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Innovation. What is it?

Innovation.

We all love it, want it, speak it, eat it, and it feels good when something we do is affirmed as innovative by others, especially those we admire. Sometimes, though, and perhaps often, when we don’t hear such affirmations, we create our own. We cite our own work as innovative.

However the recognition of our innovative work manifests, the cynic inside of me does wonder from time to time if our desire to be innovative gives birth to claiming innovation in much of the work we do. That cynic inside of me has wondered the same about me on occasion; just mention that to suggest that my inner cynic has no qualms about digging in on me, what I think, and what I do (and don’t)

What it is?

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Failing forward: Are the partners stretching?

 At the end of my accreditation as a partnership broker, we were required to agree to a contract of professional best practices. On the surface they might seem simple and straightforward but the truth is that they capture the true complexity of partnering across sectors.

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Sharing Successes from Saint John, NB

Saint John, New Brunswick is one of Vibrant Communities’ 13 original trail builder communities. They were among the first members to undertake the Vibrant Communities framework, establish a multi-sectoral collaboration, and work towards a set goal of poverty reduction. 

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Further Learning Around Deepening Community

In June 2016 the Tamarack Institute held one-day workshops on Deepening Community for Collective Impact, focused on exploring ways to deepen community for achieving social transformation. With plans to personally attend one of these workshops this month, I realized it would be timely to finalize my reflections on the event hosted by Tamarack last year that I had shared I was attending, both to prepare myself for the workshop, as well share with others the ideas that I learned so far.

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It's not the Process - it is the Outcome

By now readers of my blog know that I am all about collective impact.  It is a framework that I believe has real merit, under the right circumstances and with the right outcome in mind.  But gosh, it is hard work and even though we have alot of experience in collaboration, we do not have the collective impact muscle fully developed yet.  

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Income Trends and Canadian Consumer Debt

Over the past 15 years Canadian consumer debt has risen dramatically.  Since 2000, the percentage of Canadian debt in relationship to disposable income has risen from 110% of income to about 165%. The change in debt to income ratio represents a 12 year increase of 50%.

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