Are you tasked with entrepreneurial, business, and or socio-economic developmental responsibilities?
Interested to explore valuable ideas on how you can achieve your developmental goals.
For an introductory discussion
Our experience and intuition can be a source of ideas. However, without analysis and critique, these ideas are just intuition taken on faith, a reminder of the need for processes to validate our ideas and thoughts.
The field of social science can be a practical method to validate ideas and beliefs, however as the then chairman of the Social Science Research Council in Britain, Schonfield (1971), reminded us;
What may have led us often up the wrong path is an unwillingness to recognize that in social sciences, it is rarely possible to pose questions and provide clear-cut answers in the same manner as in the natural sciences. Instead of focusing on widely applicable generalizations, social science practitioners must identify and tease out the relationships that have a crucial effect on developmental challenges. To achieve this, they base their work on a sound informed basis that cuts down the reliance on guesswork or prejudices, sometimes used in policy and or developmental interventions.
In essence, the aim is to develop novel (new) ideas based on an increasingly firm factual base. At the same time, we need to be mindful that for ideas to matter (and give a voice to our discontent), they must continually evolve, enabling new forms of thinking that can make sense of our ever-changing human aspirations.
From this, the advantage of incorporating a social science component into any developmental intervention is rather evident. However, as with most things in life, there are also potential downfalls to manage and be aware-off.
There are many excellent social science practitioners capable of picking apart an argument. However, as Baggini (2019) observes; the question remains; do they contribute anything worthwhile in the process, a reference to intellectual game-playing, an empty process of analysis without insight.
He highlights the need for social science practitioners to be mindful of the need for contextual insight in their work, to focus on processes that offer the ability and or prospect to spot what matters contextually, what is really at play or stake in a defined environment.
Baggini reminds us that ideas have histories that are constantly in the making. Indicating that we may have little prospect of coming up with new views fit for recent times unless we are willing to take the time to understand how concepts relate contextually to their time and space. A fruitful idea in one socio-economic environment (entrepreneurial ecosystem) cannot simply be exported or imposed on another without considering the different histories and cultures. The sharing of ideas across socio-economic landscapes may require adaptation. The benefits of understanding an idea correctly in context to a defined socio-economic environment offer us insights into the past, present, and serve as a reasonable indication of its potential future.
In summary, incorporating a social science component into any developmental project can validate our thoughts and ideas on developmental interventions. It offers the potential to transform our ideas into contextual insight that may reveal valuable nuances needed to achieve our developmental goals.
How the world thinks, Baggini, 2019;
The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty, Christensen, Ojomo, Dillon 2019;
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, Rosling 2018;
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, Frankopan 2015;
Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow, Harari 2015;
The Selfish Gene, Dawkins 2016;
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Harari 2011;
Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth, Schor 2010;
Why Africa is Poor: And what Africans Can Do about it, Mills 2010;
Complexity: A Guided Tour, Mitchell 2009;
Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change, Beck, Cowan 2005;
A theory of everything, Wilber 2001;
The marriage of sense and soul, Wilber 1998;
The Making of Modern South Africa: Conquest, Apartheid, Democracy, Worden 1994;
A Green History of the World, Ponting 1993;
The Mind of South Africa, Sparks 1990;
Integral Integrated Insight, Le Grange, Chapter in Enterprising Africa: Transformation through Entrepreneurship, edited by Dobson, Jones, Agyapong, Maas 2020;
Understanding Small Business Growth: Developmental models and the entrepreneurial ecosystem, Le Grange, Dobson 2018;
An investigation of the potential interrelationships between the coping-values of entrepreneurs and the developmental stages of their businesses, Le Grange 2017