Ideas

Community Innovation

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
- Albert Einstein

At Tamarack, we see Community Innovation as a particular form of social innovation that is place-based, within the specific geography of a community. Canada has been a pioneer in the field of social innovation, which has been defined as “both a destination – the resolution of complex social and environmental challenges – and also a journey – devising new approaches that engage all stakeholders, leveraging their competencies and creativity to design novel solutions.”

As dynamic ‘living labs’, communities offer the perfect container for innovation. Our experience with community change has taught us to appreciate that to be effective, Community Innovation requires an appreciation of both the issue one is hoping to address, as well as a deep understanding of the unique characteristics of the community – the place and the people within it – where the innovation will be implemented. Successful Community Innovation is context specific. Solutions that have been proven effective in one community can, at best, serve as a source of inspiration for another community. These innovations, however, must be adapted and modified to reflect the unique strengths, challenges and leadership of the community where they are being replicated.

Innovation creates a solution that is distinct from – and more ambitious and uncertain – than continuous improvement.  It is also important to note that innovation exists in a number of different forms. These include: program; product and/or service innovation; funding innovation or, system innovation. Karen Pittman, founder of the Forum for Youth Investment, illustrates this distinction well: “Programmatic interventions help people to beat the odds but systemic interventions seek to change the odds.” System innovation moves beyond the better alignment of programs and services within an existing system to challenge the system’s conventional norms and look beyond proven or accepted practices to create new, never-before considered solutions that are usually based on a fundamentally different set of assumptions.