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People-Powered Innovation: Interview with Robin Chase

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Each Wednesday, we post an interview with someone who is living, exploring, or championing aspects of thrivability – people at the forefront of cultural, organizational, or individual change.

Robin Chase is founder and CEO of GoLoco, an online ridesharing community.  She also founded and leads Meadow Networks, a consulting firm that advises city, state, and federal government agencies about wireless applications in the transportation sector, and impacts on innovation and economic development.  Robin is also founder and former CEO of Zipcar, the largest carsharing company in the world.  In 2009, she was included in the Time 100 Most Influential People.  Robin lectures widely, has been frequently featured in the major media, and has received many awards in the areas of innovation, design, and environment.

Todd Hoskins:  Robin, you’ve been looking at the possibilities of using excess capacity for quite a number of years now.  What is compelling about excess capacity?

Robin Chase:  Excess capacity lets us tap quickly and cheaply into resources that already exist.  We don’t have to pay for the asset, place it, maintain it.  I think about excess capacity very broadly: assets, physical space, temporal space, experiences, expertise, and networks.

Some obvious examples of making use of excess capacity are Wikipedia (excess mental capacity and expertise), eBay (excess junk), Flickr (other people could use your photos), LinkedIn (ditto for networks), CouchSurfing (beds).

Less common examples are Cyclovia in Bogota, Columbia, where excess road space on Sunday mornings led them to shut down 121 km of roads to car traffic and open it up for pedestrians and bikes.  From 7am to 2pm 1.3 million residents go out and play, dance, exercise, and meetup.  It has been an enormous success.  All for very little money and implemented very quickly.

Todd:  Are we cooperatively enabled to apply this excess capacity?

Robin:  Ah, technology!  I love it.  We may or may not be cooperatively programmed, but that is beside the point.  All of the examples I listed don’t require cooperation in the way we usually think of it.

With Zipcar, for example, 450,000 people are using 7,000 cars.  But it is painless.  No one is waiting for someone else or waiting their turn. Through the miracle of technology the sharing is easy and frictionless.  Of course, there are lots of examples that do require some cooperation.  My point just is that this is not required.

Todd:  You are serving on the National Advisory Committee on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and advising on policy issues.  How can our governments possibly become more adaptive and less rigid?

Robin:  Innovation is a country’s lifeblood.  Imagine if our lives stayed exactly the same.  The 1980s forever! (or choose your decade).  On the other hand, people hate change because they can’t quite see the future so it is unnerving.

Big companies and governments (who occasionally respond to their constituents who like the status quo) are not that easy to change.

By enabling innovation — 1) creating a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship; 2) reducing barriers and costs to experimentation; and 3) reducing the costs of the innovation inputs — government can make it possible for people to do the changing themselves.

This committee is specifically looking at ways to improve K-12 and university education to change the culture and provide more opportunities to innovate, making sure that government-funded research that has the potential for commercialization is easier to get at.  We are looking at reducing the effort and time to participate in the US government small business programs and procurement programs, and changing capital incentives for investing in startups.  Lastly, we are looking at ways of celebrating innovation and entrepreneurship.

I am particularly interested in getting more value out of government technology policy and procurements so that we maximize its potential for repurposing by innovators and businesses.  The government is about to make huge investments in smart transportation, smart health, smart grids, smart education.  We can unlock the excess capacity found in government purchases by making them more open.  Open as the default.  Closed proprietary single-purpose purchases need to be argued for.  Open data, open devices, open spectrum, open radio, open networks should be the norm.

Todd:  If we cannot rely on government or big business to facilitate change quickly enough, who can we turn to?

Robin:  People! I think of it as people-powered innovation: collaboration production, collaborative consumption, collaborative infrastructure, collaborative financing.  The excess capacity of individuals (their expertise, networks, assets, time) beautifully leveraged and joined together on the internet will be the most powerful force for change in the next 20 years.

Together, we get incredible speed and scale, at a fraction of the cost, and using resources of all kinds efficiently.  Beginning examples of this — we are in our infancy of this idea right now — include Airbnb and Etsy.  Smart phone apps are an example too. Based on the excess capacity made available in these devices over the last 2.5 years, we have seen 500,000 applications built — primarily by individuals.  Yes, Apple has made out like a bandit, but Android is surging ahead with its reduced tolls.  And hopefully, some of those innovating engineers are making a living and starting some interesting new companies.

Todd:  You’re currently living in Europe.  What are you seeing and experiencing that you would like to bring home to the US?

