The document discusses key concepts related to resilience, social innovation, and adaptive change. It defines resilience as a system's ability to absorb disturbance and reorganize while retaining function. Adaptability and transformability allow systems to manage or create new ways of living. The adaptive cycle model shows phases of growth, conservation, release/destruction, and reorganization. Strategic grantmaking can aim to build resilience through adaptation or reduce resilience to enable transformation, depending on the goal. Cross-scale interactions are important to consider.

1. Social Innovation and
Resilience
Frances Westley
Waterloo Institute of Social Innovation and Resilience

2. In this presentation I will…
! Define key terms
! Look at resilience as a property linked to adaptive capacity
(represented in the adaptive cycle)
! Look at resilience as something one wants to build indirectly
through a pattern of invention for adaptation
! Look at resilience as something one wants to reduce
indirectly or directly through a pattern of innovation for
transformation
! Close with some questions for discussion

3. Some definitions
! Resilience: the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance
and reorganize while undergoing change, so as to still
retain essentially the same function, structure, identity,
and feedbacks” (Walker et al. 2004; Folke et al. 2010).
! Resilience is about neither persistence nor change but about
balancing and integrating both in an adaptive cycle

4. Routine Change (Persistence)
Conservation
K
Growth
r

5. Adaptation/Transformation Release
Ω
Backloop
Reorganization
α
Steve Carpenter,

6. Stored
--
Released
Variety Sameness

7. Much The birth, growth, destruction and renewal of a forest
Little CAPITAL STORED
1
Creative
Destruction
Weak CONNECTEDNESS Strong

8. Much The birth, growth, destruction and renewal of a forest
2
Renewal/Exploration
Little CAPITAL STORED
1
Release or Creative
Destruction
Weak CONNECTEDNESS Strong

9. The birth, growth, destruction and renewal of a forest
Little CAPITAL STORED Much
3
Exploitation
Weak CONNECTEDNESS Strong

10. Much The birth, growth, destruction and renewal of a forest
4
Conservation
CAPITAL STORED
3
Exploitation
Little
Weak CONNECTEDNESS Strong

11. Resilience and basins of
attraction

12. In comes agency….
! Adaptability: the capacity of individuals within the
system to maintain or manage its resilience through
continuous invention and adjustments
! Transformability: the capacity to create untried
beginnings from which to evolve a fundamentally new
way of living when existing ecological, economic, and
social conditions make the current system untenable
(social innovation).

13. In comes innovation….
! Social Inventions: any product, process, design,
program or initiative designed to assist vulnerable
populations or those serving them to adapt more
affectively to social or ecological circumstances
! Social Innovation: any product, process, design ,
program or initiative that profoundly changes the
defining routines and laws, resource and authority
flows, cultural beliefs and practices of a given social
system. Social innovations transform intractable
problem domains.

14. The adaptive cycle and
invention/innovation?

15. The idea is developed An established innovation
The idea is launched as a product, An idea is born
process or organization

16. Release or Creative
Destruction

17. The psychosocial space called release or
creative destruction
! Key pressures - sensemaking and reconfiguration of resources
! Associated changes -
! Breakdown of trust, networks and meanings
! Confusion, lack of clarity, lack of direction
! Pirating ideas and resources; introduction of novelty
! People: those who thrive on crisis, on new beginnings are
happy here – others may be depressed or in mourning

18. Reorganization or
exploration

19. The psychosocial space called reorganization
or exploration
! Key pressures: resource (funds, time, energy, attention, skill)
availability - low connectivity - time pressure
! Associated changes:
! multiple random walks , experiments, initiatives which
lead to little in the way of measurable outcomes
! people who learn by doing are happy here, others may feel
increasingly anxious about waste of time or directionless
! reflection moving to experimentation, lots of false starts and
sometimes frustration and mounting anxiety about inputs/
output ratios

20. exploitation

21. The psychosocial space called exploitation
! Key pressure- demand for delivery and productivity
! Associated changes-
! The dynamic of start-up - high excitement as the
initiative takes form. Communication is still highly
personal, roles flexible, integration through mutual
adjustment.
! With success and time, there is increasing need for
organizing systems (communication, control,
accounting), job definition and regulation.
! Team-builders and the action oriented come into
their own. Conceptualizers may feel a little
uncomfortable.

22. conservation

23. The Psycho-social space called
conservation
! Key pressures - standardization of rules and
procedures; demand for product
! Associated changes
! A time of measurable returns and performance
! Increased demands for reliability and productivity
! Increased reliance on systems for monitoring and
rewarding efficiency
! Good management prevails- visionaries step aside or
move on?

24. Use of the adaptive cycle in
change making
! Where are you as an individual most comfortable?
Least comfortable?
! Organizational assessment: Which phase is each of
organization/program? What does the combined
picture say about where is in the adaptive cycle?
! To what extent does the pattern of activities in any
program area support the resilience of the broader system?

25. But what about the broader societal
outcomes you are seeking:
Adaptation or Transformation?

26. Crossing scales

27. Fig. 2

28. Resilience suggest the role of
opportunity and of agency

29. 1. D. Scaling Up -
A. Institutional 2. 3 Institutional
Economi Political Cultural
landscape c
Entrepreneurs
E. Scaling Out/
Social
entrepreneurs

30. Thinking like a
movement: The PLAN
Case Institutional level
Changing the definition
of citzenship
National level
Can Plan be
disseminated??
Individual level
Fatigue and
questioning
Organizational level
Success brings many
demands

31. Resilience
2. Building
the
resilience
of the
innovative
3. nibbling at the
alternative
1.Reducing the system to create a
resilience of window of
dominant opportunity
regime

32. Use of concepts of adaptation,
transformation and cross scale
interactions in strategic grant
making
! Is the goal of the program to build the resilience of the
system through building adaptive capacity ?
• Or
! Is the goal of the program to reduce the resilience of the
focal system through building capacity for social
innovation?

33. What is your goal?
To maintain the resilience of the To transform the current
current system by adaptation? systems
! Treat the “institutional” or ! Treat the “institutional” or
environmental landscape as a given environmental landscape as mutable and
needing change
! Focus on the problem regime level
! Concentrate on connecting good ideas at
the level of innovation niches to windows
! Look for opportunities to introduce of opportunity at institutional scales and
new (inventive) programs , processes, connecting the two.
initiatives that address the needs of the
most vulnerable and builds the ! Social entrepreneurs and institutional
resilience of the whole entrepreneurs are vital
! Social entrepreneurs key as providers ! Build the capacity for institutional
of these inventive approaches entrepreneurship: system thinking,
pattern recognition, networking,
! Re-engaging the voice of the advocacy, brokering partnerships, selling
vulnerable provides the diversity ideas, building vertical social capital etc.
needed for invention