Geoff's blog

Canadian spring

Geoff Mulgan - 11.05.2012

I spent a few days last week in Canada, working with some of our partner organisations in technology, business and social innovation.

The host was MaRS, a sister organisation to Nesta, which combines venture investment, incubation, social innovation programmes and running a great space in which over 2000 people are employed.  I was there partly to learn from them and others in the Canadian innovation scene.    



While I was there I gave a closing keynote at a conference on the Business of Aging, a talk on Innovation in Austerity (that was also streamed to locations across the country), one on social entrepreneurs (for the Centre for Social Innovation that's run by the dynamic Tonya Surman), one on neighbourhood regeneration (for the Metcalf Foundation) and another on public strategy (for the University of Toronto). 

Highlights for me included a discussion on the future shape of lab models (prompted by a paper by Lisa Torjman); a session with their very impressive CEO Ilse Treurnicht and board; another with Tim Draimin, Al Etmanski, Alysson Hewitt and Frances Wesley at SIG, Social Innovation Generation, who are pioneering social innovation work across Canada; and several interesting sessions with officials from the national and provincial government.

Canada continues to be a remarkably successful country, having successfully weathered the financial crisis, and sustained a decent and tolerant society. But it's also wholly devoid of complacency.

In New York at the end of the week I met Robert Johnson the head of George Soros' initiative to transform economics.  The Institute for New Economic Thinking which is setting up centres at top universities around the world and must rank as one of the most ambitious intellectual projects of recent history.  

That was followed by a session with my colleague Stephen Bradley at the UNDP who had brought together many of their staff, plus the World Bank and UN to discuss innovation skills. This looks set to become a lasting partnership.  After that I met the Bloomberg Foundation with another colleague, Philip Colligan, who has been working closely with them on innovation methods for cities, mayors and municipalities - we have a great convergence of ideas and approaches and it looks likely that that will be another very productive partnership.