The Real Work- New Practices for a New Era and The Roots of Innovation

The Arts Commission hosted Richard Evans, founder of EmcArts, for an evening presentation on innovation and adaptive capacity.  The lecture was held at the Lucas County Public Library.

Behind the ongoing programmatic and financial stresses being felt by nonprofit organizations at a time of economic uncertainty lies a vast territory of change in the sector as a whole. This means practitioners of all stripes unlearning a lot of things we have taken for granted, surfacing new assumptions to drive new thinking, and doing things differently across the board. Organizational innovation is challenging in a resource-strapped sector, but is now essential if field leaders are to successfully re-orient themselves to this new era. Fortunately, innovation can be systematized as a new organizational discipline, one that brings our best thinking together across traditional organizational and sector boundaries, and helps us make competitive use of our creative assets. Organizations across the United States are beginning to see that daring to risk a new approach can reveal new pathways to relevance and sustainability.