Transformative social innovation and multisystemic resilience: Three case studies

Abstract

To illustrate the relationship between transformative social innovation and multisystem resilience, this chapter summarizes three transformative social innovations, the National Parks in the United States, the internet, and the challenging or social engineering-like case of the intelligence test. Each case study demonstrates how innovations shift several systems as they develop, scale up, and even became challenged themselves, as well as the authors’ overarching assertion that transformative social innovation and multisystem resilience are deeply interrelated. Additionally, it is by understanding our social innovation history that we can be better prepared for our future and avoid the pitfalls of social innovation’s underappreciated dark side, the risk of social engineering. This chapter is based on over a decade of work on multisystem resilience and social innovation at the Waterloo Institute of Social Innovation and Resilience.