Community Think Tank
David Armistead and Jon Lebkowsky of Social Web Strategies created this description of a community think tank to guide Green Austin, an informal group of sustainability-focused Austin leaders. This thinking can apply to other groups, as well.
A community think tank is an idea factory, an incubator of new ideas, a forum in which members collaborate to sponsor and perform quality, unbiased research and breakthrough invention to:
- generate creative and empowering new views of critical community
situations - discover new solutions and visions for solutions of emerging
community, regional, and even global problems - define new possibilities for individual and community development
and being - conceive practical pathways, perhaps previously inconceivable, for
community action and engagement - encourage and facilitate community-based interaction to discover and
invent new possibilities for cooperation, collaboration, and
individual and collective action
Important community change usually starts with a new idea. These ideas originate in the interactions of people who choose to come together to collaborate in thinking about and re-inventing community. Thus the most important sources of community change are ideas generated in community think tanks - not academic or research groups, not government or civic bodies, and not politicians or political parties.
What do community think tanks do?
They generate important thinking and promote change. This begins by producing new ideas in creative invention and interaction. These ideas are then circulated through discussions, blogs, papers, presentations, speeches, briefings and reports. The new ideas are then introduced within conversations for policy and planning. And finally they find application in action. Because this all takes time, the work of the community think tank requires a commitment to make and sustain long- term investments in creative thinking and communication.
A community think tank does not require walls or permanent endowments. It is not necessary that all members assemble under one roof. It does however require ego-free participation because the really important ideas will often take a life of their own within the community, leaving the names of the authors, inventors and creators behind.
The community think thank always functions as a fountain of knowledge and social capital creation, as a source of social entrepreneurialism from which value continually flows, enriching the whole community. Because of this, the community think tank can view and run itself as a type of enterprise. It can have plans; raise resources, conduct projects and track results. It can invest its human and social resources in programs and judge success by the return those investments generate within the community. It can engage with experts and scholars as needed, encourage and conduct research, and act as a forum for quality intellectual interaction, creation and invention.
Are we a community think tank? We think so. If so, as a think tank, what do we intend to do?
We believe the world has already entered a profound period of global change. We will inevitably experience a global awakening to the need for a reinvention of human society, from living off of Nature, to living in balance with Nature. This is going to require a complete reconstruction of all our artifacts, of every aspect of how we live and act. In this process there may be serious crises, dislocations, breakdowns and confrontations. There will also certainly be unprecedented opportunities for the invention of whole new domains of prosperity, health, fulfillment and realization of the human potential. All of this is going to profoundly affect our home here, our local community.
Austin and Central Texas are no longer a place distinct from the processes of the world at large. We are involved in every moment and in every way in this sweeping adventure that is the human transition to a sustainable global culture. We believe we will either participate in creating this global reinvention by helping our community become a world center of sustainability thought leadership and creation, or we will be swept aside as irrelevant to the new tides of the emerging world civilization, to become a city and region without sustaining global relevance.
We believe that the BrightGreen group of leaders within the local sustainability community is and will be a critical asset to our community if it elects to function as a community think tank focused on all issues connecting our community to the emergence of the global sustainable society.
We hold that engaging for this is our first order of business.
How may our network be structured to support the realization of this concept of the community think tank?
We suspect that the best structure, to begin, will be a combination of brainstorming sessions and charrette-like gatherings for refining ideas.
