By Kenzie Love
Members of the co-op sector from over 30 countries gathered in Portugal last month for the Global Co-op Innovation Summit. The Summit was organized with the intention of inspiring, promoting, and fostering the development of cooperative and mutual enterprises around the world, with a theme of Facing Tipping Points Through Cooperative Innovation.
As its theme would suggest, the Summit didn’t gloss over the challenges pushing the world to the brink on many fronts, whether in climate, geopolitics, technology, or society. However, it emphasized the importance of co-operation amongst co-operatives in addressing these, something attendees found reflected in the collaborative setup of the Summit itself in presentations, workshops, networking sessions and other activities. Attendees came together to explore topics such as building strong international partnerships, embedding environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles into all levels of their co-op’s operations, and leveraging AI for transparency, ethical decision-making, and accountability.
“It was not a talking head conference where people were just like, here are the best practices, blah blah blah blah blah blah,” says Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada’s Senior Director of External Affairs, Dan Brunette. “It was meant to be sort of a giant workshop.”
In keeping with this setup, participants in the Summit didn’t arrive or leave with all the answers to the problems they discussed, but there was still a sense of hope present. The Summit brought together what Brunette calls “practical dreamers” intent on seeing the co-operative movement thrive instead of merely survive. A key takeaway was that co-operatives can best do this by staying true to their principles and values.
“With what’s going on around the world, especially with our southern border, it reinforces the fact that co-ops are and need to be different,” Brunette says.
The need to articulate the co-operative difference was also evident to co-operative educator Cathy Statz, particularly pertaining to innovations such as AI. While technological advances may benefit co-ops in some respects, she believes, they won’t be what gives them the edge over conventional businesses.
“You can be as accomplished and as forward-thinking in those typical technological innovations,” she says. “But if we aren’t layering the co-operative lens on top of that, what’s to differentiate us from any other entity which can do that? – probably with more resources than we can.”
Even for well-resourced co-ops, however, affirming this distinction still matters. As Alexandra Wilson of the International Co-operative Alliance’s Co-operative Identity Advisory Group observes, large, commercially successful co-ops may no longer be fighting for their very survival, but the struggle to differentiate themselves continues.
‘What, in the eyes of their members, and especially of their nonmembers, makes them any different?” she says.
But one obvious distinction came from the willingness of those who attended the Summit to share ideas on how co-operatives can meet this moment rather than keep the most successful strategies to themselves. By empowering people to act, building trust together, and co-creating for lasting and effective change, which was the Summit’s aim, co-ops can demonstrate the value of collaboration at a time when it’s badly needed.