The Guiding Stars / Key Features

Community-University Engagement

“Data-driven and evidence-based practices present new opportunities for public and social sector leaders to increase impact while reducing inefficiency. But in adopting such approaches, leaders should design and implement programs in ways that engage community members directly in the work of social change” (Barnes and Schmitz, 2016).

Community-University Engagement is at the very core of the Hub’s approach toward innovation. The Hub will take a collaborative approach towards social innovation by fostering engagement between academia and the broader community to enhance collaboration, co-creation, knowledge, and expertise sharing.

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI)

Achieving a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive Canadian research enterprise is essential to creating the excellent, innovative, and impactful research necessary to advance knowledge and understanding, and to respond to local, national, and global challenges (Tri-Agency Statement on EDI, 2019).

Multi-stakeholder, Multi-sectoral, and Multi-disciplinary (3Ms)

Another major guiding star for the Hub’s approach towards innovation is taking an inclusive approach involving stakeholders from multiple sectors and disciplines to ensure a collaborative, inclusive, sustainable, and participatory path toward solving some of the wicked problems of the current world. The socio-economic dynamics of today’s problems are very complex. This requires collaboration among the public sector, private sector, academia, industry leaders, community leaders, ecosystem enablers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and much more. The Hub will play a key role as the integrator, connecting all the relevant stakeholders from various sectors and disciplines.