Social Innovation Labs

Good morning austerity readers. This week we feature a presentation from another one of the long term projects funded by the grant. This time it is a collaborative project between Dr. Meghan Joy (University of Concordia) and Dr. John Shields (Ryerson University), with the aid of Ryerson University doctoral candidate, Siu Mee Cheng. Their work focuses on the possibilities and risks of 'social innovation labs', which are tools which allow private investors to fund non-profit social service interventions with the promise of receiving a return if the service achieves a pre-determined social outcome. The authors claim this marks a shift from funding services to funding outcomes, but indicate that their research thus far shows that SILs have both negative (e.g. financializing social issues and reducing outcomes to the minimum) and positive potential (e.g. expanded voices in the problem definition and conceptualization processes). The authors' research is ongoing, and we will have more to present soon!

You can find the presentation on our Research Page under 'Labour Markets & Lived Experience'.  

To learn more about Dr. Joy, see her profile at Concordia: http://explore.concordia.ca/meghan-joy. You can see more from Dr. Shields by looking at his profile at Ryerson: http://www.ryerson.ca/politics/about-us/personnel/faculty/shields-john/.

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