At Social Innovation Generation, University of Waterloo (SiG@Waterloo), our goal is to generate new knowledge about social innovations and the social innovation process in Canada. In particular, the dynamics of learning, adaptation and innovation in the arena of sustainable development and in the mental health domain (identified as one of the most pressing challenges of engaging vulnerable populations).

JW McConnell Chair in Social Innovation – Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience

Many of us have a deep desire to make the world around us a better place. But often our good intentions are undermined by the fear that we are so insignificant in the big scheme of things that nothing we can do will actually help. Getting to Maybe applies the insights of complexity theory and harvests the experiences of a wide range of people and organizations to lay out a brand new way of thinking about making change in communities, in business, and in the world.

Co-Author – Getting to Maybe: How the World Is Changed

In his book Consilience, E.O. Wilson set forth the idea that integrating knowledge and insights from across the spectrum of human study—the humanities, social science, and natural sciences—is the key to solving complex environmental and social problems. Experiments in Consilience tells the unique story of a path-breaking effort to apply this theoretical construct in a real-world setting, and offers fresh ideas on how to improve on-the-ground conservation decision-making.

Author / Editor – Experiments in Consilience: Integrating Social And Scientific Responses To Save Endangered Species

The Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation (WICI) facilitates rigorous transdisciplinary and collaborative research promoting innovation and resilience within — and beneficial transformation of — the complex adaptive systems at the core of human well being in the 21st century. Core Members are regular, research, or adjunct university faculty who lead a long-horizon research program under the Institute’s auspices.

Core Member – Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation

SARA(S)² is an interdisciplinary research institute designed to catalyze high impact science that serves to enhance the region's long term resilience and sustainable development. SARA(S)² is a place where paradigm shifts in thinking about resilience and sustainable futures are triggered. While it is respected for its cutting edge science, SARA(S)² is also be known for its remarkable capacity to link the powers of science and arts to policy.

Board Member – South American Institute for Resilience and Sustainability Studies

The Conservation Breeding Specialist Group (CBSG) is a global network of conservation professionals dedicated to saving threatened species by increasing the effectiveness of conservation efforts worldwide. CBSG is recognized and respected for its use of innovative, scientifically sound, collaborative processes that bring together people with diverse perspectives and knowledge to catalyze positive conservation change.

Strategic Committee Member – Conservation Breeding Specialist Group

The Centre for Marine Biodiversity (CMB) is a largely virtual institute established in 2000 to provide a focus for the broad array of marine biodiversity research being conducted in Atlantic Canada. The mandate of the Centre is to provide a focus for structuring independent research efforts toward an overall synthesis of information on marine biodiversity, with a focus on the Northwest Alantic.

Advisory Board – Centre for Marine Biodiversity

Stockholm Resilience Centre advances research on the governance of social-ecological systems with a special emphasis on resilience – the ability to deal with change and continue to develop. The aim is to create a world-leading transdisciplinary research centre that advances the understanding of complex social-ecological systems and generates new and elaborated insights and means for the development of management and governance practices.

Board Member – Stockholm Resilience Center

In 2003, Dr. Westley received a Corporate Knights Schools Pioneer Award in the Category of Institutional Impact. The award recognizes Canada's academics who have had the most impact in furthering the evolution of the triple-bottom-line (people, planet, and profits). The  winners were voted by the Knight School advisory panel consisting of leading individuals from business, media and the NGO sector.

Recipient – Corporate Knights Schools Pioneer Award

Musagetes is an international organization which seeks to transform contemporary life by working with artists, cultural mediators, public intellectuals and partners to develop new approaches to building community and culture. Musagetes promotes the arts & artistic creativity as tools for social transformation, and works with artists, cultural mediators and partners to develop new approaches to enhance the impact of artistic creativity on culture and communities, policy makers and the public.

International Advisory Council – Musagetes Foundation

Getting to Maybe: How the World Is Changed

Experiments in Consilience: Integrating Social And Scientific Responses To Save Endangered Species

Social Innovation Generation (SiG) is a group who believes that serious social problems can be solved. To that end, SiG and its partners help foster social innovation to achieve impact, durability and scale by engaging the creativity and resources of all sectors.

SiG seeks to address Canada’s social and ecological challenges by creating a culture of continuous social innovation. Our focus will be on social innovation that has the potential for impact, durability and scale.

In order to nurture the health, resilience and vibrancy of our linked social, economic and ecological systems SiG will work to develop a "living laboratory" of social experiments that have the potential to achieve system change and improve the well-being of Canadians.

The responsibility for addressing our social problems cannot be delegated to any one group or sector. Our aim is to search for solutions that engage the creativity and resources of all sectors. Particular attention is paid to innovations that engage vulnerable and excluded people, that encourage and benefit from the abundant natural, social and cultural diversity of Canada and its rich heritage of innovation.

We see SiG as its own living laboratory where we can experiment with a different way of telling a story, learning new practices for tipping or changing systems, and the creation of new possibilities for building resilience.

