TECH FOR GOOD

Tech for Good is the intentional design, development and use of digital technologies to address social challenges. It is the combination of the most powerful and flexible tool we’ve ever had and good design approaches that are user-led and test-driven.

The phrase ‘Tech for Good’ was first popularised in the UK by Paul Miller, formerly of Social Innovation Camps and now CEO at Bethnal Green Ventures. It began in the noughties days of hack weekends when web developers who cared came together with third and public sector folk to hack a solution to a social problem during 48 hours of pizza fueled tech creativity.

Those events seeded hundreds of ideas and prototypes many of which went no further. But what they did was show it was possible to do something explicitly good with tech. To use it to solve social challenges.

Zoom forward a decade or more and the tech for good movement has risen. And risen.

We’ve now got the triple helix model, ideas of user, social and economic value through doing good with tech. Accelerator programmes for tech startups with a social mission and funding programmes for charities and social enterprises looking to use tech to achieve their aims. The ecosystem has grown into a thriving marketplace of needs, problems and solutions.