Stories from the Field: Using the Canvas in Higher Education

Flourishing Business Community
Speakers Series: Stories from the Field #07

Using the Canvas in Higher Education with Nabil Harfoush

Date: Tuesday November 14

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 seventh monthly flourishing business community speaker series: stories from the field, the community is delighted to welcome Nabil Harfoush from the Resilience Design Lab at OCAD University, Toronto, Canada. 

Founded in 2016 at OCAD University, the largest design school in Canada and third largest in North America, the OCADU Resilience Design Lab takes a holistic approach to strengthening the resilience of organizations and communities. It aspires to support intrapreneurs (those working to bring change from the inside) with new tools and methods optimized for their needs. It pursues a research agenda exploring the various aspects of resilience.

Nabil is a distinguished academic and entrepreneur. He holds the position of Full Professor and co-founding faculty at OCAD University’s Strategic Foresight & Innovation Masters of Design program, and directs the OCADU Resilience Design Lab.  He is a Visiting Professor and Associate at Harvard’s School of Engineering & Applied Sciences. His teaching portfolio encompasses graduate courses in areas such as business design, sustainable business models, strategic foresight, and complex problem-solving. 

Nabil co-founded the Strongly Sustainable Business Models Group (now the Community for Flourishing Enterprises), contributing to the evolution of the Canvas and initiatives like the Future Fit Business Benchmark. With over 50 years of experience, he’s advised governments, international organizations, and co-founded multiple companies. He has also published extensively on sustainable business models, innovation structures, and managing diverse multidisciplinary teams. He is a renowned international speaker and has presented at prestigious institutions worldwide. (For full bio see below)

Since its early development stages, starting in 2013, Nabil has been using the Canvas in the graduate courses that he teaches. Initially he used it at OCAD University as part of the capstone course of the Strategic Foresight & Innovation masters’ program. Subsequently he introduced it as part of his course in the Strategic Design MBA program at Jefferson University in Philadelphia. More recently he included the Canvas as part of graduate courses he taught at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and the School of Engineering & Applied Sciences. 

Over these years of practice, he has developed a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of this tool and of its relation to other tools used by his students.  He will share some of the learnings from his practice using the Canvas, including:

• The role of tools in educational settings
• What are the settings and objectives when using the Canvas with students?
• How have students reacted to the Canvas – reflections over time? 
• What is exciting and challenging about the Canvas?
• How does the Canvas relate to other tools?
• What does Nabil hope to gain from participating in the Flourishing Business Community and what can he offer to the community?

At the end of his talk Nabil  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.

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About Nabil Harfoush

Nabil Harfoush is Full Professor and co-founding faculty of the Strategic Foresight & Innovation MDes program at OCAD University; Director of the Resilience Design Lab; Visiting Professor and Associate at Harvard’s School of Engineering & Applied Sciences (SEAS). He teaches graduate courses in business design, sustainable business models, strategic foresight, and complex problem solving.

He is co-founder of the Strongly Sustainable Business Models Group (SSBMG) that contributed to initiatives such as the Future Fit Business Benchmark; the Flourishing Business Canvas; and the Community for Flourishing Enterprise (C4FE), a LinkedIn global community of over 2500 researchers and practitioners of enterprise sustainability. 

As an entrepreneur he has co-founded four companies and has served as CIO of 3 technology companies. He has advised national governments and international organizations such as UNESCO, W.H.O, the World Bank and IDRC, and has worked on 4 continents. He has spoken internationally at venues such as ENPC in Paris (France), Politecnico de Milano (Italy), Denmark Design Centre, London School of Economics, Harvard’s Kennedy School and Berkeley University. 

Nabil brings over 50 years of professional experience in IT, entrepreneurship, organizational transformation, and resilient strategy development. He has published papers and book chapters on sustainable business models, innovation structures, and management of highly diverse multidisciplinary teams.

Nabil has degrees in computer engineering and data communications from Germany and is a graduate of the Executive Program at Schulich Business School (York University). He speaks 4 languages fluently.