Flourishing Societies Framework - DwD Workshop

Copyright © 2015, Peter Jones
Co-Creating Civic Proposals for
Systemic Change
Flourishing Society Framework
Peter Jones, PhD
OCAD University, Toronto

Getting beyond Visioning …
• Civic Engagement & Policy Design
• Strategic Design through structured dialogues
(Dialogic Design)
• High quality engagement, consensus, mapping of
challenges & agreement on leverage issues
• We end there. How do we move to action?
• How do we push/pull/define the “business case?”
• How might we formulate strategic pathways?

Engaging citizens in co-creating
proposals for the Region of Peel
strategic plan.
Could a Flourishing Society
framework help these types of
civic engagements create initial
business cases for change
proposals?

A Framework for Flourishing
Purpose – Models for Governance “now”
– Adapting the business model construct as shared mental model
– Defining Flourishing as shared aim - Idealization
– Adapt co-creative business model thinking
– Incorporates most of the systemic design principles
Future Outcomes
– Co-design practice & artifact for governing societal innovation
– Cybernetic model as a tool for citizen participation
– Aim to create shared vocabulary for flourishing goals & measures
– Primary aim is redirective, eliciting multiple perspectives for
governance proposals.

“Caring for ecosystems demands far-sightedness, since no
one looking for quick and easy profit is truly interested in
their preservation. But the cost of the damage caused by
such selfish lack of concern is much greater than the
economic benefits to be obtained. Where certain species are
destroyed or seriously harmed, the values involved are
incalculable. We can be silent witnesses to terrible injustices
if we think that we can obtain significant benefits by making
the rest of humanity, present and future, pay the extremely
high costs of environmental deterioration.”
Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter Laudato Si , June 19, 2015

My Motivations.
After a career in high-tech product design, we are making things worse.
(Left) is what business & tech people mean when they talk about ecosystems.

Ecological balance in society …
How do we cooperate toward achieving ecological balance ?
Hasan Ozbekhan,
The Predicament of
Mankind, 1970

What do we want from sustainability?
“The possibility that human & other life
will flourish on this planet forever”
John Ehrenfeld, MIT
• Audacious
• Inspirational
• Attractive
• Universal
• Pragmatic
• Values-centred
• Continuous
Flourishing - A goal worthy of our vision
Ask yourself, what is it that sustainability sustains over time, and why?
(“Strong Sustainability” Is this also Thrivability?)

 Clean air & water
 Vibrant soil for food
 Healthy eco-systems
creating materials for us &
rendering our wastes
harmless
Trusting relationships
focused on well-being
with all our fellow
citizens (neighbours,
communities, cities, regions
& countries)
Organizations co-operate,
collaborate & compete to
best meet our needs
today & in future, while
creating the wealth to
meet shared needs
(education, infrastructure, etc.)
Individuals choosing to
flourish emotionally,
spiritually, physically,
practically, artistically &
economically
Requirements for Flourishing…Big Picture
Macro: Natural Sciences
Micro: Physiology, Psychology, etc.Meso: Businesses, Organizations, etc.
Macro: Cities, Places,
Social Systems

Person &
Family
Workplace
School
Congregation
Family
Groups
MICROSYSTEM
MESOSYSTEM
EXOSYSTEM
MACROSYSTEM
ECOSYSTEM
Microsystem
• Self acceptance
• Positive relations
• Personal growth
• Purpose in life, Meaning
• Environmental mastery,
Competence
• Autonomy, Self-care
• Integrity
• Influence
Mesosystem
• Social coherence
• Social actualization
• Social integration
• Social acceptance
• Social contribution
• Social care
• Social equality
Practice
Community
Learning
Networks
Neighborhood
Voluntary
Clubs
Community Exosystem
• Equity of access to
services
• Community livability
• Cultural resilience
• Respect for commons,
law
• Political participation
• Capacity to satisfy
essential human needs
• Community care
Governments
& Institutions
Political
Parties
Corporations
Organizational Exosystem
• Worklife satisfaction
• Organizational
participation
• Measures of success
• Value co-created with
stakeholders
• Socially responsible
Macrosystem
• Cultural flourishing
• Recognizing natural
ecosystem
• Human & non-
human rights
• Place in the world
Cultural belonging
National Identity
Perspective
Social
Values
Macrosystem
• Watershed & bioregion
• Natural resource stocks
• Ecosystem actors
• Ecosystem services:
Process & use flows
• Regeneration flows
• Cultural services
Socioecological
System Model
System of Systems
Conditions for
personal, social &
Organizational
flourishing

Upward & Jones, 2015
Based on 3 years +
Strongly Sustainable Business
Model Group
(LinkedIn, ssmbg.org, &
Flourishingbusiness.org)
Workshopped at conferences
& multiple client/NGO projects
3rd Phase Science approach

Why would we start with
business models?

