Sectors, Vectors, and Systems: Polycrises and the Paradox of Innovation
Join us at our Annual Celebration Event on Thursday, October 17th at 11:45 a.m. Our guest speaker, James Stauch will discuss the cascade of polycrises we are all navigating, from the conflicts in our classrooms, labs, and policy shops, to the experiences of war-torn regions, coastal communities, and remote boreal forests, challenge us to think and act differently. Never before has there been such an urgent call for social innovation, yet the two faces of that concept are pulled in radically different (and equally unhelpful) directions. "Social" is burdened by encrusted ideas of 'charity' and 'altruism' unfit for the contemporary human condition, while "innovation" has been hijacked and shaped by tech start-up culture and the church of Silicon Valley. Academia could step in as a catalyst to help us rapidly learn from the past and from well-funded social science insights, and to lean into universities' public and otherwise lofty aspirational mandates. It could also create pathways to address our 'metacrisis' - a collective failure to think, learn, and act systemically. But the academy of today has been more absent than present (for reasons both ancient and modern) in bringing social innovation to the challenges of our time.
Networking lunch: 11:30-Noon (lunch provided)
Program: Noon to 1:00 p.m.
James Stauch is a social innovation and systems change consultant and educator based in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. He is currently a Complex Systems Strategist with the ATCO Spacelab, co-chair of the Banff Systems Summit, and Visiting Fellow at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Oxford. He previously served for a decade as Executive Director of the Institute for Community Prosperity at Mount Royal University.
His recent works include The Dandelion Wager: Scaling Social Impact by Winding Up and Giving it All Away (co-produced with Calgary Reads), The Right to Eat Right: Connecting Upstream and Downstream Food Security in Calgary (co-produced with the YYC Food Security Fund), and Accessing Canada: A Scan of Issues, Trends, System Dynamics and Innovations in Accessibility and Aging in Thriving in the 21st Century (co-produced with ATCO Spacelab).