VITAE CO-OP START-UP
Greeting,
My name is Renée Gratton , and I am a sustainability consultant, coach, mentor, trainer, award-winning eco-polymath, waste-free innovative and change management consultant, with 36 years of experience working across various sectors of the built environment development supply and value chains. Over the last decade, I have initiated and managed complex and large projects, while advocating for zero waste and living systems to prevent the waste of assets/resources and better management systems. Now, the real negative impacts are showing up in virtually every system and megatrend.
In Canada and the USA for instance, based on the Conference Board of Canada's performance in comparison to 15 other countries, both received failing grades in health, society, education and environment. Canada also failed in innovation and dropped from 5th to 9th in economic factors. In terms of labor productivity, Statistics Canada indicates the downtrends in the following industries
- Professional, Scientific & Technical Services
- Construction
- Administrative & Support, Waste Management and Remediation
- Arts, Entertainment and Recreation
This campaign is to help create a truly generative Multi-Stakeholder Co-op (MSC)
''Multi-stakeholder (or solidarity) co-ops are built on the strengths of different kinds of members. In a retail store, producers, workers, and consumers could come together and build a co-op on their combined strengths - and build a co-operative community enterprise. A multi-stakeholder co-op has multiple classes of members.'' (Canadian Community Economic Development Network-CCEDNet) Cooperative Principles include:
- Education, Training and Information
- Concern for the Community
- Member Economic Participation
- Cooperation Among Co-ops
- Voluntary Open Membership
- Democratic Member Control
WHY?
A Multi-stakeholder co-op will allow members to build a business enterprise that takes into account the growing needs of different people that cannot be met by public agencies, private enterprises, non-profit or non-governmental organizations. Whereas we can build a cooperative to leverage the strengths of different types of members, enabling the growing number of interested citizens to take a different, diverse, and nimble approach to big enterprising and innovative ideas. Unlike other types of business, MSCs can be more robust to survive hard times such a pandemic; more resilient to meet the ever-more dynamic business needs; and last but not least, more inclusive, and engaging to innovate, while increasing both labor and resource productivity. This is key, especially given the global megatrends.
- Global Economic Power Shift
- Demographic Shift
- Accelerating Urbanization
- Rise in Technology
- Climate Change and Resource Waste/Scarcity
HOW?
The creation of this co-op will be done in the same way that the most innovative projects are done: Through (re)generative approaches
“In regenerative cultures, people and companies create the conditions for more life, more diversity, more resilience and antifragility. It is the antidote to extractive industries. Implementing regenerative practices in all areas of human activity is not only the next economic boom and a source of unbridled potentiality but also our greatest potential scenario for healing our planet from our extractive history.” -Bloom Network
SO WHAT?
A Generative Multi-Stakeholder Cooperative Business Model Outcomes & Impact Design:
VITAE will capture community-wide and partner-wide outcome measures in order to predict service needs, forge new partnerships, generate new resources, and create new high-impact solutions through living labs.
Living labs, which are popular where innovations performance is high, are "physical regions or virtual realities, or interaction spaces, in which stakeholders form public-private-people partnerships (4Ps) of companies, public agencies, universities, users, and other stakeholders, all collaborating for creation, prototyping, validating, and testing of new technologies, services, products, and systems in real-life contexts." (Westerlund & Leminen, 2011). As such, living labs are for community use and for innovations as common living lab elements include:
- Orchestration;
- Real-Life Setting;
- Multi-Stakeholder Participation;
- Multi-Method Approach;
- Co-Creation; and
- Active Use Involvement
Common Living Lab Benefits:
- Knowledge dissemination;
- Technology and skill input/transfer;
- Stakeholder exchanges;
- Network Cost-Savings;
- Innovation Support;
- More Community Value
The VITAE Organizational and Practice Design will be “boundaryless” to evolve policy, governance, programs, and processes dynamically to meet changing community outcome needs, and co-create solutions with co-op and/or living labs stakeholders, knowledge institutes, users or customers.
The VITAE Systems and Technology Design will leverage predictive analytics and social technologies to synthesize information community-wide, track service loads and metrics, predict service demand, and communicate impact measures.
WHAT AM I ASKING FOR? AND WHAT'S IN IT FOR YOU?
Starting any business takes time, seed and angel investors, as well as
This is where this crowdfunding campaign comes in.
If you cannot afford investing anything financially, that's OK. Just share this with your network and help me spread the word.
For those who can, every single dollar and campaign page share helps.
- $5 will keep you informed
- $25 will get you a receipt...
- $100 will make you a lifetime member with special benefits, including privileged access to special events and discounts
- $200 will make you a lifetime member with additional benefits, including listing or logo on web site co-op page, promo, events...
- $2,500 or more will make you a lifetime supporter/investor with additional high value-added benefits, including dividends, return on investment (ROI). Dividends and ROI terms and conditions are negotiable based on on such factors as needs, amounts, if paid in one lump sum or in installments, timeline, risks, etc.
Benefits include discounts on services https://vitaegroup.ca/serviced/ , which include over 70 automated courses for continued learning.
For more details,
visit https://vitaegroup.ca/vitae/vitae-co-op/
call me at [phone redacted]
or
e-mail me at [email redacted]
