Govlaunch Senior Producer Olivia Labonté sits down with the City of Montréal's Commissioner of Economic Development, Cécile Vergier, and discusses her focus on supporting social innovation.
Social innovations are social practices created with the goal of extending and strengthening civil society. Montréal's action plan aims to encourage innovative initiatives that have a beneficial effect on the community by supporting social economy enterprises (mutuals and cooperatives), NPOs, and private entrepreneurship with a social purpose.
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Featured government: Ville de Montréal, Canada
Episode guests: Cecile Vergier, Commissaire au développement économique - Innovation Sociale
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Lindsay: (00:05)
Welcome to the Govlaunch podcast. Govlaunch is the Wiki for local government innovation and on this podcast, we're sharing the stories of local government innovators and their efforts to build smarter governments. I'm Lindsay Pica-Alfano, co-founder of Govlaunch and your host. Today, Olivia sits down with the city of Montreal's commissioner of economic development, focused on supporting social innovation. Social innovations are social practices created with the goal of extending and strengthening civil society. I'll turn now to Olivia to dive into this topic and learn a bit more about how the city of Montreal is fostering its own social innovation ecosystem.
Olivia: (00:47)
Hi, I'm Olivia from Govlaunch and I'm here with Cecile Vergier from Montreal, Canada. Tell us a little about yourself.
Cecile Vergier: (00:55)
Hi, Olivia. Thank you for inviting me. Really excited to talk about Montreal. I am a commissioner for social innovation in the service of economic development in Montreal. So I'm an old public servant because I've been working for 15 years in local governments. First in Paris, and now in Montreal because I am a new Montrealer. I was born and raised in Paris, but I fell in love with Montreal. And so I decided to come and live here and most because the city is so vibrant and creative. And so I am really like so lucky to be working about social innovation here in Montreal as a commission of social innovation. My role is to foster social innovation projects and companies that emerge and develop here in, in Montreal. So what we do is we try to ensure that the proper conditions for innovation as here on the territory and are accessible to both citizens and companies. So I joined the city in 2018 and I participated in the creation of the first action plan for social innovation.
Olivia: (02:01)
That's exciting. So we'll touch on that in just a moment. And as a fellow Montrealer myself, I agree with your compliments. It's an amazing city. So you mentioned that your work focuses primarily on social innovation at the city of Montreal. Can you describe to our listeners what that is exactly? I'm sure they have an idea, but it'd be great to hear in your own words, how do you define social innovation?
Cecile Vergier: (02:24)
I would say that social innovation is the process of creating new solutions to social challenges by engaging the community. And I think the community is really the key word here because, uh, social innovation is built by the community and for the community. So the whole process can involve very diverse actors in a collaborative way. So let's say, uh, incubators for example, or research people, but the roots really are in the community that is some neighbor or some people here in the city that identify a specific problem and they try to find their own solution to it. And then the process is experimented. And then if everything goes well, we scale it up. So what I could add is that here in Quebec, social innovation is really linked to the social economy because Quebec has a very strong culture of community economic development. We are lucky to have strong cities and engagement, but also a strong supporting network for the creation of social economic projects. And so this has been for many years. So I would say that most social innovations here in Quebec are rooted social economy field. And so as social innovation commissioner in an economic development system, my role is to work both on social innovation and social economy projects.
Olivia: (03:52)
Thanks for that. So you mentioned an action plan and it seems like the city of Montreal is far along on its social innovation journey, especially with the whole cultural component that you mentioned more widely in Quebec. How did the city Montreal initially start its journey of supporting social innovation?
Cecile Vergier: (04:10)
Well, um, what happens is we worked on social economy for like more than 15 years now in Montreal with the first partnership with social economy companies in 2009, but in 2017, 18, the province of Quebec gave new powers to municipalities and especially Montreal as the metropolis of Quebec. And so the Montreal came back with a global strategy for economic development that took into account these new powers. And this is where we wanted to include social innovation within the economic development strategy, because we saw a strong link between the the economy of the city, but also the growth of the quality of life, which is one of the, of the rankings that we go best in Montreal. And so here, social innovation is really useful for that. So our objective was to foster social innovation initiatives by focusing on intermediary organization that is incubators other, the organizations that support citizens and entrepreneurs.
