RADIUS Lab works on systems, collaborating with community to understand tough problems and generate impactful interventions. Currently, our work focuses on inner city economic innovations, in partnership with Ecotrust Canada.
The Ecotrust Lab @ RADIUS
Ecotrust Canada and Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business forged an important and timely partnership in 2013 to foster a new generation of innovative business leaders.
The Local Economic Development Lab is a unique partnership between Ecotrust Canada and RADIUS SFU. Based on principles of mutual interest, mutual respect, and trust, the initiatives marries Ecotrust Canada’s 20 years of community development practice, and the venture and talent incubation characteristic of RADIUS SFU in service of improving the lives and livelihoods of inner city communities over time.
Under the banner of a 3-year Memorandum of Understanding, both parties are committed to:
- Designing, deploying and developing innovative solutions to complex social and economic challenges;
- Promoting examples of an economy that balances financial, environmental, and social interests;
- Supporting a next generation of leadership in the field of social innovation and entrepreneurship; and
- Reporting, publishing, and speaking on the subject of social innovation to advance the field of practice.
Ecotrust Canada and RADIUS SFU have co-hired a full time Lab manager, who is accountable to and participates equally in both organizations.
RELATIONSHIP TO THE WIDER SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY
LEDlab represents a new model of community-university partnership. The Local Economic Development Lab inverts the traditional research lab model and places community needs at the center of the research agenda.
Our vision is one wherein meaningful university-community partnerships serve and enhance community-led solution building and not the other way around. Our theory of change posits that multi-sectorial collaborations between academics, non-profits and the public and private sectors, will indeed build better solutions to adding complex problems.
