Chair on Resilience and Territorial Innovation

The major effects of global climate change, local perturbations, environmental degradation, resource depletion and growing inequalities are leading public and private actors to question their policies and practices and to reorient their objectives and modes of operation. Many innovations are underway, particularly in the field of territorial resilience.

TERRITORIAL RESILIENCE: A POLYSEMIC CONCEPT

The concept of resilience has various definitions depending on the actors. In order to allow a constructive dialogue between specialists in the field (sustainable development, inclusiveness, adaptation, environmental transition, etc.), the Chair on "Resilience and Territorial Innovation" uses a broad definition of the term. Resilience is seen as the ability of territories and all their actors to continue to function and pursue their development objectives, regardless of major shocks, while reducing and better resisting the chronic stresses they face today and potentially in the decades to come.

THE MAJOR CHALLENGES OF TERRITORIAL INNOVATION

Innovation policies for resilience are often cross-sectoral in nature, involving government and institutions, businesses and industry, civil society, users, and academia. Transdisciplinarity, transversality, cooperation, interplay of actors, fuzzy and evolving perimeter, emerging effects, multiple temporalities... the setting up and management of such adaptive innovation projects and policies are not without difficulties, well known by the public and private actors of the system.
Evaluating and measuring the impact of these initiatives, and thus measuring resilience itself in its multidimensional and evolving aspects, is also a very complex issue. While purely technical projects have a proven steering and evaluation system, new, more flexible tools need to be invented for monitoring public policies and projects with a societal impact involving stakeholders with different opinions, values and objectives.

THE PROJECT

The Paris Institute for Advanced Study, the Délégation Générale à la Transition Écologique et à la Résilience de la Ville de Paris and the École des Ingénieurs de la Ville de Paris are jointly setting up the Chair on "Resilience and Territorial Innovation", which will aim, over a five-year period, to collect and produce knowledge, formalize and analyze steering processes, and evaluate resilience policies. Based on the study of concrete cases of territorial innovation, in collaboration with the best researchers in human and social sciences and engineering at the global level, the Chair will propose an innovative open source platform for sharing and reflection for all types of actors in order to become a laboratory of ideas and build a community of knowledge.

THE MAIN MISSIONS OF THE CHAIR

> Setting up of an open database to capitalize on knowledge on intersectoral collaboration formats
> Creation of a permanent multi-stakeholder platform for the exchange of best practices
> Involvement of international researchers to work on concrete cases and share the latest advances in their disciplines
> Creation of guides and assessment tools adapted to the complexity of the subject under study, for the different types of actors (public, private, academic)

In anticipation of this future Chair, a series of seminars focusing on evaluation issues was launched in October 2019 at the Paris IAS. It regularly brings together research professionals, policy makers and practitioners from both an operational and academic perspective. This exploratory year will conclude with an international conference in the summer of 2020.

BECOME A PARTNER

Private and public partners are sought to co-finance the Resilience and Territorial Innovation Chair and participate in its governance. This Chair will operate on an original, multidimensional partnership model, aimed at allowing a wide participation of interested stakeholders (companies, inter-professions, administrations, associations, universities and schools) according to their resources.
For more information: information@paris-iea.fr