SiG is a collaborative partnership between The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, the University of Waterloo, the MaRS Discovery District, and the PLAN Institute. Our ultimate goal is to support whole system change through changing the broader economic, cultural and policy context in Canada to allow social innovations to flourish.

Social Innovation Generation

Dr. Frances Westley joined the University of Waterloo as the JW McConnell Chair in Social Innovation in July 2007. In this capacity she is one of the principle leads in a Canada wide initiative in social innovation.

SiG (Social Innovation Generation), a cross sectoral partnership to build capacity for social innovation in Canada funded by the J.W McConnell Family Foundation, University of Waterloo and the Ontario government. At University of Waterloo, Dr. Westley leads a research team dedicated to understanding social innovation, and has designed both graduate and undergraduate curricula in social innovation.

Dr. Westley is a renowned scholar and consultant in the areas of social innovation, sustainable development, strategic change, visionary leadership and inter-organizational collaboration. Her most recent book, Getting to Maybe focuses on the dynamics of social innovation and institutional entrepreneurship in complex adaptive systems. Her first book, Experiments in Consilience focuses on the dynamics of inter-organizational and interdisciplinary collaboration in the management of ecological and conservation problems.

Before joining the University of Waterloo, Dr. Westley held the position of Director, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies (2005-2007) at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. Other positions she has previously held include the James McGill Professor of Strategy at McGill University’s Faculty of Management, director of the McGill-Dupont Initiative on Social Innovation and director of the McGill-McConnell Masters program for National Voluntary Sector leaders – an innovative executive masters customized for the leaders of voluntary organizations across Canada.

Dr. Westley serves on numerous advisory boards including Resilience Alliance Board of Science, Emery University School of Ecology, World Conservation Union-Conservation Breeding Specialist Group, the Canadian Biodiversity Institute, the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, the Stockholm Resilience Center, the SARAS Institute and Evergreen Canada. She is on the editorial board of several journals, including Journal of Applied Behavioral Science and Ecology and Society.

Honours and awards Dr. Westley has received include the Corporate Knights Award and the Ulysses S. Seal Award for innovation in conservation.

Funding Social Innovation.pdf

Social Innovation

Social Finance

Engagement and Social Change

Social Innovation and Resilience

Funding Social Innovation

Building Partnerships for Social Innovation

Sustainable Development

Social Innovation Generation (SiG)

Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience

Social Innovation and Resilience: A Complexity Approach to Change and Transformation

Tipping towards sustainability: The great transformation towards sustainable development

Case Studies: Strategies of Engagement

KEYNOTE SPEECH: Harnessing the Power of Social Innovation

KEYNOTE SPEECH: Social innovation and the Resilience of Social-Ecological Systems

KEYNOTE SPEECH – Experiments in Consilience: Integrating social and scientific responses to biodiversity conservation challenges

Speaking Innovation to Power: The Uses and Abuses of Power in Social Innovation

Investing for People AND the Planet

KEYNOTE SPEECH – Institutional Entrepreneurs: Building Resilience in Socioecological Systems

KEYNOTE SPEECH – Getting to Maybe: Social Innovation an Agency Based Approach to Transformation

Panel Moderator: Leadership, Innovation and Sustainability

A Conversation on Climate Change and Social Innovation

KEYNOTE SPEECH

This presentation will explore the links between crisis, opportunity, and innovation for navigating shifts and large-scale transformations towards global sustainability. A key question is the role of social innovations in transforming multi-level governance and management regimes and reducing negative environmental impacts. Social innovations that hold the promise of changing unsustainable trajectories need to be nurtured and connected to broad institutional resources and responses.

Private citizens, charities, interest groups and businesses are increasingly becoming involved in causes in which government has traditionally played a role. The issues range from climate change to global humanitarianism and consist of local, national and international spheres of action. This presentation will examine the complexities and sensitivities of engagement. Key issues to be explored include the constraints and success factors in different approaches.

Strategies of Engagement

Speaking innovation to power is a key element of successful, system changing, social innovations. This session will ground the dynamics of challenging and channeling existing power resources to support real change in cases as diverse as helping displaced persons camps in Eritrea, facilitating multi stakeholder collaborations in British Columbia and changing the power dynamics of environmental organisations through the use of global search engines.

Environmentalists and social investors are coordinating efforts to restore ecosystems and lift people out of poverty. There has been an unnatural divide between impact investors focused on alleviating poverty and planet-focused funders. Now scientists and investors jointly realize that these problems and solutions are linked and require a new, holistic approach to meet the challenges faced by our world and our species.

Social innovation is an initiative, product or process or program that profoundly changes the basic routines, resource and authority flows or beliefs of any social system. Frances Westley will discuss how disruptive social innovations can address seemingly intractable social problems such as environmental degradation, poverty, and mental health and how the capacity of a society to create a steady flow of social innovations, can contribute to its overall social and ecological resilience.

JW McConnell Chair in Social Innovation, University of Waterloo

Presentation by Professor Frances Westley during the 2011 Nobel Laureate Symposium in Stockholm.

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