Business Model Canvas – the Language of Profit Prioritizing Business
Enables Strategic
Discussion
Makes Us
Creative
New Idea
Template Fast to
Use
Clarifies
Thinking
Enable Better
Conversations
and Decisions
Understand
customers Alignment – get’s us
all on the same page
Shared Language
for all Depts.
& Locations
Helps Tell Our Story to…
Investors, Customers,
Suppliers, New Employees
Creates a
Sense of
Urgency
Better
Teamwork
*From “The business model canvas – why and how organizations around the world adopt it – a Field Report”
http://blog.strategyzer.com/posts/2015/2/9/why-and-how-organizations-around-the-world-apply-the-business-model-canvas
Focus Quickly
on Best Ideas
We Can Act
Immediately on
Our Ideas
Inspires
Innovation
Drives
Effective
Collaboration

A Vision for the Future of Business*
We imagine a world where business
• No longer merely attempts to do less harm
• Strives toward the possibility of flourishing
• Creates “tri-impact” by being tri-profitable
Financially rewarding
Socially beneficial
Environmentally regenerative
* Increasingly shared: see recent Flourishing & Prosperous Business
Conference (www.globalforumbawb.com), the book
“The Flourishing Enterprise” by Laszlo, Brown, Ehrenfeld et. al. and
the Future Fit Business Benchmark (www.FutureFitBusiness.org)
OPEN meetings of the Strongly
Sustainable Business Model Group
(SSBMG) at OCAD 2nd Tuesdays 4:30

A business model is a description of how an organization
defines and achieves success over time.
New mode of co-creative planning & design
• Consistent with Reflexive Modernization
(Ulrich, Law, Beck, Giddens, Ozbekhan)
• Every stakeholder has perspective, values, relations
And opportunity to contribute to evolutionary design
• Creates “tri-impact” by being tri-profitable
– Financially rewarding
– Socially beneficial
– Environmentally regenerative

• A common language to collaboratively sketch,
prototype, design, share, measure, diagnose & tell
stories about a flourishing business model
• Based on 3 years of graduate research + 3 years of
practice community R&D.
• Ontology & visual canvas - Built upon Osterwalder’s
successful Business Model Canvas & PhD

Three Contexts for Business – And Cities?
Social &
Technological
Physical,
Chemical &
Biological
Monetary
V2.0© Antony Upward / Edward James Consulting Ltd., 2014 All rights reserved.
Each and every business relates to all three
contexts - The environment that supports a
society that creates economies

Outcomes
Process Value People
Perspectives on a Business Model
Who does a
business do it
to, for and
with?
What does a business do
now and in the future?
How, where &
with what does
the business
do it?
Why: How does a
business define &
measure success?
(in Environmental, Social
& Monetary units)

Relating Contexts to Perspectives

Describe What’s Unique… & Shared
Unique to this
business
Everything
shared with
everyone
Common to
everyone &
everything

Narayana Health

A Community Business Model?
• Can we create a process for participatory
systemic civil planning ?
• Could we adapt the FBC as a planning tool?
• Would a canvas be sensitive to capturing
stakeholders & community proposals?
• Do the Flourishing distinctions provide
guidance for a sustainability case?
© 2015 Peter

Questions that drive the process:
SSBM Ontology Flourishing Society
1. Actor
2. Needs
3. Stakeholders
4. Relationships
5. Channels
6. Value Co-Creation (Co-Destruction)
7. Resources Processes
8. Governance Participatory governance
9. Partnerships Service Partners (in community)
10. Activities
Assets (community stewardship
of assets, legacies, commons)
11. Biophysical Stocks
12. Ecosystem Services
13. Goals / Definition of Success Goals
14. Tri-profit
15. Outcomes Accountabilities
16. Costs
17. Benefits

Using the Framework…
1. Generate responses on notes that propose ideas & actions
toward ecological balance in your issue.
2. Start by defining Goals (idealized outcomes) for your group’s
issue. Generate Value Co-Creations that might achieve these
goals. Iterate between these two at first to change Goals/Value.
3. Unlike a business, Stakeholders include broad sectors of society.
Start defining those with influence or who benefit from the
change you propose. Align these to Relationships.
4. Then extend ideas to the adjacent entities & questions.
5. Create a narrative for the proposal that makes a case for the
plan.
6. We’ll share & circulate. (Take the maps with you to keep
working on them. See if other people join you.)

Concluding Questions
• How might this model enable conversations for
Flourishing?
• What are the relationships between business &
social ecologies in a place?
• How might we get started with this approach in
policy debates?
• How could this become a practical, usable model
for engagement?

REFERENCES
• Upward, A. and Jones, P. (2015). An Ontology for Strongly Sustainable
Business Models: Defining an Enterprise Framework Compatible with Natural
and Social Science. Organization and Environment (in press).
• Jones, P. (2014). Caring for the Future: The Systemic Design of Flourishing
Enterprises. In Proceedings of RSD3, Third Symposium of Relating Systems
Thinking to Design. Oslo.
• Jones, P. (2014). Systemic design principles for complex social systems. In G.
Metcalf (ed.), Social Systems and Design, Volume 1 of the Translational Systems
Science Series, pp 91-128. Springer Japan.
• Weigand, K., Flanagan, TR, Dye, KMC, and Jones, P. (2014).Collaborative
foresight: Complementing long-horizon strategic planning. Technological
Forecasting & Social Change, 85, 134–152.
pjones@ocadu.ca

Flourishing Societies Framework - DwD Workshop

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