Posts Tagged ‘sLab’

Connecting Citizens to Future Governance

Thursday, January 15th, 2015

The Design with Dialogue group in collaboration with Strategic Innovation Lab of OCAD University is dedicating its January session to discuss the convergence of governance and digital technologies. The session’s agenda is to use dialogic techniques to discuss the co-evolution of connected citizens in Canadian governance. DwD events usually attract 20-30 participants of diverse backgrounds. Discussions are usually rich and nuanced and participants leave often with surprising new insights.

The event takes place on Wednesday January 14th from 6:00 to 9:00 PM in the Lambert Lounge (Room 187) at OCAD’s flagship building, the Sharp Design Center (100 McCaul st., Toronto).

SSBMG January 2015 Meeting

Monday, January 12th, 2015

The Strongly Sustainable Business Model Group will be holding its January meeting on Tuesday January 13th, 4:30-6:00 PM at OCAD University’s Strategic Innovation Lab. On the Agenda for this month are news and updates about members activities and achievements as well as a discussion on how to measure the progress of the Group towards achieving its mission: The acceleration of the transition of small and medium enterprises (SME) to  sustainability.

SSBMG December 2014 Meeting

Sunday, December 7th, 2014

The December meeting of the Strongly Sustainable Business Model Group (SSBMG) will be held on Tuesday December 9th, 4:30-6:00 PM at OCAD University’s sLab (205 Richmond Street West, 4th Floor, Room 7410) in Toronto. The final meeting of this year will have two presenters. First Fiona Stappmanns, a doctoral candidate at the Innsbruck Universität in Austria will be presenting her work from her Masters thesis and her plans for her dissertation. Her talk is titled “Business Model Innovation – Sustainability as a Key to Competitive Advantage”. The second presenter will Anshula Chowdhury, CEO of Social Asset Measurement, who will be updating us on the insights from the annual conference of cthe Social Impact Analysts Association, held for the first time outside Europe in Toronto this fall. As usual we expect a lively and inspiring discussion.

xClinic Stakeholder Meeting

Tuesday, November 18th, 2014

On Wednesday November 19th we are convening a meeting of all stakeholders in xClinic+, an evolution of the original xClinic concept integrating more clearly the cultural change agenda of the project. Since the original charette (collaborative design) of 2010 the ideas underlying the project have evolved and the spectrum of interested persons has broadened. In addition a team of graduate students of the Strategic Foresight & Innovation program at OCAD University has explored various models for sustainable operations of xClinic. They will be presenting their findings at the meeting, which is being hosted by the Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab). If you are interested in joining the project you are welcome to attend the meeting. Attendance is free but seating is limited so you have to register on Evenbrite.

SIAA’s Annual Conference 2014

Friday, October 3rd, 2014

Under the title “Talking Data”,  SIAA, the Social Impact Analysts Association, is holding its annual conference in Toronto November 3-4, 2014 at the St. James Cathedral Conference Centre. This is the first time the event is being held outside of Europe and hosting it in Canada should be credited to the efforts of Anshula Chowdhury, the CEO of Social Asset Measurement in Toronto. This is exciting stuff. Leaders from the UK, Europe, the United States, and of course from all Canada, will be in Toronto discussing some of the most pressing issues around impact analysis.

“We see this as a golden opportunity to showcase Toronto’s commitment to social innovation and its burgeoning position as a social impact hub” said Chowdhury in a recent communication. The conference includes plenaries, workshops, interactive activities and networking. In addition delegates will have the opportunity to participate in one of several City Impact Tours aimed at highlighting key institutions in the social innovation space. One such destination will be OCAD University’s sLab, where delegates will learn about the Strongly Sustainable Business Model Group and its pioneering work.

More details about the conference program can be found at the Talking Data web site.

Toronto’s Lab Movement – An Opportunity for Collective Impact

Friday, November 1st, 2013

On November 6th OCAD University’s Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab) will be hosting the next meeting of Lab Practitioners in the series organized by MaRS SiG. The speaker for this meeting is Hal Hamilton, who will be sharing lessons learned from his decade of work with the Sustainable Food Lab.

The series has been successful in achieving a number of important objectives: It raised awareness about individual labs and their work; it highlighted lessons learned from the various practices in labs, and last but not least, it continued strengthening the links between the various members thus helping the emergence of stronger and more resilient community.

