Brenda Herchmer is the owner of Grassroots Enterprises, a community development consulting company.Social Innovation Was Never Going to Deliver Systems Change
We Bet On the Wrong Horse
For years, we told ourselves a comforting story: if we focused and funded enough social innovations, eventually the big systems would shift to a more equitable balance between money and quality of life.
It hasn’t.
For me, and many others working at the community level, social innovation has only ever been part of the solution because we have learned firsthand that systems are the real barriers to change and innovation.
Focusing on systems innovation at the community level has been a tough slog and, honestly, an often lonely path. But the more I look around, the more convinced I am that this is where we should have started when social innovation surfaced some twenty years ago.
How We Mixed Up Social Innovation and Systems Innovation
When social innovation took off, it came with ambitious promises: addressing root causes, fostering collaboration, and responding to complex issues.
In practice, most of what got built may have made things more efficient and effective, but they were rarely transformative:
- Projects and pilots
- Social enterprises and “scalable” models
- New funds, forms of measurement, and theories of change.
All important. Often brilliant. But mostly constrained by the fact that they dealt with one issue and/or one sector. Additionally, they responded to problems rather than assets and opportunities.
Here’s the crux: social innovation is about better initiatives; systems innovation is about more impactful systems. They’re related, but they are not the same job.
Why We Avoided Starting with Systems
Even when we recognize that social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being are interrelated, initiating “systems change” can feel overwhelming. Where do you even begin?
So we reached for something more comfortable:
- Kept the existing macro rules of the game largely intact
- Looked for promising initiatives that could “scale.”
- Wrapped them in the language of complexity and systems.
Funders and governments could discuss transformation while still using familiar tools and refining the existing system of grants, pilot projects, and evaluation. It sounded ambitious without being too threatening.
But that meant almost no one was mandated—or funded—to actually assess and redesign the underlying systems that contributed to the problems.
Why Community Is the Right Place to Start Systems Innovation
If everything is interconnected, then real systems change starts in communities — not at arm’s length, and rarely from the top down.
- Community is where the intersections show up:
- Housing, health, income, education, and climate risk are not separate “files” in people’s lives, even though our siloed systems treat them as if they were.
- Local economies, cultures, and ecologies collide in ways that pan‑Canadian, one‑size‑fits‑all programs can’t fully grasp.
Localized systems innovation is not “just local work.” It is:
- Rewiring relationships, governance, and decision‑making in a specific place
- Questioning who holds power, whose knowledge counts, and how resources flow
- Treating a community not as a delivery channel, but as a system steward.
That is systems work. It doesn’t resemble the glossy diagrams we developed to convey the perceived greater importance of hubs and pipelines for innovation, or to demonstrate that new products, services, and solutions can be created and scaled.
What This Means for the SDGs
All of this also explains why the SDGs matter most and must be addressed at the local level.
Global institutions have been clear: the SDGs will not be achieved unless they are localized. Yet instead of truly localizing, many organizations are quietly shifting away from the SDG framework—not because the goals have lost importance, but because they are difficult to pursue within systems that aren’t conducive to change.
How can anyone deliver on SDGs like “no poverty,” “good health,” or “climate action” with a handful of projects if the underlying funding rules, governance structures, and power dynamics stay the same?
Localizing the SDGs means treating communities as system stewards and backing community‑driven systems innovation. Ideally, these local actions are framed within the context of the world’s most pressing issues. If we avoid prioritizing systems, the SDGs are merely a colourful poster rather than an embedded practice.
Why Community Systems Work Often Feels Lonely
If community‑level systems innovation makes so much sense, why does it feel so marginal?
It’s because almost everything around it is misaligned:
Funding is projectized, short‑term, and siloed. Great for pilot initiatives; terrible for long‑term system redesign.
Current measurement demands quick, attributable outputs, not slow, relational work whose effects emerge over years.
Narratives still treat national policy wins, big funds, and tech‑centric solutions as “real” systems change, and community work as “implementation.”
So if you’ve chosen localized systems innovation, it often feels like swimming upstream. You’re not imagining it. The current really is flowing the other way.
Social Innovation Is an Ingredient, Not the Meal
This isn’t an argument against social innovation. It’s an argument against treating it as the whole recipe, rather than as one set of tools within a broader systems agenda.
Social innovations—programs, models, tools—are vital when they’re guided by a clear view of the system we’re trying to change and the leverage points we’re targeting. But without changing rules and incentives, shifting narratives and power, and building institutions that act as system stewards, we simply end up with a collection of good projects. No matter how promising, they won’t transform interrelated systems.
We didn’t get it completely wrong. We just got stuck halfway. We made social innovation the main character in a story that should have been led by systems innovation, with social innovation in a supporting—but still essential—role.
So What Needs to Change?
If we’re serious about systems change, we need to do at least three things differently:
Describe community systems work for what it is: systems work. Stop treating it as a “nice-to-have local innovation” that only happens when funding appears. It’s about learning to see and support our communities as ecosystems—rather than collections of silos—and helping redesign systems from the front line out.
Fund communities as system stewards, not just project sites. Resource long‑term, cross‑issue, cross‑sector work in places. Support governance, coordination, capacity building and learning—not just delivery.
Connect local innovation to higher‑level rule change. Local practitioners shouldn’t have to hack the system alone. Create intentional pathways from community learning to provincial/federal policy, regulation, and funding reform.
What “Systems Catalyst Leadership” Really Adds
A systems catalyst facilitates innovation by connecting people, ideas, and resources across boundaries, reducing friction, and enabling aligned action.
The emphasis is on triggering shifts—in relationships, flows, and narratives that, in turn, enable further change—rather than on owning the solution or scaling a single model.
Being a systems catalyst means holding a systemic view and doing the relational work: convening unlikely allies, surfacing shared intent, and helping institutions see themselves as part of a larger pattern. It also legitimizes the “invisible” work many people are already doing—sense‑making, brokering, enabling—rather than just counting projects or outputs. That is at the core of a new kind of leader—the systems‑catalyst required to address today’s complexity.
From Systems Innovators to Systems Catalysts
If social innovation is an ingredient and systems innovation is the meal, then systems catalysts are the people in the kitchen. They’re the ones who make collaboration possible—less focused on designing better projects and more on changing the conditions so many actors can move together. They hold a systemic view and do the relational work that connects sectors, aligns intent, and reduces friction across government, business, community organizations, and residents.
In our work, this has led us to name a new, emerging discipline: systems‑catalyst leadership. It blends eight competency areas we observe in effective community system catalyst leaders: amplifying strengths, mobilizing collaborative development, using strategic foresight, promoting systems practice, serving as a catalyst for change, prioritizing citizen responsibility, advocating for balanced development, and employing entrepreneurial approaches to sustainability.
These aren’t “nice‑to‑have” soft skills; they’re the practical capabilities needed to lead community‑driven systems innovation in volatile, brittle and interconnected environments.
As more people step into systems work, the real questions aren’t, “How many projects will you fund? or “What initiatives will you implement?” but rather, “How will you, as a systems-catalyst leader, motivate and mobilize collective wisdom and maximize the potential for transformation?
Posted on 02-21-26
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