Cecile Vergier: (05:18)
The perspective is really the economic development for the community here. We promoted social programs as well, but what we wanted to do in addition to all that, which is quite classic, was to work with a few organizations that really encompass, uh, a vision of social innovation that is very transformative. Uh, we are in a time of big climate change, big race of inequalities, and there are many organizations that really want to change the system we live in rather than adapting ourselves to the system. So what we wanted to do was also helping those organizations to scale up.
Olivia: (05:59)
It's great to hear that systems change is at the heart of social innovation, which is interesting, cuz it's local interventions, small interventions, but with that as systems change in mind, is there a common pattern? So when you're working on lots of different social innovation interventions, and we'll touch on an example in just a moment, do you see a lot of common patterns, trends and do these social innovation, uh, interventions, do they work together even though they're quite local and often small before they actually scale?
Cecile Vergier: (06:31)
Well, that's a good question. I, I would say yes, there is a common pattern in the organization. We worked with those last years. We tried to work with them and to work together. So we had like a system where we were promoting each project and helping each project out, but we wanted to share all the learnings I I'm looking to forward to, um, together so that they can collectively become stronger. So this was the idea, uh, at the beginning of the project we wanted to do, but actually with the pandemic, we had to shift our interventions and we couldn't do that as broadly as I wanted to do.
Olivia: (07:15)
Yeah. The pandemic was certainly, um, bit of a curve ball for, for lots of different local governments to say, to say the least. Now that we've set the stage, I'd love to chat more about one of your projects in particular Solon. Can you tell us about the social innovation initiative and how it came to life?
Cecile Vergier: (07:35)
Yeah. Uh, Solon is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to collectively find new paths towards socio ecologic transition. So to put it in a simple way, how it began, it was that in 2015, uh, there was a bunch of neighbors that, uh, gathered together and wanted to enhance their, uh, their alleyway they're back alleyway in Montreal. And so they came up with two projects that are really interesting because they were projects that were most about sharing and not owning. And so the idea was to share things with the neighbors so that you can enhance your own life. So one of them was called locomotion. The idea was to pull private bikes and cars at the scale of an alleyway. And so people without cars could borrow the car from their neighbor. And the idea was to develop that as a system, but always with a citizen engagement aspect.
Cecile Vergier: (08:34)
The other project was an energy one. It’s called Celsius Montréal and it was about geothermal. So, um, the problem at the beginning was, uh, an engery cost in Quebec. As you might know, we do need some heat in winter and we need some air conditioning in summer, uh, more involved, unfortunately. And so the objective was to see if it was possible to create a geo thermal network at the level of the back alley. And so this needed to have all the neighbors working together to pull the costs, but also pull the grants. And first geo thermal network started, uh, few months ago. And so we, as the city of Montreal, we met Solon when they started to get a bit known. And so there were not able to answer the requests from the community because many people came to them with many projects and they didn't know how to answer that.
Cecile Vergier: (09:37)
And at the same time at the city, we wanted to promote local social innovation, uh, that articulates citizen engagement and social economic projects. And the geo project I was talking about was about to become a cooperative. So we thought this was really interesting shift. So we started to chat with Solon and we realized that in the end, we, as a city and them as Solon, we shared the same question and it was how to scale up these activities so that your impact becomes bigger, but you don't lose this very local and grassroots approach that was your recipe for success in the beginning. So we worked on a project that could help Solon become an organization that foster others citizen on projects. Uh, and so the lab transition was created like that.
