Announcing: School of Wise Innovation🕯️
📣 Starting a new educational initiative
If you made it to the end of my last piece (🥹 The Proudest Moment of My Career), you’re aware that my education work incubated at Center Humane Technology is spinning up into an new organization called School of Wise Innovation!
I wasn’t planning on starting something new. But it’s really a continuation of work I began three years ago with Path of the Humane Technologist. Which is connected to questions and visions I’ve been nurturing for the better part of a decade now.
To the many of you who have been following my journey since Siempo, this next chapter may come as no surprise 🤭
School of Wise Innovation catalyzes deep learning experiences
Around wise and responsible initiation and innovation
For maturing innovators and the next generation
🏫 So, what is it?
We envision a world in which innovators and their innovations are in greater alignment with all life.
It’s certainly a kind of school. But it’s already starting to serve as a think tank or research institution. A community or guild. A publisher and innovation lab. It probably won’t fit very neatly into a box…
It’s an exploration of rich themes and questions such as:
The process for bringing ideas into the world is begging for re-imagination. How do we innovate in ways that don’t reproduce the conditions that nourish the dominant tendencies that got us into such a mess?
Human development is the elephant in the room when it comes to calls for responsible innovation. What is the adequate training, initiation, and deceleration programming for innovators to be fit to wield powerful innovations?
2024 will be a year of experimentation and learning. Virtual courses with world class faculty, IRL workshops and retreats, research into perplexing tensions, media that sings an octave above the noise, novel tools and templates to support wise innovators. We’ll learn a lot in this first year that will inform what’s next.
Check out to WI Incubator for potential projects on the horizon. Resources, Services, Research, Events, Media, Courses. Is there anything you’d like to collaborate on?
Check out the WI Library for curated experiences and resources in the ecosystem. Aware of high quality innovator-oriented retreats, educational resources, coaches/consultants/therapists, challenges and practices? Submit here!
🎨 What’s the vibe?
I care a lot about the energy that goes into the mix here, having learned time and again that HOW you do something is as important as WHAT you do. The ends don't justify the means, because there are no ends, only means. Process is purpose. Product is purpose. Some may refer to this as embodiment, integrity, or alignment.
SWI aims to be:
Aspirational and solution-oriented, while not naive to material realities and incentives
Practice-what-we-preach, without getting stuck in perfectionism
More “Yin”-oriented to adjust for great imbalance, without exiling the “Yang.” Balanced and integrated.
Welcoming and accessible, without sacrificing depth and hard conversations. Calling up > judgemental.
Nuanced and integral (have you been on social media lately? 😖), while standing firm in moments that matter. Epistemic flexibility, curious > prescriptive.
Creative and agile, without subordinating rigor
Collaborative and inclusive, without trying to please everybody
It’s a beautiful context to practice wise leadership and innovation ourselves, as an organization that is creating new products and services. During this fertile early stage I’m thinking about how we might be more joyful, just, and effective if we were:
Living and working in greater alignment with natural cycles: day, week, moon, season, sun, and shmita
Minimizing burnout, urgency mindset, and following the impulses of personal wounds
Empowering accountability, integrity and safety stakeholders from the get go
Working with organizational development partners before business-as-usual power dynamics arise
Acting as a trustworthy and collaborative ecosystem partner
Creating regular integration time and space, especially after big moments
I’m reminded of Bayo Akomolafe’s provocation: “Part of crisis is way we are responding to crisis.” To be honest, this fall I’ve been going a little faster, headier, and lonelier than desired. I’m learning, and will keep trying my best to adjust when I fall into old patterns. Giving special thanks to wonderful mentors and teachers I’ve been leaning on more than ever this season 🙏
🙏 Inviting Support
I feel the edginess of launching this new thing, that I got close to building several years ago, but didn’t feel quite ready. The world wasn’t asking for it as loudly then. I didn’t feel as supported and empowered then. Things are different now.
While building SWI feels relatively easeful (I’ve been involved with starting enough new things to have good intuition for how to get off the ground), it still takes a whole big village.
I am writing to ask for your support in activating School of Wise Innovation. Support may look like many different things:
Follow Along | Subscribe to the School of Wise Innovation Substack here (email newsletter). Over time, I’ll share less SWI stuff on this personal Substack.
Join the Community | I’ve setup a HyLo (a more humane tech community platform) for connection and discussion, though I won’t be actively facilitating or moderating conversation there for a few weeks
Guidance | I’m welcoming advice and ideas on building an educational institution at this unique intersection of disciplines.
Accountability | Please share reflections if there’s something that you experience as out of integrity in me or the school. I am evaluating structures to make this kind of invaluable feedback safe, easy and effective to share.
Collaborate | Welcoming partnership on operations, development, org management. Pedagogy and instructional design. Graphic design and media production. Marketing and community. Research and more. Check out some immediate volunteer opportunities here.
Importantly, there is a broader ecosystem emerging that is energized and exploring building things out! DM if you’d like to join a newly formed online group of folks who are passionate about contributing to this collective effort.
Spread the Word | Who else ought to know about SWI? What communities and teams are hungry for this? Who else is working on wisdom schools for technologists?
Feel free to reply here directly! I may be a little slow to respond, as I’m heading to India and China for a month ✈️
🌱 Donating
SWI is on the non-profit track, planning to resource itself through a combination of course/event revenue and philanthropic support. I am ecstatic to count one of the co-founders of social media giant Pinterest as our very first donor!
At this early stage, I’m less focused on meeting a fundraising goal, and more about having your vote of confidence, no matter the amount. Of course, larger amounts would grow our capacity to further this mission, and I’m happy to share more of our strategy and needs upon request.
But I feel just as jazzed about small gestures of “Hey friend, this is dope and important. I’m rooting for it and I believe in you. Thank you!!”
Will you help lay a brick for a beautiful foundation?
Donations are tax-deductible. You can give here via credit card, Venmo, Paypal, Bank, even stocks and crypto. Forwards and intros to potential funders are also deeply appreciated too - here’s a two pager for referene.
School of Wise Innovation will be fiscally sponsored by my dear friend Gabi Jubran’s non-profit HAPPI (Helping Awesome People Prosper Intentionally), a 501(c)(3) on a mission to cultivate healthy communities and cultures that help people and planet prosper.
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for your consideration 🫂
Lots more to share. I’m trying to practice writing more concisely 🤭
Perhaps what I’m most excited about is getting to learn and grow alongside with you!
May this school be a great gift to the world in these troubled times, catalyzing the long term culture change that is necessary for technology to support life.
With so much gratitude for all the known and unknown ways you have supported me and the possibility of this work to flourish in the world,
Andrew
Excited to follow how this comes into being! Thanks for following your wise whispers from the heart <3