Global Summit on Social Innovation

Angus Donald CampbellConferences, Social Innovation

From the 14-15 of March 2017 I will be representing the Design Society Development DESIS Lab at the Global Summit on Social Innovation in Bogotá, Colombia hosted by the The Rockefeller Foundation and the Multilateral Investment Fund of the InterAmerican Development Bank Group.

The Summit is an exciting opportunity to bring together leading actors from across the social innovation spectrum – from labs to social enterprise accelerators – to learn, share, inspire, and collaborate. The Design Society Development DESIS Lab was one of a select group of key actors, stakeholders, and practitioners in the social innovation space that were identified as being able to help drive truly systemic social change.

Today’s global challenges are more complex and rapidly changing—traditional approaches to problem solving can’t keep pace. But at the same time, social change agents have more tools at our disposal, and more diversity of ideas to draw from through processes like crowdsourcing or social innovation labs, to create change at a transformative scale. As a result, the social sector has recalibrated its approach to innovation to harness these new dynamics. Because change happens so rapidly, and implementation and scale can take time, we must be constantly anticipating and solving for problems of the future. By thinking of innovation as a proactive process we can better spot good ideas when they emerge and feed a pipeline for continuous innovation. But we must work together to drive this change. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a number of spaces and conferences in the US and Europe dedicated to the dialogue of catalysing innovation to address social problems, but not as much elsewhere around the world. There is a desire and need among social innovation organizations working closest to the problems to come together to share how they are addressing challenges and driving innovative solutions to learn from their diverse experiences, create a common agenda, and ultimately, enhance their ability to effect change at a systemic level. Social innovation organizations like the Design Society Development DESIS Lab play a critical role in the construction of more inclusive systems, both locally and globally.

This gathering sparks a broader effort between The Rockefeller Foundation and the Multilateral Investment Fund to develop a globally connected community of key social innovation organizations that share their knowledge, experience and resources in order to drive change at a systemic level. Approximately 90 social innovation organization leaders and other key social entrepreneurship ecosystem actors from all over the world have been invited to participate in the Summit that is being hosted by their local partner, Compartamos con Colombia. Participants will have the opportunity to engage in highly interactive workshops, learn from leading innovators, be inspired by stories of impact on the ground and build lasting connections for future collaborations.

For more info please visit http://wiringthesystem.com/site/