Our Mission
The Mission of MIT Collaborative Initiatives is to promote a systems-based approach to solving deep-rooted societal issues by engaging experts from a broad range of disciplines both within and outside the scope of a problem.
It is the belief of the Collaborative that many of today’s most challenging issues can benefit from outside expertise. Debate among experts is valuable but is often self-perpetuating. Adding viewpoints from outside the conversation broadens the debate and may lead it in new directions. The Collaborative’s intentions are not to compete with people and organizations involved in addressing critical issues, but to swell the wave by broadening the discussion.
In addition, the Collaborative has come to believe that a systems-based approach is vital to challenging widespread societal issues. Systems thinking looks at the interconnectivity of actions and studies a problem as a whole. This approach considers the system as a sum of its parts where a change in any one part has system-wide ramifications. Without this global view much time can be spent addressing issues in a single part of what is ultimately a comprehensively flawed system.
The Collaborative applies its Mission in two basic models:
- We bring people together to instigate challenging discussion and debate around a given issue or set of issues.
Often, the Collaborative is approached to bring a significant group together around a specific topic and facilitate constructive dialogue. At other times, the Collaborative identifies areas that it feels could benefit from this type of broad discussion and initiates the meetings.
Meetings range in size and scope, and the Collaborative takes on large group meetings—in a discussion format—if it feels that a broad discussion across silos and with outside input could be beneficial. The Collaborative is currently focused on healthcare, but has facilitated these types of meetings around issues in global health, global finance, and other areas of widespread concern.
- We target specific areas of interest and develop projects by identifying and advising a project team, engaging influential external advisors, and building project objectives to apply a systems approach to various arenas.
The ultimate goal of MIT Collaborative Initiatives is to shrink the existing gap between the way we think and what the world actually needs, and to encourage and develop innovative solutions to the enormous challenges that we as a society face in the beginning of the 21st Century.
For more information on how we work, please see New Models.
