Hello 2022

👋🏾A note from our Co-Directors

As 2022 begins, we’re taking the opportunity to refocus the direction of our work.

To put where we’re heading in context, here’s a quick recap of where we’ve come from

In 2019, Griffith University approved an investment case to speed the development of the Centre. This arrangement also created commercial accountability, and we have been operating as an enterprise within the University ever since.

The Centre’s mantra at that time was the ‘business of social impact’, we were focused on the skill-sets, organisational models, and ecosystems that would enable more people to engage in, and combine; enterprise, innovation, and impact.

We went about this work through the development of credit-based courses and programmatic work that spanned research and practice. We also started exploring options to provide professional development and spent time building relationships.

The three ‘ages’ of The Yunus Centre, Griffith University as at early 2022

By the end of 2020, the Centre’s work was becoming increasingly influenced by mission-oriented innovation approaches (which we have since adopted in the framing of ‘challenge-led’). We found this field compelling because of its practical ambition to address complex challenges, and its insistence on cross-sectoral and collective efforts.

Our Yunus Centre, Griffith mud map for designing challenge-led innovation approaches, 2021

This influenced how we evolved the Centre’s goal, which became focused on ‘accelerating transitions towards regenerative and distributive economies’, and shaped the core content of our MBA course, ‘Innovation for Impact’. Mission-oriented thinking also informed the design of our applied research program, where we developed three ‘missions’ (now ‘challenges’) around circular economy, civic innovation, and impact finance.

In 2020, we also undertook discovery work around the impact potential of ‘anchor institutions’, and became more intentional about what could be our contribution to the Logan region. In early 2021, this progressed when we were successful in securing funding from the Federal Government to establish ‘Homebase’, a place-based innovation platform, in partnership with Logan City Council and many others.

Add to those activities an expansion of course offerings and a proliferation of advisory contracts, and 2021 became a very full year. Maybe too full.

By the close of the year, we had delivered an eye-watering number of events, workshops, seminars, programs, and projects. We had supported circular economy strategies in local government and the development of the Social Enterprise National Strategy. We had curated a portfolio of food systems projects and joined design efforts to address homelessness and improve community health outcomes. We worked with more than 2500 students and other learners, and developed the conceptual foundations of our three R&D programs. We also spent a lot of time building our team rhythms and culture. All of these activities had value in their own right, but for a team of 13 we were spread thin. Also, by the end of the year, we had identified the areas where we wanted to go deeper.

Back to 2022

We start this year as a more established team, and aim to be more focused. Our course portfolio will continue to expand and we intend to develop new postgraduate offerings in ‘Impact Literacy’ and ‘Impact Finance’ for 2023. Beyond individual courses, we also want to establish a program, potentially a professional postgraduate certificate, enabling us to offer a specialised qualification in impact and innovation. We also want to continue to grow the number of students that we reach.

Over 2021, we developed two professional development products. The first is a ‘networked-based learning’ offer that focuses on a specific area of practice (such as community energy), with a leading industry partner (such as the Community Power Agency), and a format that is both time and cost-efficient (eight weeks, online, peer-based). We’ll repeat and expand these offers this year. The second product is a ‘Re:Treat’ — providing a rich learning experience with challenging content in an intensive, two-day format. Our first Re:Treat was on challenge-led innovation, which we’ll be running again in April.

In our R&3D work (now explicitly naming design and demonstration alongside development), we are looking to progress the discovery work we’ve undertaken into more applied demonstrations. We recognise that this step will require resources and capacity, so we’re intending to approach this development in a number of ways.

Firstly, we are looking for activities where we can combine the research agendas of our three challenges (e.g. a place-based transition with circular economy goals with an emphasis on civic innovation and the potential to experiment with systems-based financing).

Secondly, we will seek deeper partnerships. All of this work is hard, and we recognise that we need alliances where there is a distribution of effort and where we can focus on the roles we’re best equipped for — design, discovery, and sense-making.

Lastly, we are creating a membership program for researchers from across Griffith University to work with us and create the potential for cross-disciplinary teams.

As we progress our R&3D work, we also aim to shift the resourcing model from contracted advisory work to co-funded and longer-term agendas.

Homebase will also evolve. We intend to move on from an approach which is heavy on programming, to one which is based around convening and networks, and which fosters emergence and innovation from what already exists. Food systems and community health are the areas that have momentum in the community and where we’ll direct our energy. This work will also merge with R&3D demonstrations.

Our last objective for 2022 is to continue the development of our communications and story-building. Through our publishing, we are seeking to balance relevance, novelty, provocation, credibility, and accessibility. We have found that our ‘visualising change’ series has been a powerful enabler in this respect, and we will double down on this approach as a core medium for our style and voice.

To sign off, we’ll share a final reflection on where we think the greatest potential for change lies.

The longer we do this work, the more invested we become in the power of mindsets. Regardless of the resources, design, technology, policy, or business models - mindsets and the ability to (re)frame paradigms come first.

Moving forward, we are committed to being bolder at this intervention point, because, although more abstracted, it is upstream of everything else. Ultimately, imagination and intention will always precede action, and in searching for better futures, this is where we need to inspire, inform, and enable.

Professor Ingrid Burkett (L) and Professor-of-Practice Alex Hannant (R), Co-directors, The Yunus Centre, Griffith University.