Networks and Collaboration

Samule Palmisano, the chair and chief executive of IBM, writes about the change agents of the 21st century and how the most important locus for innovation will be in the cities. Technology that can make our cities much smarter is already excisting. However, if we are really going to drive meaningful change, we need to get smarter about how we work together and the cities of the future will have to be far more collaborative than they currently are.

You can read the article here: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/01/15/the-future-of-the-city.print.html

There has been increased emphasis on intentional innovation, on conscious efforts to develop a more systematic approach to innovation. Rather than wait idly by for social innovations to appear, practitioners and organizations around the world are working to understand and establish methodologies, frameworks, and processes that stimulate social innovation and aim to increase the chances of its success. This is an important development.

Yet, there is an intrinsic character to innovation that resists the linearity imposed by many traditional frameworks. And, while it is important to pursue these more structured methods, it is equally as important to pursue approaches that embrace the unique, magical quality of emergent innovation.

Much of the existing literature acknowledges the need to set the conditions for social innovation, but rarely does it discuss what those conditions should be. The Centre for Social Innovation's on-the-ground experience with a diverse range of civil society groups provides them with unique insight into how to create the conditions for social innovation emergence.

This paper uses the Centre for Social Innovation as a case study to demonstrate how the conditions that facilitate social innovation emergence can be deliberately created. It provides insight into the field and offer transferable ideas that can be used to accelerate social innovation in other environments.