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Why Social Innovation?

First, let me welcome you all back to school! Best of luck for success in all your studies, whether academic or more “social”!

We’ve started to get the word out on the new Innovation Mini Challenge (the "MC") and are already seeing teams register. I can imagine folks reading the Social Innovation theme and asking “Hmm, interesting but why would an Innovation group in a Canadian bank care?” Let me back it up a bit and tell you the Mini Challenge story.

The idea behind the Mini Challenge is simple; we wanted to give students a way to warm up and try innovating with us leading to our main Next Great Innovator Challenge later in the fall. We took what we have learned in the past few years of running the main Challenge and boiled it down; simple entry, online, quick, a more open topic that can get the audience involved; and voila the Innovation Mini Challenge was born. The last item was particularly important as we wanted to attract students that might not jump right into the main Challenge but should! We wanted to use the Mini Challenge to attract other disciplines and perspectives, and encourage them to stay with us for the main Challenge. We also liked the idea of asking an innovation question in the MC which is not so financial services specific, so we can share the innovations broadly.

Then the search for a topic began. This past year I’ve come across Social Innovation from a number of angles; seeing the topic emerge in my innovation feeds, seeing social change happening though online tools like twitter (i.e. hohoTO), offline via groups like The Torch Partnership and their great “Unfinished Lecture Series”, and the Center for Social Innovation just up the street here in Toronto. At the same time we have been able to work with our partners in the RBC Foundation on a number of opportunities. These influences and my own interests came together and got me thinking about all the great groups out there working to create a better society, and some of the emerging challenges and opportunities for them. We’re all challenged to do more with less these days BUT luckily we have things like social media, virtual worlds and mobility as new tools. And some of my favorite “old” tools too; ingenuity, inspiration and collaboration. With that in mind it was a short hop to come up with the MC Challenge question; to ask you to come up with innovative ways for all those groups to connect and collaborate. It strikes me that in that collaboration there is tremendous opportunity for us all to create some real Social Innovation!

So get your team together and you tell us: "Suggest innovative ways to allow these organizations to connect and collaborate."

Here are some groups to look at initially for inspiration in your innovation:

Torch Partnership
(and http://www.torchiswicked.com/ )

Center for Social Innovation

Mashable’s Social Good Conference

hohoTO

RBC Foundation
(and support for groups)


Posted by Tim on September 9, 2009 10:51 AM

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