REDI Innovation Hub Cooperatives Program

Regional Economic Development for Eastern Idaho (REDI) is developing a program to assist municipalities in supporting local communities to develop innovation hub cooperatives.

What are Innovation Hub Cooperatives?

Innovation hub cooperatives are buildings that serve as neighborhood destinations for innovation culture - designed, governed and owned by local communities as cooperatives, based on the solidarity cooperative framework.

Examples

Commongrounds is a 50,000 s.f. innovation hub cooperative in Traverse City, Michigan, which serves as both a pilot project and learning laboratory. It is presently the only project of its kind in the country - a mixed-use community building that is owned and governed as a cooperative.

Cooperative Development and Governance Systems

• Prosocial - A perspective, practical purpose, research effort and community toward the welfare of others and society as a whole. This might be an attitude, a behavior (e.g. helping, sharing, donating, cooperating, volunteering), or an institution. It might be directed toward family and friends or the social acceptance of all people. Ultimately, Prosocial is an entire worldview.

• Co-Creation Systems - Systems, models, tools for co-creation, designed, governed and owned by participants with a shared purpose, such as campaign teams and local communities.

• Self Organizing Systems - Processes where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The resulting organization is wholly decentralized, distributed over all the components of the system. As such, the organization is typically robust and able to survive or self-repair substantial perturbation.

• Partnerism - An economic system that, unlike Capitalism & Socialism, recognizes the economic value of care and adequately rewards it in both the market & non-market sectors. Like Capitalism and Socialism, Partnerism is an economic ideology that promotes a set of values, assumptions, and beliefs. First coined by Riane Eisler in The Real Wealth of Nations, Partnerism as an ideology promotes and rewards caring for one another, nature, and our collective future.

Development Phases

1. Phase I: Develop Core Team and Vision
   1. Define and pre-develop the mission, vision and founding support team
   2. Seed the idea, enable emergence of partners
   3. Develop project access
   4. Develop cooperative governance and financing agreements
   5. Develop interim staff

1. Phase II: Develop Founding Membership and Vision
   1. Develop 15/150 founding membership
   2. Launch publicly
   3. Support visions from the membership
   4. Launch successive series of campaigns
   5. Conduct feasibility studies

1. Phase III: Property Acquisition
   1. Secure down payment for property acquisition
   2. Secure tenant partners
   3. Secure finance partners
   4. Finalize financing

1. Phase IV Optional: Construction/Renovation
   1. If necessary: Secure development and construction team
   2. If necessary: Secure development and construction loan

1. Phase V: Ongoing Management and Emergence
   1. Financial accountability
   2. Restorative practice
   3. Self organization
   4. Crowdsourced placemaking

Resources

• Catalyst hub cooperatives - A similar model to innovation hub cooperatives, supported by Be The Change Cooperative.