As the community matures, there is a sense emerging that the community is seeking something beyond the networking and learning about other labs. In conversations with a few of the regular participants, I sensed that a new need is emerging, a need to tackle something bigger, beyond the capabilities of the single labs. This reminded me of the collective impact approach described in a paper of Stanford Social Innovation Review. Could we find together one big challenge that we all apply our experimentation and our multidisciplinary collaboration capabilities to address? Or has the movement not matured that far yet and needs more time to get to that point? It’s definitely worth a deep conversation at the next gathering.

Taking Over Toronto

Saturday, February 2nd, 2013

The Toronto Overlappers community has been seeing a resurgence of activity recently thanks to the initiative of Michael Dila founder of Foundery and the support of Overlappers like Leila Boujnane, CEO of Idee Inc., and Mathew Milan, CEO of Normative Design who hosted monthly dinners for the group in November and December 2012. On February 6th the Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab) at OCAD University will be hosting the next dinner gathering of the community.

In true Overlap fashion, no strict agenda was set for these gatherings. Beyond strengthening the bonds and introducing new friends into the community, the conversation that is starting to emerge is exploring the real potential for Toronto to become the global hub for an innovation for change movement and how the Overlap community could play a leading role in it. Stay tuned for what is certainly a very exciting and promising emergent thread.

Recipes for Systemic Change

Sunday, November 11th, 2012

On Wednesday November 14th I have the pleasure of hosting Bryan Boyer from the Helsinki Design Lab and co-author of the book “Recipes for Systemic Change” in an Explorations event at the Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab). The event is organized in collaboration with Social Innovation Generation.

In this event we will explore with Bryan questions like: How might we undertake to “redesign” systems, institutions, markets, and even the social contract, in the face of constraining legacies, limited finances and other extreme challenges in the public sector? When good ideas abound, but don’t always come to fruition, what approach might bring success?

Participating in the event is free but registration is required here. Don’t delay, only a few seats remaining!

Sustainable Business Models – A Demand Side Perspective

Sunday, November 11th, 2012

As a convener of the Strongly Sustainable Business Model Group (SSBMG) at OCAD University’s Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab) I am committed to developing tools and methods to help organizations become more sustainable. As such I am thrilled with the research of colleagues like Antony Upward in developing an exhaustive business model ontology and deriving new visual tools from it (a super version of the BM Canvas tool developed by Alex Osterwalder). It struck me, however, that not withstanding all the good intentions behind the development of the many tools and methods trying to achieve the same, they all can be classified as “supply side” solutions, that is beautiful and interesting solutions developed without seriously researching what the needs of the intended users are.  I set out therefore to add “demand side” research stream to the research agenda of SSBMG.

To investigate users needs we thought we would start by better understanding how important business decisions are made in organizations and at what stage of that decision process business model considerations come in. We were interested particularly in decision-making processes in situations  involving trade-offs between economic, social and environmental elements. The first steps in that direction was to investigate the mindset of leaders in organizations that are progressive in their views on balancing these elements. This research is currently underway through a Major Research Project by Ben McCammon as part of his  degree requirement at the Strategic Foresight & Innovation (SFI) Masters program. Ben is using the design probe method to collect information on the mindset of leaders in Canadian B-Corps. I am anticipating reading about his findings before the end of this year.

The next step will be to do the same research on regular organizations and comparing the two mind sets and decision making processes to better understand how decisions pertaining to sustainability are made and what the optimal leverage points would be to influence this process. The aspiration is to use these insights to inform the design of tools and methods intended to assist organizations become more sustainable.

Toronto: A Hub for Foresight & Futures?

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

Toronto is buzzing this week with foresight events and activities. WorldFuture 2012: The annual conference of the World Future Society, is taking place at the Toronto Sheraton Centre, July 27-29, 2012. In conjunction with it the Futures:BetaLaunch 2012 also known as F:BL  2012 awards will be celebrated. This free event features 11 award winning future-focused start-ups is scheduled for Saturday July 28 evening. For details click here.

APF, the Association of Professional Futurists is celebrating 10 years of existence with a full-day of professional development hosted by the Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab) team July 27 at OCAD University’s landmark Sharp Centre, with a reception in the evening. To top it all the Strategic Foresight & Innovation masters program at OCADU is celebrating being selected for on of the F:BL 2012 awards.

Much to celebrate in a Toronto rapidly becoming a hub for foresight and futurists activities.