Entrepreneur turned activist Paul Hawken is advancing the idea of “Blessed Unrest”: a global, decentralized network of local organizations united by a common focus on what Hawken calls "the coming world". Absent from the excerpts of his list of over 130,000 such organizations are the baby-boomers' legacy change agents of the 20th century: labor unions mired in post-WWII economic models, non-profits more focused on institutional buildout and donor gratifications than external outcomes, bureaucracy-bound government agencies and NGOs, universities fixated with the prowess of their athletic programs and the magnificence of their edifices, etc. Why?
Is this because Hawken recognizes the inherent contradictions within the idea of establishment change agents? Unrest implies a dissatisfaction with the status quo, while while comfortably-established institutions and leaders want to assure us that they are already delivering the us the best.
The lesson to any enterprise striving for change, including upstart businesses seeking to innovate in their marketplaces, is to look for fellow change agents outside of the established players, no matter now strongly those players self-identify as progressive forces. And because change often starts at the periphery, not the core, don’t forget the potential of contemporary, non-hierarchical communication/collaborative tools to connect and focus diverse change agents.