Cecile Vergier: (10:29)
So we met, we spoke and we agreed on the project. What we did with them was organize a service offer by doing three things. First raising awareness about the transition that is organizing events, organizing talks, uh, allowing people to do very practical things that is for example, uh, a swap of clothes, which was a, an opportunity to talk about our relationship to consumption, for example, but also very theory meetings. So book club about the comments philosophy, for example. And so the idea was to mix the activities so that different personalities, different citizens could be interesting in each of them and bring them into the project like that. Then it was to allow people to meet and discuss and get to know each other. So Solon is in the making of a third place here in, in, uh, LA Petri, which is open both to citizens and to a social economy organization that works within the transition field.
Cecile Vergier: (11:32)
For example, we have La Remise, which is a tool library that people can borrow from and develop skills around repairing rather than buying again. Then Solon developed something I think is really interesting, which is matchmaking between citizens. That is citizen school say, okay, I'm here. I live here. I have these kind of skills and I would like to participate, but I am no entrepreneur. And so I don't have any project to work on. Do you have some projects I could join? And on the other hand, there was like a list of project that you could join if you were interested either on a territory or a specific subject. And so there was this creation of bank of skills and bank of projects. And when the projects were created could develop a whole range of coaching and providing tools in an open way for the projects that were developed. So I think, yeah, that's the three things, raising awareness, allowing occasion for people to meet and offering coaching and, and tools to the projects that were the three main things.
Olivia: (12:41)
Social innovation sounds like a lot of fun if you ask me. You gave so many great examples of how innovation can sometimes be low tech, you know, you're not necessarily spending a lot of money on developing new and complex technologies, yet you're being incredibly transformative in the community. So it seems that an important success factor was understanding the community's needs and finding creative ways within that space to fix a problem. So how does your team creatively engage with residents. I know that it's sometimes through other organizations, but how, how do you engage with the community and get a sense of what's important to them?
Cecile Vergier: (13:22)
Well, actually it is, as you said, mostly, we let grassroots organization do the work and take the lead because they know much more about the community than we do. Uh, maybe, yeah, I should say that the city of Montreal is really a big local government. It has like 19 neighborhoods and, uh, a central organization and I work in the central organization. So I am quite, um, I don't know if we use the, this word in English, but, uh, in France, like in, ivory tower, I am like high in the tower, but away from the citizens. And so it's really important for us to have really good connections with the organization that are grassroots, both organization and the borrower by themselves. So this is this connection that we try, try to foster so that they could tell us what were the needs rather than we think about the needs.
Cecile Vergier: (14:13)
So I think also that the important thing is the combination of events of activities so that you can reach a broad range of citizens and of local needs. And also, I guess it's time. I mean, we always need to do things like rushing into it, but it is real times that allow to precise things and to go into the social challenge, um, very deep. So that often we find that the real social issue that is behind the challenge we identify in the beginning is something completely different. And so the solution can be different as well.
Olivia: (14:59)
So on that note, the sense of experimentation, especially if there's unknowns that you'll discover through the process, how does your team effectively prototype quickly and us quickly? Cause I'm assuming that that would also be an important part of the social innovation journey?
Cecile Vergier: (15:15)
Um, yes, well actually we work in a context where we cannot go that fast and change our, the way we work very easily. So what we did was to build a framework and proposing this framework to the, uh, the local government, the, the administration actually, and explaining that the organization could have some Liberty within this framework. And so it was like a long grant so that we can have enough time to experiment without going back to the whole administrative process. And also it was explaining the framework of what we want to do in social innovation, on the territories to the organization and to the administration, and then letting the organization, um, go and find their subject and find the projects that are really important for the citizens. So we really had a lot of trust in the organization that we chose to work with in the beginning so that we could really not plan what's gonna happen and accept the idea that the projects are gonna be really different from what we could imagine in the beginning.
Olivia: (16:33)
Really interesting. So when we think about local government, I myself work in the local government space as well. There's so many business cases and administrative processes, and we think about anything that's tied to public money, but we know that experimentation innovation is necessary, especially when it comes to tackling these social challenges that you mentioned. So how do you measure benefits for the projects that you engage with and how do you measure risk? How do you ensure that these projects are within the realm of how local governments perceive risk while still saving that spirit of innovation and experimentation that's required for it to be successful?
