Centre for Social Innovation - Where Change Happens!

This week the City installed bike racks for 16 bicycles in two parking spots on Spadina Ave. This is a Toronto first. What an exciting moment to see infrastructure built for cars be adapted to the growing demands of bicycles. Although just a pilot, this project exemplifies how we can share the roads. This is what social innovation looks like!

SEE Change Magazine launches in Canada. It is great to start getting some coverage of social enterprise, social innovation and more. I was delighted to be invited to write about Trends in Social Innovation for SEE Change's inaugural issue... Check out the article on their site.  It's also posted below ... I would love your thoughts.

Can't help but call out the excellent description of the constellation governance model that Ben Zeigler has written at http://www.collaborativejourneys.com/archives/909. If you are interested in collaboration, his blog is outstanding. Quite a good writer and full of a wealth of great information.

Red Rover, Handball, Tag, Capture the Flag, Scrabble, Connect4, Go Fish, or Euchre. Depending on where you went to school and the innumerable other influences we encounter at a young age, most of us are familiar with at least one of the above games. We would play them at recess, after school, or on rainy Saturdays. Regardless of when we played them, these games were a chance for us to take a break from learning or doing, and have a bit of laugh-until your-insides-hurt fun.

As many of you will know, I am a governance geek... I am particularly interested in how groups figure out ways to work together in new an innovative ways. Recently, an article about the constellation governance model that I was involved in developing, was published in 'Social Space' a publication of the Lien Center for Social Innovation in Singapore. Here is the link to the article....

http://www.lcsi.smu.edu.sg/downloads/MarkSurmanFinalAug-2.pdf

As you are well aware, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is in the midst of shaping an economic stimulus package, which he will deliver to the nation on January 27.

Today an article that Mark Surman and I wrote has been published in the Open Source Business Review. You can find it at...  http://www.osbr.ca/ojs/index.php/osbr/article/view/698/666 

I have spent the last few weeks pondering collaborative leadership and wondering how we can build the capacity of the social mission sector to work together more effectively.

In writing up the preceedings of the Sharing for Social Change event and having had a couple interesting conversations with colleagues, it has become increasingly clear that we need some institute or centre of excellence or brokering system that will help us to think more intentionally about collaboration and leadership and models and governance and what makes collaboration work and so much more... 

For anyone that knows me, you will know that I am fascinated by both the power of social entrepreneurship and the power of collaboration. In effect, the Centre for Social Innovation is the embodiment of both of these.