Survey on the Evolution and Adaptation of Social Problem Solvers in an Era of Rapid Change

In 2020, the outbreak of the COVID-19 significantly impacted social issues and the people working to resolve them. The starting point of this survey was to understand this impact, consider what we should do now, and communicate the results to society. This survey was conducted by making full use of the connections between ETIC., a non-profit organization, and entities that resolve social issues, as well as the research and analysis capabilities of ABeam Consulting.

Since its founding in 1993, ETIC. has been involved in a variety of sectors, including corporations, governments, and NPOs, by offering practical internships and entrepreneurship support programs, and has created mechanisms to support people who wish to take on challenges.

The outbreak of COVID-19 may be an unprecedented crisis, both in terms of its global scale and duration, and its impact on human lives, lifestyles, and people’s values. However, even since the year 2000, there have been many crises that have had a major impact on society, such as the 2008 financial crisis and the Great East Japan Earthquake. In addition, other than sudden disasters and crises, Japan's declining birthrate and aging population pose an issue, and it is conceivable that the impact on society will increase even more in the future.

In light of these circumstances, we conducted this survey with the aim of indicating the directionality of evolution and adaptation of non-profit organizations, social venture companies, and other entities that work to resolve social issues in an era of drastic change described by the acronym VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity), and of providing suggestions for the realization of that evolution and adaptation.

This survey, utilizing publicly available information and questionnaires, covers social changes and the impact on problem-solving organizations. Through interviews with 28 organizations and companies, the survey examines hypotheses and grasps the actual circumstances based on the voices of those working at the frontlines of social issues. Through these methods, we have identified general suggestions for resolving social issues and summarized them in the results of the survey.

(1) Situations social problem solvers were placed in due to the outbreak of COVID-19
First, in order to look at the current state of the social sector and the impact of COVID-19 from a bird’s-eye perspective, we collected industry data and surveyed the status and efforts of each organization in light of COVID-19. Due to the inability to provide face-to-face support because of the need to avoid close contact with others and the increased difficulty faced by beneficiaries in emergencies, the situations in which social problem solvers found themselves in due to the impact of COVID-19 were sorted into four quadrants according to “Necessity of on-site response” and “Urgency for maintaining lifestyles”.

(2) Four Patterns of Evolution and Adaptation of Social Problem Solvers
Social problem solvers finding themselves in the above situations have evolved and adapted in order to get out of their respective difficult situations. We have divided these into four patterns of evolution and adaptation

(3) Four Key Points for Evolution and Adaptation
From these industry analysis and interviews, we have identified four key points that are particularly important for the social sector to evolve and adapt. For details of each point, please refer to the Survey Report.

(4) Future Possibilities
Through this survey, it has become apparent that in addition to the important points for evolving and adapting, spreading case studies of best practices that emerge in various regions to other regions is a key point for accelerating the resolution of social issues in Japan.

In the past, there was a strong tendency to think that best practices were likely to emerge in urban areas and then be deployed in rural areas. In recent years, however, there has been a growing idea of deploying and sharing best practices and key points in a “Local to Local” way. In fact, there has been an increase in the number of best practices in local regions, and there have been developments by organizations that are trying to spread these.

In addition, it is important to perceive how digitalization and changes in people’s values have accelerated due to COVID-19, and to utilize this to further expand the deployment of best practices from region to region, as well as to create a trend to see this as a turning point to accelerate the resolution of social issues in Japan.

This project was started to ascertain the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on social problem solvers, and was a new initiative in the VUCA era that identified important points for making the activities of social problem solvers sustainable, such as NPOs and social venture companies.

By verbalizing and visualizing the experiences of people working to resolve social issues and the images perceived by individuals, we were able to convert such subjects into “information” that is communicated to many people. We would like to thank everyone involved who cooperated in the interviews.

ABeam Consulting has begun efforts on further surveys surrounding social issues and its next projects in order to further promote initiatives that contribute to the resolution of social issues.
 

Natural disasters and crises such as the pandemic always hit society’s vulnerabilities. The question is what changes should we make to address this? With the help of our pro bono partners, we were able to systematically organize the things we have perceived so far. As the complexity of social issues increases, such collaboration carries heightened importance, and we hope that we will be able to continue working together.