INTONOVUS Canada has a prevailing “wholistic” focus on people, the communities they belong to and the places they live, and on the ventures, gatherings and funds that help all three flourish. We look for compelling and genuine visions, plus creative ways to inspire, influence and activate innovation in community life, arts and culture, sport and recreation, education and entrepreneurship, so that the flourishing models, mindsets and worldviews vital to a world with fewer inequalities and injustices reach everyone, including people who would never call themselves entrepreneurs. We believe transformation happens through experience, so we design gatherings, programs and funds that people take part in and help build: done with them, never done for them. We share our co-founder Lori Farley’s conviction that the economy is a servant to humanity, that neither impact nor innovation happens in isolation, and that we can create a world where “enterprises excel because humans flourish and nature thrives.”
Emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality and immersive experiences, keep fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, and they now shape how we learn, gather, play, work and care for each other. At the same time, many people in our communities are facing rising costs, isolation and the work of starting over: newcomers to Canada, women reinventing their working lives, young people, and owners of very small businesses whose supports were designed for businesses many times their size. Entrepreneurs, artists, educators, volunteers and neighbours (aka human beings) have critical, and transformative, roles to play in the greater collaboration between actors, and fragmented ecosystems, that complicate our current ability to act collectively to affect socio-economic change locally and globally.
More than ever, geopolitical, economic, social, cultural and moral dimensions shape whether communities, markets and economies move along the trajectories sketched in the Sustainable Development Goals. As ways of living, working, gathering and doing business that are more social, local, regenerative and circular become more mainstream, the projects we spearhead, the partnerships we lead, the experiences we design together and the community capital we build are key to pushing towards breakthrough outcomes and system change designed to boost positive impacts for people and planet, in the present and for the generations ahead.