Cecile Vergier: (17:18)
That's a good question. I'm not sure I have an answer today about that, but how we measured the benefits, um, what we chose to do with the example I gave of Solon, for instance, we had like some quantitative metrics that were within our economic development strategy, which were once again, quite classic. That is, um, how many projects some could support because in the beginning they had like, maybe, I don't know, they were working on, I guess, five projects and now they have more than 30 projects that are active today. So this one, one a measure that is like easily accountable and we can really monitor easily. But what we wanted to do also was to focus very on the qualitative approach of evaluation. And so, uh, have discussions with Solon about what they learned and how they could change things. So this is really like more difficult to, uh, we cannot put it in a Excel table and say, okay, the results are here.
Cecile Vergier: (18:26)
And so the impact is bigger than before, because it's really in very gray areas that it's, it comes. Often it has like indirect benefits that we, we hadn't thought in the beginning. And for the moment, I must say, we, we are gathering all this information and discussing with the organization about it, but we are still thinking about the process in the, I think we need as government. It's, it's really complicated because as government, we, we need to have a very strong focus on, um, what we do with public money. But also I think we need to have some, some space for grey areas where the focus is not necessarily the efficiency is not, is, uh, calculated the same way as in other projects. So in the end, I think it is important for us as civil servant to keep on for some small projects and some innovative projects keep on fighting for not having evaluations that are too precise in the beginning and stuff like that. But at the same time, it's like, it's more an ethic question almost it's at the same time, it's more like having engaging in a constant discussion with the project to be sure that we still have the same focus and the efforts are going in the same direction.
Olivia: (19:49)
Yeah. Learning by doing is the best approach when it comes to innovation. And sometimes you just have to try and then see, and that that's challenging, but that spirit of innovation is, is so important as you've mentioned. And it seems like your team and the organizations that you work with are tackling some pretty, um, important social challenges. So thanks for sharing that.
Cecile Vergier: (20:11)
Thanks to you.
Olivia: (20:13)
So how do you ensure that initiatives such as the projects coming through Solon get transition eventually to business as usual? So how does the city of Montreal step away from the social innovations that they help scale?
Cecile Vergier: (20:26)
Well, uh, actually, uh, we don't necessarily want them to become business as usual. It depends on what you mean by business as usual, because what we really want them to become, uh, is strong social economic companies that is collective entrepreneurship. And so I, I don't think I define social economy before very precisely, but it is really, uh, it is, um, it is a business, but it is a business that first and foremost meets the needs of, uh, the member of the community, uh, then ensure, uh, democratic governments in the way they're proceed and operate and aim economic sustainability, uh, in order to be able to continue to, to have the social mission. Um, what we do here in the city of Montreal to help organization become that, is that we try to make available to try to offer them, uh, an available network of support with the, the becoming a business part is to help the organization both work on their impact objective and on the business model that can really work with this impact objective. So we in Montreal develop strong partnerships with incubators and accelerators program that focus specifically on impact and focus also specifically on the very collective approach that's E encompasses social economy. So we, we help this organization by proposing to them, these kind of tools. And then they can go to the existing funding system that is in Quebec about social economy for instance.
Olivia: (22:19)
What advice would you share to local governments looking to create their very own social innovation ecosystems perhaps for the first time? Can you walk us through the key steps?
Cecile Vergier: (22:29)
Okay. I'll try. Well, here in Montreal we are looking to have already a strong ecosystem, so we try to help it become stronger. But I think like the key, the key step is to get to know very precisely the organization that are in your territory and what are their strength and what are their not weaknesses, but the thing they can, they could work on to, to develop ecosystem. Uh, what we have here in Montreal is we have a space where, uh, we as a city and all the organization from the ecosystem, uh, come and talk every two weeks to share about their project, the difficulties they can find on the, on the field, um, the subject where they are tackling with, for instance, in Quebec those days is like we lack of people to do jobs. So, uh, how can this affect the social economy and how can we collectively answer the needs?
