Anya Goldin is a Research and Policy Consultant with Plaid Consulting in Vancouver. As a B.A student at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, majoring in Philosophy and Ethics, she worked as our first “SPARKLIN” student partner.
Thomas Carey is co-Principal Catalyst for WINCan and Executive-in-Residence in the British Columbia Association of Institutes and Universities and the Monash University Faculty of Arts
Our team at Kwantlen Polytechnic University began exploring the WINCan theme of “Every Graduate an Innovation-Enabler” by creating an initial Knowledge Synthesis on Developing an Innovation-Enabled Workforce. As we developed this resource, we came across an emerging body of research on Innovation and Indigenous Ways of Knowing. These new perspectives offer an exceptional opportunity to extend partnerships with Indigenous communities and regional employers, to address together three contexts for Workplace Innovation Capability in Canadian higher education:
“Although innovation is not a new concept, in recent years Indigenous Innovation has started to gain momentum. In some cases, Indigenous innovation describes social enterprise, and in other cases…a move away from industrial production and technological reproduction as drivers of invention…characteristics of Indigenous Innovation should be part of larger conversations on related notions of Indigenous tradition, change and adaptability.
—Elizabeth Huaman, “Indigenous-minded innovation in shifting ecologies” ”
Ensuring all our graduates are aware of the distinctive perspectives on – and contributions to – Workplace Innovation that can arise from Indigenous Ways of Knowing (as one element of higher education’s ongoing commitment to Indigenization of the curriculum)
Enabling our Indigenous learners to integrate their Indigenous Ways of Knowing with other perspectives on Workplace Innovation, within Indigenous communities and enterprises and in broader workplace settings
Extending these impacts to opportunities for developing capability with young Canadians at other institutions (e.g., in our WINCan collaboration) and in partnerships with innovative B.C. workplaces.
In this post we highlight sample resources we discovered that showed promise in helping us address these goals. These came from multiple research areas, which we characterized under the following headings:
Indigenous Ways of Knowing and “Indigenous-Minded Innovation” as a Social Process
Research evidence on Indigenous Entrepreneurship
Research evidence on innovation within specific indigenous communities
Exemplary practices for incorporating Indigenous Ways of Knowing into higher ed programs
Indigenous Ways of Knowing and “Indigenous-Minded Innovation” as a Social Process
The best example of the kind of thinking which we want to apply is this book chapter:
Huaman, E. S. (2015). Indigenous-minded innovation in shifting ecologies. In Huaman, E. S., & Sriraman, B. (Eds.). Indigenous innovation: Universalities and peculiarities. SensePublishers, Rotterdam. pp. 1-9.
A quote from this chapter was cited in the text box above. Here’s another quote to illustrate the theme:
Indigenous innovation put into practice is a part of this dialogue and necessarily takes into consideration not only the need to acknowledge and understand multiple epistemologies—Indigenous, other non-western, and western—but also, the need to do so in our own and other shifting ecologies, in a globalized world with ever-increasing flows of capital, technology, people, and ideas where both opportunities and inequalities have increased.
Resources focused on Indigenous Entrepreneurship
We have also been compiling a separate list of resources comparing the distinctive capabilities needed for entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and workplace innovation (inspired in part by discussions with the team developing RBC’s internal incubator for intrapreneurs, RBCx). As we explore the context and impact of those distinctions, the resulting insights should allow us to apply the emerging body of resources on Indigenous Entrepreneurship to further our goals re Innovation and Indigenous Ways of Knowing.
Here are some illustrative examples from our preliminary scan for relevant recent resources:
De Pratto, B. (2017). Aboriginal Businesses Increasingly Embrace Innovation. Special Report by TD Economics for the Collaboration Research Series of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business
Mika, J. P., Warren, L., Foley, D., & Palmer, F. R. (2017). Perspectives on indigenous entrepreneurship, innovation and enterprise. Journal of Management and Organization, 23(6), 767.
Essers, C., Dey, P., Tedmanson, D., & Verduyn, K. (Eds.). (2017). Critical perspectives on entrepreneurship: challenging dominant discourses. Taylor & Francis.
Colbourne, R. (2017). An understanding of Native American entrepreneurship. Small Enterprise Research, 24(1), 49-61.
Croce, F. (2017). Indigenous Women Entrepreneurship: Analysis of an Emerging Research Theme. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2017, No. 1, p. 13771). Academy of Management.
References focused on Arctic indigenous communities
We have also identified an emerging research literature focused on indigenous communities in the Arctic, which we expect may also provide relevant insights. Here are some examples of this research:
Schjetne, E. C., & Andersen, S. T. (2016). Innovation Processes in Indigenous Communities in the North-Cultural, Psychological and Technological Knowledge in Practice. In International Conference on Culture, Technology, and Communication (pp. 82-95). Springer, Cham.
Petrov, A. N. (2016). Exploring the Arctic’s “other economies”: knowledge, creativity and the new frontier. The Polar Journal, 6(1), 51-68.
Process Exemplars
While not specific to workplace innovation, this new book on incorporating Indigenous Ways of Knowing into program higher education frameworks and structures presents some helpful examples for achieving our goals – particularly in our thinking about how innovation in higher ed’s ‘work of learning’ an become an opportunity for experiential learning to develop capability for innovation in other contexts.
Huaman, Elizabeth Sumida, and Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, eds. (2017). Indigenous innovations in higher education: Local knowledge and critical research. (pp. 3-19). SensePublishers, Rotterdam.
“This book focuses on innovations in higher education to respectfully incorporate indigenous ways of knowing from one particular context: – educating students in research that respectfully incorporates Pueblo ways of knowing. The partnership and processes described to achieve and sustain that respectful incorporation are suggestive of ways we might proceed in the context of B.C.’s First Nations communities and our project goals.”
As the Editors state in their introductory chapter:
Generating these kinds of programs in academe reshapes academe…we can capture a glimpse of a future where Indigenous presences, knowledges, and the commitment to sustain and protect Indigenous ways of life — whatever that is for students and communities — is clear and advances transformation within historically closed spaces.
We are continuing a watch list on this issue, in collaboration with the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology (B.C.’s indigenous public higher education institution). We intend to develop a broader collaboration to explore and foster the distinctive value that Indigenous Ways of Knowing can contribute to Workplace Innovation.