Stories from the Field: The Canvas in Social Enterprise and Community Development

Flourishing Business Community
Speakers Series: Stories from the Field #09

The Canvas in Social Enterprise & Community Development with Nicole Norris

Date: Tuesday January 9

Time: 16h00 UTC – 08h00 PST, 11h00 EST, 16h00 GMT, 17h00 CET, 01h00 JST (+1 day).  To convert UTC to your timezone click here

Duration: 1 hour

Registration: Required via Eventbrite at

For our ninth monthly flourishing business community speaker series: stories from the field, the community is delighted to welcome Nicole Norris from Social Innovation at Georgian College, a post-secondary institution in Central Ontario, Canada.

Nicole is the Director of Social Innovation, a part of Research, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship at Georgian College.  Georgian is Canada’s first and only Ashoka U Changemaker College with a 7-campus footprint that covers predominantly rural and non-metropolitan communities.  

The Social Innovation Department is a new area at the college, and Nicole’s role is to establish a community-focused strategy to support a flourishing innovation ecosystem. 

As part of this work, she draws on her own background and research working with the Flourishing Business Canvas, flourishing-inspired ontologies, and flourishing practitioner communities. 

Nicole is a graduate of the OCADU Strategic Foresight and Innovation program and is currently enrolled in PhD studies at Halmstad University, Sweden in the School of Information Technology with a cross-over to the School of Business, Innovation and Sustainability. Her research is exploring co-design for flourishing through participatory game play with the canvas in community-based participatory living labs.

Through their practice and research Nicole has come to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the Canvas.  During their talk they will share some of the learnings, including:

• How is Georgian College using the Canvas in flourishing social enterprise and community development processes?
• What is the feedback from social entrepreneurs and community members on using the Canvas as a design and innovation tool?
• What challenges have been experienced in using the Canvas?
• How are we planning to use the Canvas going forward?
• What does Nicole hope to gain from participating in the Flourishing Business Community and what can they offer to the community?

At the end of their talk Nicole will take questions from members of the community.

After the event a video of the talk plus any slides will be shared in the “Speaker Series” space of the Flourishing Business Community. Please join other flourishing business leaders and become a full member to access.