alarming to politicians.

Roger Knights, 5446 45th Avenue SW, Seattle, WA 98136-1108, USA (tel 001 206 932 5446; fax 206 932 9324).

Editorial comment

In fact for the 1994 Awards the judges used a fairly arbitrary rating scheme for judging ideas, with each individual judge filling in a chart as follows. First, out of 100, the judge's intuitive response to the idea. Then, out of 20, how novel and imaginative they thought the idea was. Also out of 20, how much progress the idea had already made or was imminently about to make. Out of 25, how likely the media were to lap it up (given that publicity rather than large-scale money is the main help the Institute's awards can offer a winner). Out of 10, what are the scheme's chances of lasting success? Out of 10, if it were successful, to what extent would it benefit large numbers of people? Out of 10, to what extent would it empower people or decentralise power? Out of 10, how much would the award publicity or money help?

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