Cecile Vergier: (23:33)
And so, well, we do this in a ecosystem that already exists, but you can do that in a ecosystem where you don't have incubators, or you don't have phones, bike talking with the, the local organizations themselves in other region of Quebec, that's what they do. And so we could then propose the right policies that answer this needs. And so, yeah, meeting, talking, taking time to see exactly what is the right need coming up with small product project and see if it works so that we can build a case so that we can go and ask for more funding. Because most often we have to go on the upper scale of the province of federal state so that we can, we can experiments new project within the ecosystem. So the pilot approach and the prototyping effort is very interest in this regard.
Olivia: (24:26)
Excellent. And especially the piece around also thinking of other sources of funding as well for social innovation projects at different levels of government. Very interesting. Shifting gears a bit. Do you know of any other standout innovation in another local authority? We should check out what other cities are doing cool work right now.
Cecile Vergier: (24:45)
Okay. I, I don't know if you've been there already, but, um, I could tell you to go and see what's happening in Barcelona, Spain, well, Catal actually, and Spain. Uh, they have a really interesting, um, well, both common based approach about developing projects on one side, and they have a very extensive, uh, vision of the ecosystem I was talking about. So, uh, I think they're doing, uh, great things there, uh, in a totally different way. I was impressed by what SI is doing, because it's the huge metropoli, which is very like data oriented in terms of innovation. But it also have like very many, many grassroots and very vibrant initiatives in the social economy. And they have this, uh, vision of developing both, uh, feet. Yeah. I'm really impressed by what they were doing. Uh, um, and also, maybe in Mexico Puebla, they were developing many, many projects in relations to, uh, cooperative, uh, within the city of Puebla. Uh, so that, um, the, the problem sector really different from Quebec because it's, it's in term of extracting people from violence, uh, from gangs and stuff like that. And by offering cooperative project that give a name, a collective aim and a sense of belonging. And so they develop many interesting projects around this team and they have a huge fab lab, which is working with the university. And I think it's Volkswagen of the partners and, uh, which is very impressive.
Olivia: (26:37)
Lastly, what's something that excites you about the future of civic innovation in Montreal?
Cecile Vergier: (26:43)
Well, it's showed that the pandemic has put on a lot of stress on everyone, individuals as well, economy as the system, as a whole, but it's also showed a lot of need for more and more local projects. People are more and more testing in what is happening like next to their home. And I think it's a potential for developing more social innovation on the territory. Uh, what I think is a really interesting trend, uh, here in Montreal, but I guess as well also is like the development of, uh, the common space approach for managing the resources that can be either public or private. That is extracting actually, uh, the resource from the vision that it is either private, private, or public, that it is a property. And thinking of it rather in terms of use than in terms of property and in terms of, uh, governance and collective new managing, uh, a resource for preservation. And so this approach, uh, we worked on it in Montreal when we were working on the smart city challenge that we end up winning. And it's really interesting because it, it allows to mix both technological approach with the digital comments and all the open approach to the digital life, but also very low tech approach. And, uh, I think there is very much potential here.
Olivia: (28:08)
Well, we're looking forward to seeing many more cities becoming social innovators, just like Montreal. Thanks so much for joining us today, Cecile.
Cecile Vergier: (28:17)
Thank you so much for letting me in.
Lindsay: (28:25)
I'm Lindsay Pica-Alfano and this podcast was produced by Govlaunch the Wiki for local government innovation. You can subscribe to hear more stories like this, wherever you get your podcast. If you're a local government innovator, we hope you'll help us on our mission to build the largest free resource for local governments globally. You can join to search and contribute to the wiki at Govlaunch.com. Thanks for tuning in. We hope to see you next time on the Govlaunch podcast.