As Seattle’s tech industry continues to boom, the city’s growing pains are starting to become more apparent. Along with an influx of jobs and prosperity, rising housing prices, strained transportation systems, and increasing homelessness are changing the landscape of the city, and challenging Seattleites to find creative solutions.
On this week’s GeekWire podcast, GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop discuss these challenges with Jeff Shulman, an associate professor at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business and host/producer of the Seattle Growth Podcast.
Bishop offered up an idea: Community leaders should leverage Seattle’s tradition of philanthropy by organizing a major fund that would back startups working on social innovations, treating the region as a “petri dish” for ideas that could ultimately spread to other parts of the country.
He noted that Amazon provides a model for this approach in its own business, using Seattle as a testbed for services such as its Flex delivery system and Amazon Fresh grocery deliveries.
“I think there has to be an economic incentive for startups to address these challenges in the Seattle region,” Bishop said. There are some startup groups and funds already tackling social challenges, but the idea would be to take these efforts to a new level.
But Cook wasn’t convinced it would work.
“When you try to implement something it hits the Seattle process and hits a brick wall and then nothing gets done,” Cook said. Seattle’s problem is an age old one: a bureaucratic political system. And although the fund could be privately run, that’s no guarantee to cut through all the red tape.
Shulman said, “I don’t have those specific answers, but I do have a firm belief in the people of Seattle.” He added that solutions will happen when Seattleites begin thinking about how they can help others in their community.
“Community is paramount,” Shulman said. “Whether growth is the enemy or growth is the savior, community is at the top of almost everyone’s minds that I talked to.”
“If we listen to each other and talk to each other and just have a conversation, we can start to identify solutions to some of the biggest problems facing us all,” he said. “I’m very optimistic about the way people can work together.”
Listen to the full show below, or download the MP3 here. The conversation with Shulman is in the second and fourth segments.
