Digital Innovation & Entrepreneurship
MEASURING SOCIAL IMPACT
T wo trends are increasingly shaping firms’ strategies and fortunes. One is technology, with AI dominating the thoughts of executives, policymakers, and commentators alike. The second is social and environmental impact, with current progress falling well short of that required to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals in 2030. These are not easily reconciled. Technology such as AI is something of a double-edged sword. It provides unprecedented opportunities for growth and prosperity on one hand, but creates significant challenges for business and society on the other. Our research indicates that executives are concerned about the wider effects of emergent technology. But a glaring gap in their strategy toolkit often limits their ability to make social impact evaluation part of their operations and product or service development. With so many companies investing heavily in AI technology and adapting their business models, we developed the Social Impact Strategy Analysis (SISA) tool, following dozens of workshops with 500 stakeholders at a Fortune 50 technology corporation in Silicon Valley, California. The SISA methodology can be used to evaluate plausible risks and benefits associated with AI (or other emerging technologies) across a range of factors such as environment, energy, and society. It is a flexible tool that can be used as an individual or group process to investigate impact on local communities and society in general. Crucially, it is an open process designed to incorporate a range of
Is your AI strategy sustainable?
accidents and healthcare costs against predicted job losses. The final step is to summarise the aggregate results of the SISA exercise. A simple way of doing this would be to use a risk-benefit scorecard covering all the factors. Adopting an open approach to strategy is a fundamental part of the SISA methodology. Rather than top-down decision-making, the aim is to design a bottom-up process. Include a range of stakeholders, from frontline and mid-level staff in other areas of the organisation to suppliers, customers, regulators and government agencies. As well as accessing specialist knowledge, this can create buy-in for a proposed strategy, identify blindspots, and mitigate risk. It is unlikely that any single tool will solve all the strategy challenges an organisation faces. However, adopting an open approach alongside the SISA tool should improve the overall quality of strategy development. It provides organisations with a means of evaluating, representing, and sharing the potential impact of interactions between technology and relevant social factors. Introducing emerging technologies into all aspects of our lives could exacerbate problems within the current capitalist system. But providing the people affected by these technologies with an opportunity to influence their development and use is likely to benefit creators, consumers and society more generally.
by Sotirios Paroutis & Luciano Oviedo Use this tool to find out
stakeholder perspectives, including affected communities, before any innovative technology is deployed. Once the challenge or opportunity has been identified, the SISA strategy can be divided into three stages: the initial setup, understanding the value ecosystem, and the social impact factor analysis. The initial setup consists of four steps: the selection of participants, prioritising social factors for analysis, clarifying the use case, and gathering information to be used in the second and third stages. Our methodology is designed to accommodate up to eight relevant social factors that allow discussion about dynamic interplay, rather than the one-way impact of technology. The second stage establishes the context via three questions. Where are we? This maps out the something of a double-edged sword” “Technology such as AI is
existing landscape for the specific technology. Where might we go? This explores the evolution of that landscape. Why should we go there? This identifies opportunities in that future landscape. For autonomous vehicles (AVs), for example, the platform landscape might include safety and security, autonomy, intelligent manufacturing, and onboard sensors. Exploring the evolution of the landscape might suggest that a shift from ownership and human control to ride-sharing and autonomous systems is highly likely. Finally, analysis of the potential could outline the economic impact of AVs – an estimated £5.5 trillion in consumer and business products and services. Having established the platform landscape and the organisation’s position within it, the next stage is to analyse the interaction between technology and selected social factors. For AVs, that might include energy and environment, with risk-benefit analysis considering the impact on emissions, energy consumption, and the effects of battery manufacture and disposal. Analysis of economics as a factor might weigh potential benefits arising from reduced
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Sustainable Development Goals
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