Educore helps organizations face future challenges through user-centered innovation.

Opportunity enrichment for sustainable futures is at the core of this work.

[General]

Future Center Alliance

4 April 2011 [General]

FCA is an alliance of Future Centers and master practitioners in the art and practice of creating, running and supporting Future Centers. The goal of the Alliance is to promote the effective use of Future Center concepts in diverse domains. Members work together to exchange ideas about effective practice and co-create new knowledge, methodologies and tools to support systemic change in organizations and society. The intention is to initiate and collaborate on joint international projects relevant to key stakeholders in the public and private sector.

Building on the work of an earlier alliance, the FCA was renewed and reestablished in 2011 by a diverse group of practitioners from 8 countries. It is the leading international alliance for initiating, organizing and actively supporting the management and renewal of Future Centers and similar dedicated innovation environments.

Alliance partners leverage their core expertise, complementary skills, and extensive networks to collaboratively achieve client objectives. They advise on and support public sector renewal and private sector innovation in a dozen countries, and have actively participated in the development of Future Centers throughout the world.

FCA members are:

  • Working Future Centers and other innovation and foresight-enhancing workspaces;
  • Public and private organizations committed to the practice of innovation, and seriously interested in applying Future Center concepts to co-create value for their customers, stakeholders, sectors and society as a whole;
  • Experienced professionals working in the field of business and societal innovation, intellectual capital, collaborative workspace design, problem solving and academic/action research, who have demonstrated an affinity with Future center concepts.

For more information, please contact
•   contact@fc-alliance.net

Website: www.fc-alliance.net

Filed under: [General]

ACSI - Aalto Camp for Societal Innovation

4 April 2011 Events, Innovation, [General]

ACSI – the Aalto Camp for Societal Innovation – is a new generation innovation initiative of Finland’s Aalto University and The New Club of Paris. ACSI integrates academic and societal expertise with hands-on innovation practice in the creation of real-life systemic change.

ACSI is a dedicated process of research, learning and rapid implementation, based on a set of core principles, processes and methods for creating societal impact, now and in the future. It provides a continuing process for furthering social and societal change. The process integrates virtual and physical work on real-life issues, the search for effective ways to think about and reframe complex problems, and research on emerging insights on how societal innovation actually works. It connects networks of researchers, user communities and international societal innovators in a community geared to create solutions meeting the real needs of business, citizens and society. In this way it leverages local knowledge and cutting-edge expertise from all over to world to further systemic change.

The 8-day camp in Finland is central to the working process. The first ACSI camp was prototyped in the summer of 2010.

ACSI 2011 will be held in Finland August 24th to 31st.Virtual work with cases starts in April 2011 and continues after the camp.

http://acsi.aalto.fi/acsi+homepage/

Filed under: Events, Innovation, [General]

European Food Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) Roundtable

5 April 2009 Sustainable futures, [General]

Establishment of the European Food Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) Roundtable
From a Joint Press Release, 26th February 2009

Major stakeholders in the European food and drink chain set up a round-table to promote environmental sustainability.

Food and drink products play a fundamental role in daily life. Every day, some 500 million EU citizens rely on high quality food for their nutrition, health and wellbeing. Food and drink products relate to their lifestyle and reflect their cultural identity.

At the same time, the production and consumption of food and drink products (from farm to fork and end-of-life) also triggers environmental implications, like for other products. The European food chain shares the responsibility and commitment to ensure that production and consumption of food not only meet consumers’ needs for food safety, nutrition, health, affordability and product choice and contribute to the generation of economic growth, but that they are also environmentally sustainable, respecting the carrying capacity of the Earth’s ecosystems in the long term.

While the concept of SCP generally applies to all products sold and bought on the market, food and drink products are different. Their specificities in terms of health, nutrition, wellbeing, cultural identity and lifestyle make them incomparable to any other product. It is for that reason that a dedicated Roundtable is being established to properly address the specific sustainability implications of the production and consumption of food and drink products.

The Roundtable will constitute a major food sector-wide contribution to the EU’s ambitions in the field of Sustainable Consumption and Production, bringing together farmers and their suppliers, agricultural traders, food and drink producers, packaging suppliers, recovery organisations and civil society representatives, and will be supported by the UN Environment Programme and the European Environment Agency.
Its outstanding features are its clear-cut focus on food and drink products and the involvement of all major food value chain players on an equal footing. The Roundtable will add significant value to initiatives outlined in the European Commission’s 2008 Action Plan.
The first priority of the “European Food SCP Roundtable” will be to facilitate agreement on uniform and scientifically reliable environmental assessment methodologies for food products.

The Roundtable will examine key sustainability challenges along the food value chain (e.g. climate change, water conservation, resource efficiency and waste reduction) and develop adequate strategies to address them.  The Food SCP Roundtable will be formally launched in a public stakeholder event in April 2009. Participation is open to all food chain partners and other relevant stakeholders, including NGOs, with pertinent expertise and who are committed to engage themselves actively towards the objectives of the Roundtable.

Participation is open but conditional on relevant expertise, active engagement, and commitment to the objectives of the Roundtable. For further information regarding participation in the Roundtable, please contact Ms Catherine Stadion, CIAA Secretariat (e-mail: c.stadion@ciaa.eu).

To view the Joint Press Release, click here:

european-food-scp-roundtable_260209

Filed under: Sustainable futures, [General]