Shifting Place-Based Systems
Working within a system to create the conditions for change:
Take a systems view and look after the relational infrastructure
How are people moving across and between the ecosystem of activities and services?
Where are the skills and knowledges between stakeholders, how are they being shared- and where are the gaps and overlaps?
Who is influencing the system and distributing their relational power appropriately?
Where are the hidden leaders and innovators?
To support a healthy innovation system we need to understand how people move between opportunities and resources, then strengthen the links between those services - both because it makes the system more resilient, and also to design a more responsive and traversable system.
This means creating better networks of referral and connection between services/opportunities whilst understanding the flows of funding and other resources.
Other explorations we can do with a Relational Map to shift systems:
Build a set of shared stories about what this place does well, where the gaps and opportunities are, and what challenges need a longer time frame.
Take a whole sector view into the opportunities for complementary innovations, i.e: what can two or three organisations do together that shift the system more meaningfully.
Build density where there is fragmentation using introductions, collaborations and short funded projects.
Bring in organisations from adjacent sectors who have an impact into the system and set up cross sector working groups to surface and resolve silos and dysfunction.
Build relationships between and across the informal layer and the statutory layer.