GLOBAL INNOVERSITY OPERATING AND GUIDING PRINCIPLES
Operating Principles designed to foster effective innovation.
These principles are to be practiced at every level—Global Innoversity itself, each metro region innovation coalition, and innovation projects sponsored globally or locally. This initiating set of five principles is consistent with existing concepts of managing value conflicts and generating innovation in complex settings, yet it is differentiated by the collection of these principles into an implementable set. A version of these principles was successfully and extensively practiced by TransForum, the initial founder of the Innoversity, in its innovation projects.
- Create value across all three elements of sustainability—people, planet and profit
- Engage key stakeholders—businesses, governmental units, societal/community organizations, and knowledge institutions—together throughout the work
- Experiment with innovation as the means to move beyond conflict and compromise to co?creation, learning and action
- Monitor and reflect to create and share new knowledge
- Optimize change from innovation by integrating technology (hardware), human capacities (software), and organizational/network design (orgware) into the innovation process
Guiding Principles designed to reflect our core values.
These principles are to be practiced everywhere in the network in order that innovation serves specific broader values rather than merely being an end in and of itself.
- Focus our work on food, agriculture and integrated resource systems in, around and for metropolitan regions and not be bounded by the narrow geographic outline of any one city
- Promote inclusivity, diversity, equity and social justice as integral to our work
- Promote entrepreneurship, venture development, and commercialization of innovation as integral to our work
- Connect global and local wherever we can to guarantee a mutually beneficial flow of inspiration, knowledge, innovation, and service, while honoring the specific situation and context in each region
- Honor the usefulness of existing and indigenous knowledge in our pursuit of new knowledge while recognizing that existing knowledge in part contributes to innovation and in part has resulted in the undesirable value tradeoffs that make innovation essential
- Evaluate and evolve the Operating and Guiding Principles in order that we assure their implementation in practice and their adaptation to reflect our learning from practice