Building An Innovative Community Ecosystem
Driving Economic Development Through Human-Centered Innovation
How Do You Measure And Harness Innovation In One Of Alberta’s Fastest Growing Municipalities?
With all the attention focused on creating new organizations and tech start-ups, it’s easy to forget about the ones that already exist, the ones that need help to grow, expand, and scale to continue to drive economic development.
But it’s more than just creating sustainable organizations…it’s about building a community ecosystem where these sustainable organizations can grow their community together.
This is Innovation at the Municipality level!
Our Partners
THE SOLUTION:
Unbounded Thinking partnered with Innovate Cochrane to coordinate a 10-month program to measure innovation capabilities across a sample of the Cochrane community.
Our Human-Centered Innovation Management (HCIM) framework was applied as the program’s methodology and included:
Innovation Maturity Assessment (IMA) to measure innovation maturity at the organizational and community levels (delivered at program start/ end)
Innovation Blueprint to act as the growth framework for each organization
Community Ecosystem Program to bring organizations together to learn and share
“The team at Unbounded has truly been a strategic partner to Innovate Cochrane in the launch of our Community Innovation Ecosystem program. Bringing their HCIM framework, tools and energy for meaningful impact to each participating organization, including us!”
Nathan Klassen, Board Chair Innovate Cochrane
Innovation For Everyone
From the local pharmacy to the public library, the Wolfdog Sanctuary to the Indigenous Center, and the Town of Cochrane to local nonprofits, the program was made up of a diverse group of organizations looking to unlock innovation and growth.
Each organization started by assessing its Innovation maturity before using the results to create its customized Innovation Blueprint to drive decision-making throughout the program.
The energy shifted gears as organizations started applying their Blueprint and managing new ideas across their organization. Organizations came together monthly for community roundtable sessions and knowledge-building sessions that included topics such as ‘Building Capacity For Change’ and ‘Cultivating a Learning Organization’. Between monthly sessions, one-on-one coaching with each organization took place to reinforce the changes occurring.
After completing the six-month ecosystem-building program, a second maturity assessment is completed to understand the impact of the organization’s growth during the program.
Building a Community Innovative Ecosystem
We’re not called Unbounded Thinking for nothing!
The six Ecosystem Building Modules set out to challenge organizations to think differently and adopt innovation principles to see their organizations tap into the the talents of their employees.
The Ecosystem Building Modules Included:
Know Your Employees
Simplifying Complex Problem-Solving
Cultivating a Learning Organization
Building Capacity for Change
Strategic Foresight Thinking 101
Strategic Foresight Thinking 102
The Magic In Community
The real magic has come from bringing these amazing organizations together to learn, to explore, to share, and to be vulnerable. This might not be as directly measurable as the rest of the program…nor does it need to be.
Participating organizations are now interacting with other organizations within the community, solving problems together, helping each other, and coming up with collaborative solutions between their organizations.
As we said…the magic is in the community!
Measuring Impact
As of January 2024, all participating organizations are halfway through the ecosystem-building program, and the results so far are incredible.
Unbounded’s IMA is being used again in March to measure the change in organizational and community Innovation maturity, with the results being shared with the Cochrane community and provincially and federally.
A research project is also being completed to understand the impact of the program on economic development and organizational growth.
The Data So Far
10
Organizations Participating across multiple industries and business types
+40
Total employees involved in completing their organization’s IMA
Total hours spent with organizations building their Innovation Blueprints
+40
Total Ideas tracked across all organizations with value captured for each idea
+50
+30
Coaching sessions completed with all organizations
+250
Total employee hours spent with Unbounded Thinking
Our Path Forward
Improving organizational innovation maturity to find measurable return on innovation (ROI)
Measuring innovation at a community level to provide new insights for future planning.
Building community Innovation Ecosystems that become the catalyst for economic development.
Unbounded Thinking is dedicated to redefining innovation to make it accessible to all organizations and municipalities to manage rapid change and drive intentional growth.
This is achieved by:
Our Mission
Bringing these organizations together helps to build a municipality's Innovation Ecosystem to have a significant impact on economic development and the growth of the community.
Future Outlook
By harnessing the strengths of intrapreneurs and developing a more mature innovation framework, organizations are able to capture and measure sustainable growth.