The Innovation North Speaker Series invites experts, either academics or practitioners, to share their experiences and perspectives on topics related to systems innovation. Innovation North is a research-practice initiative aimed at catalyzing systems innovation.
Systems Innovation at Scale: Transforming Armies, Governments and Canada’s Youth Employment System through Systemic Design
Speaker: Alex Ryan
Alex Ryan is the CEO of Synthetikos, a boutique global consultancy based in Toronto that helps transformational leaders to shift systems. He previously led partner solutions at MaRS, helping government and corporate partners accelerate the adoption of innovation in their organizations, markets and cities. Alex is an Executive in Residence with the Business Design Initiative at Rotman and teaches strategy, foresight and design at the Canadian Forces College. Alex is co-founder of Alberta CoLab, the first provincial government innovation lab in Canada. As a consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton, Alex previously helped introduce operational and strategic design into the U.S. Army. Alex holds a PhD from the University of Adelaide in applied mathematics. His dissertation advanced a multidisciplinary approach to complex systems design.
ABSTRACT
A lot of people talk about systems change. Few have done it.
In this talk I will share my experiences innovating at the systems level across various scales and contexts:
- Being at the centre of introducing systemic operational design into the U.S. Army, transforming the operational and strategic planning process of a million-person organization in the middle of fighting two wars
- Establishing Alberta CoLab, the first social innovation lab in a provincial government in Canada, leading 100+ systemic design and strategic foresight projects across every ministry of government, with a focus on integrated resource management and energy transition
- Scaling the MyStartr youth employment program from a stickie note on a MaRS Solutions Lab wall into a national program that has helped 20,000+ NEET youth find their first full-time job
I will also share some of the participatory systemic design methodologies and tools that I have helped to develop over the past 15 years to enable systems change in complex environments, such as the Systemic Design Toolkit. Finally, I will share the open questions I am holding at the frontiers of my global systems innovation practice.
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