Robin:  It is totally intriguing to experience firsthand the differences that result from very different government spending priorities. Both systems are imperfect.  France has really terrific transportation, road, rail, and airport infrastructure compared to the US. My ability to move around this city without a car and having so much choice (walk, bike, metro, bus, high speed train, etc) is a great pleasure.

On the other hand, the amount of duplicate forms to be filled out and mailed places — back and forth — is pretty amazing. The value of some of the bureaucracy around opening a bank account, getting an apartment, signing up for a transit pass eludes me. This frustrates me to no end since I’ve experienced the same transactions so easily and quickly in the US.

Todd:  Robin, thanks for making the world a more thrivable place!

Open Wide

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When I was pregnant with my daughter, I was determined to have a drug free and very conscious birthing process. My son had been 10 and a half pounds. Giving birth to him in a handful of powerful pushes both tore up my body and freckled my face with broken blood vessels. I was half dazed with pain-killers, and I was certainly not fully present to the experience.la cuarta ventana

Creative Commons License photo credit: bachmont

How, I wondered, am I going to navigate this better? So I read a bunch of books – on meditation and visualization as well as birthing. One of the relevant things I learned is that we often respond to pain with fear, which makes us contract. In childbirth (and in the body in general) this means that the muscles tighten up. Which leads to more pain, which leads to more tightening… just when we need to be most open and relaxed. We go against ourselves.

I had learned, as a young horsewoman, to relax my body. To send a message to the animal that it can relax too. So I had some small sense of what this was like. For childbirth, I had to ramp that up significantly. I practiced relaxing every part of my body. I did breathing and meditation exercises. I did yoga, hoping to make my body more supple. I wasn’t one of those highly structured people that did things at set intervals, but I kept at it in my meandering but persistent way.

I succeeded. I thought of the pain as warmth, turned it in my mind into warm light. My daughter was born on this ray of light. I do not think of it as pain at all, although you might say my neurons were firing that way. I was very aware and present to it. I was grateful for the gift of her and treasuring each moment (without judgment, for what it was).

Wisdom - Seeds of LightNow I use this process in other domains of my life. When I feel fear and want to contract, I intentionally open and release. When I feel my needs are not met, rather than shutting down or closing up – or telling stories about it – I become more direct and precise in making requests or sharing my experience. Sometimes it takes a little time to turn around, but I always get there.

I get that it seems contradictory. Yet, I have to say it works so well so consistently. That doesn’t mean I don’t experience fear or contraction. I do. It just doesn’t stay around very long. Usually within hours if not minutes, I can shift to being more wide open, curious, and direct.

How do you navigate contraction in your life? How do you transform it? How did you learn how to do so?

Motherhood

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Happy Mother’s Day!

Friday I attended a little performance my daughter and her class did for the mothers. It was, of course, truly heartwarming to see my daughter perform. She loves to sing, and she emanates pride in herself. However, these songs and poems often felt odd to me. One piece talked about Mom being someone who makes cookies. Huh, when was the last time we made cookies together. Sure, we do it sometimes, but this is not what I think motherhood is about. To me motherhood is about deeply loving someone no matter what for who they are at every level in every nook of their being. My children fascinate me. I try to let go of my ideas of who they might become and allow them to be just who they are.

That is not to say that I do not try to shape and guide them. My service to them is to equip them in ways that will serve them and our society (since these things are intricately linked) over the long haul. I try to hold this as a conversation between their being or nature and the way the world appears to work to me. This has nothing to do with the sugar in cookies, right?

My job as their mother is to give them love and support as they navigate the world. As their mother, I strive to empower them with the knowledge, savvy, and joy to move with grace through a complex world.

And you may wonder why this is my approach to mothering… well, because in so many ways, this is what my mother did for me. She had a light hand in my daily activity, offered adoring love and yet held high standards, modeled grace, and she trusted me to navigate my world. Sure, at times she would intervene explaining what she could intuit from a situation. However, most of the time, she let me explore on my own: explore nature, people, myself, our library, my spirituality, and my life path. She and I see two different worlds when we look out from our hazel eyes, and I am sure my children will perceive a world I can’t know from their hazel eyes. She let me inhabit my world, and in turn I try to let my children inhabit their world and their lives fully. And may we each and all serve and co-create a world the future generations can explore too.

To my mother on this mother’s day, for her amazing elegance and grace in navigating her world and preparing me to navigate mine. She already has an abundance of flowers. This gift of care for Mama Lucy and the children she cares for feels like something that my mother will really appreciate with her huge heart. If you would like to create a heart space for an amazing and inspiring mother in your life, please visit http://www.tomamawithlove.org.