Innovator Insights: Jennifer Bradley, founding director of the Center for Urban Innovation at the Aspen Institute
After spending seven years as a fellow at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program, Jennifer Bradley joined the Aspen Institute as the founding director of the Center for Urban Innovation.
While at Brookings, she co-authored The Metropolitan Revolution (Brookings Press, 2013) with Bruce Katz. The book, which was widely praised and cited, explains the critical role of metropolitan areas in the country’s economy, society, and politics. Jennifer has worked extensively on the challenges and opportunities of older industrial cities and has co-authored major economic turnaround strategies for Ohio and Michigan. She has also written for Newsweek, The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, and Next American City. A former attorney, Jennifer co-authored Supreme Court amicus briefs in cases that affirmed the constitutional powers of local governments and secured greater environmental protections, including the landmark case, Massachusetts v. EPA. Jennifer has a J.D., magna cum laude, from Georgetown University Law Center, an MPhil from Oxford University, which she attended on a Rhodes Scholarship, and a B.A. from the University of Texas. She lives with her family in Washington, D.C.
II: The Center for Urban Innovation defines cities and metropolitan areas as the wellspring of innovation in the US. Cities are also often defined by long histories of structural inequity, poverty, and often segregation. How do you ensure that the emphasis placed on entrepreneurship and innovation serve to address and not exacerbate these issues?
JB: We seek to join the innovation conversation and to show cities and metropolitan areas that their innovation sectors are not complete unless everyone has an on-ramp to the tools, processes, techniques, and supports for formally recognized innovation, and unless recognized innovators are looking to learn from underserved communities. I think a lot of cities want to connect those dots, but don’t intuitively know how. So we try to provide examples and raise awareness. It’s education, issue-framing, and peer to peer connections.
II: How does your experience focusing on networks and ecosystems complement or diverge from Aspen’s elevation of the individual as changemaker?
JB: Some of Aspen’s best-known programs do elevate individuals as changemakers, but we have more than 30 policy programs that focus on supporting networks and ecosystems, and building fields of practice. We find that they are complementary approaches.
II: How important is recognizing structural inequity in this work? In your role, how do you ensure that social justice, equity, and inclusion remain fundamental elements of social innovation?
JB: I have to start that answer by acknowledging that I am still learning from excellent teachers and partners. I keep equity and inclusion fundamental by taking steps to learn from a range of partners, to make sure that I am inclusive myself in who I work with, partner with, invite to convenings, put in speaking roles, seek out as authors. The bottom line goal of the Center is to connect innovation and inclusion, so if I am not practicing inclusion myself, I’m not fulfilling my mission. The word “curation” is terribly overused (as is “innovation”) but one of my main roles is curating, which means making choices about what to highlight, what to lift up, and draw attention to. That’s one of my main avenues for being inclusive and making sure equity is a part of the conversations that I convene or spark.
II: What is your approach to coordinating capital across sectors (governmental, philanthropic, private)? And more broadly, coordinating (human, financial, intellectual) resources and ensure that they are deployed in the way that will have the greatest impact?
JB: I’m going to answer the question I wish you’d asked instead of the one you actually asked. I think your second question goes to the issue of scale, and I don’t know who has figured that out. The intensive incubator/accelerator model is fantastic, but it only serves a handful of people at a time. So the impact is deep but not broad.
I think we won’t know until we start running more experiments, which means that philanthropies, which I think are best positioned to do that, are learning more about what does and doesn’t work and sharing that with the field.
I’d also love for the private sector to step up here as well. Are they really living up to their rhetoric about taking big risks and embracing failure? Are they really following data, or are they relying too much on the ethos of “pattern recognition” without questioning how those patterns arose and what biases they solidify?
II: What does a thriving, healthy entrepreneurial ecosystem look like? What are the necessary ingredients for getting there? (In order to nurture emergent ecosystems, what has to happen? What resources must be in place/ Who must be at the table?) Conversely, what roadblocks are commonly found hindering healthy ecosystems?
JB: one of my favorite books on this subject is by Victor Hwang (who, coincidentally is a friend of mine from high school). He creates a wonderfully elaborate metaphor of a rainforest to describe the ecosystem — what is the canopy layer, what is the understory, etc. I think a healthy ecosystem has sufficient resources, sufficient transparency, sufficient diversity, and permeability — it’s easy to access, to understand, to engage. You need all the right kinds of capital, but also a spirit of curiosity and generosity, people always asking, “Hey, who is not here? How can we bring them in? What can we learn from them? What can we teach?” Robust networks are important, too. Are all the intermediaries, all the capital providers networked so that they are constantly learning from each other? Is there a mindset that a win for one is a win for all? And, borrowing from collective impact, is there some organization or entity that is helping foster unexpected collections and nurturing relationships? Roadblocks include complacency and a sense that there is nothing more to learn, that people already know who the important players are, and that the ecosystem is a kind of members-only place.
II: How do you know when infrastructure support is more important than supporting the individuals operating within it and vice versa?
JB: That’s a great question. I don’t know what the precisely right balance is, and I wonder what it would look like if someone framed the question as both/and, rather than either/or? I would hypothesize that when you hit a road block in terms of growth or inclusion or some other goal, that’s the time to focus on infrastructure investments. I would even broaden it to say that when you want to make a change you invest in infrastructure — and that includes at the very beginning of building the ecosystem.
II: What elements of local infrastructure/ecosystem building are mobile? What parts of the work are uniquely place-based and what can be packed up and used as a template to jumpstart other idling economies? What lessons from elsewhere in the US could be learned and applied in Baltimore?
JB: My general rule is that processes are replicable, specific outcomes and participants are local. I think Baltimore can learn from Cleveland’s network of intermediaries, and the network of funders that support them, but would have to find its own constituent funders and analogous intermediary institutions, for example. I think Detroit is also an interesting case study, as is Oakland.
II: Entrepreneurs often operate wholly in an environment of risk. How do you relate? What have you risked personally, professionally to achieve what you have today? What’s that experience been like for you?
JB: It’s very hard for me to recognize myself as a risk taker, but I’ve tended to create my own jobs within institutions, rather than getting on a career path with steady, regular advancement structures. And this is by far the most entrepreneurial job I’ve ever had: if I don’t create, fund, and deliver projects, I’m out of work. The experience forces you so far out of yourself, because you’re always connecting, learning, extending yourself; but also so far into yourself because you’re having to so closely manage your own energy, moods and motivation.
II: What’s your North Star?
JB: A world in which we recognize that people are the experts about their own lives and conditions; a world that starts with listening; a world that prioritizes work on the challenges of underserved people.
II: What/who has the greatest impact on your work?
JB: Angela Blanchard of Neighborhood Centers, Inc. who introduced me to the idea of reframing work in marginalized communities, and starting with assets not deficits; Bruce Katz, who taught me to be restless and focus on the power of ideas; and Garlin Gilchrest II, who told me “The innovation we need is innovation in relationships,” which is really what I’m trying to spark.
