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The Harwood Institute

Last week, Rich Harwood wrote a series of blog introductions on the topic "What is public innovation, and why do we need it now, more than ever?" Today, he wraps up the series by responding to some of the comments he received on his blog, Redeeming Hope.

The Harwood Index
Five Stages of Community Life
Waiting Place : Impasse : Catalytic : Growth : Sustain/Renew

As Rich pointed out in his blog series last week, we need public innovation to create new pathways in public life, but public innovation cannot exist without two essential ingredients: public innovators to drive it, and civic-minded, catalytic organizations to house it, incubate it, and spread it.

Part of the success of both public innovators and catalytic organizations can be measured by their ability to hold a deep understanding of the context of their communities, and to act in a way that aligns with that context.

Through its on-the-ground work, The Harwood Institute has developed a framework for understanding a community's context we call "community rhythms." What we've found is that the reason an initiative my sail in one community but fall flat in another is because all communities have different rhythms, which we've organized into Harwood's Five Stages of Community Life.

Community rhythms is just one of a number of frameworks The Harwood Institute has developed through its work to help people and organizations gain a deep understanding of community life and thus, how to be effective agents for change.

How can you gauge your community's rhythms, why is it important, and most importantly, how can you align your work so that it takes full advantage of your community's Stage of Community Life? These are the kinds of questions we will explore, together, in our Harwood Public Innovators Lab.

The hunger across America for a different kind of politics and public life continues to be strong, as evidenced by people's enthusiastic reception to Rich Harwood's book, Hope Unraveled: The People's Retreat and Our Way Back. In fact, demand for Rich to engage people around his findings and their implications for society has been so strong that we have had to turn some requests down.

This spring through early summer, Rich will be heading to Manchester, N.H.; Austin and Dallas, Texas; Atlanta; Chicago; Youngstown and Toledo, Ohio; Albany, N.Y.; and Clemson, S.C.

If you are interested in learning more about what real Americans are saying about politics and public life, and what you can do to help create new pathways for people to come back to the public square, we invite you to join our efforts.

If you would like to have Rich speak to your organization or in your community, please fill out our online request form and someone will contact you.