Paradigm hacking is the art of asking uncommon questions of prevailing wisdom in order to uncover new truths that lead to the development of otherwise unexpected and even “impossible” solutions. In many cases these solutions are technologies but they can also be public policies and in some special cases they can even be new epistemological perspectives and philosophies. A computer hacker uses detailed knowledge of computers and code while paradigm hackers focus on understanding why society developed in a particular way and attempt to map out a future trajectory.
A classic and notable example of someone who was able to ask novel questions and derive nontrivial and otherwise “impossible” solutions to age-old problems is Nobel Peace Prize 2006 winner and banker Muhamid Yunis. His new approach to lending to Bangladeshes poorest enabled him to undertake one of his countries most successful anti-poverty and education programs while creating a thriving for-profit enterprise. This basic approach to otherwise intractable problems is in no way confined to micro-finance or social entrepreneurship but instead these are meant to serve to identify the essence of any paradigm hacking process.
Development Timeline:
Summer 2009: Develop readership and format
Engage pre-emenent thought leaders :2009 Fall
Winter 2009-1010: Grow core readership
Reader engagement and collaboration: 2010 Spring
Fall 2010 : Seek contributions from community
Paradigm:
From the 1960s, the word has referred to thought pattern in any scientific discipline or other epistemological context. The Merriam-Webster Online dictionary defines this usage as “a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated; broadly : a philosophical or theoretical framework of any kind.
Hacker:
The term achieved widespread use in the 1960s and its meaning then evolved to a quick, elaborate and/or bodged solution students devised for a technical obstacle; it was used with hacker, meaning one who discovers and implements a hack. The word itself comes from the German word meaning “someone who makes furniture with an axe”,[2] implying a lack of finesse in a “hack”; it is believed by many in the hacking community that the reason for this is because programs too large to run on the limited computer resources of the time had portions “chopped” or “hacked” out in order to be reduced to a more reasonable size.