The Wireless Crisis: Social Innovation and the Current State of Green G

Can you tell us about your project?

DC: Our project focused on the green transition of the wireless telecommunications industry. We saw a gap in a lot of what we were reading that Canada hasn't had a huge focus on what degree in industrial shift for telecommunications and specifically Wireless would be. Since Wireless has so few players within the market, we thought it would be a good opportunity to begin exploring how wireless green transition would look like, and what types of actions we would need across different stakeholders, whether that be governments, industry players, and anyone in between, but predominantly with those two groups given that you have regulators and also the industry players.

How do you define social innovation (SI)?

DC: I would say social Innovation is the means by which we look to create new structures for the progression of our world. It isn't necessarily just looking at something with a real narrow view but more so, with an understanding that it's multi-stakeholder, it's collaborative, it allows for more people to get into the conversation to allow for a better world for everyone at an equal footing.

KH: I think Dana covered most of the major points. For me it’s about recognizing inequalities, and really leveraging your area of expertise to address the problems that you identified. In addition it means reinforcing existing frameworks that are already in place and trying to find any solutions to bolster those existing frameworks as well.

What sparked your interest in SI?

DC: What sparked our interest was recognizing that we are in a climate crisis. We were looking at social innovation from a climate change perspective, recognizing that if we want a future as young working professionals we will also need to be the ones to propel such change in the green industrial economy shift. So by examining telecommunications and internet infrastructure, at different perspectives within our own Ph.D. work, we looked to social innovation to bring in the expertise within climate change so that we could have a more prosperous future that we can all live in.

KH: Working in telecommunications policy, we learned that innovation is restricted because of the power of  the regulatory system. It is difficult for academics or people outside of the system to produce meaningful social change within this industry which is taking the lead on climate change. I think it is a more relatable concern that gets people on board to support the issue, because everyone needs to live on the planet right? Canada is I would say a little bit more susceptible to some of these climate changes, so we really need to get behind the climate situation and figure out new solutions and provide some remedies. 

What is the problem you are hoping to solve through your work in SI? 

DC: We were looking to solve within our social innovation project how we get wireless to have a green transition when the current federal model for carbon pricing would have to be 10 times stronger in order to succeed. In university we are looking to map that issue and identify opportunities for a full green transition of the economy. This means working from left to right, top to bottom to allow for green in every sector as opposed to just waiting passively for the current carbon pricing model to incentivize such transitions.

Can you tell us a bit more about what sparked your interest in MTS and what drove you to make a submission?

DC: I first learned about Map The System from a newsletter and I was already thinking about opportunities to collaborate with classmates in different contexts, especially with Kevin because we have the same supervisor. So I was like “oh like this would be a really great opportunity, I'm looking at the future of the internet, he's looking at domestic wireless, why don't we just put this under the umbrella to understand the green transition of our fields. Since we need a global effort, why don't we try to be part of this complex problem, and offer what we can. Map the System was a great platform for that, we could collaborate together, it was really fun and we learned some new skills from the program.

KH:   Dana was the one who alerted me to Map the System. It provided me with a platform to explore an interesting and important topic that I wouldn't have explored otherwise because it  didn't completely align with my dissertation research. 

What did you learn from taking part in the 2023 MTS competition?

DC: I think the big thing that I learned from our project was that in order to identify complex issues you almost need to start with kitchen table issues first. Another big learning that I had when mapping any complex problem is that we need to start with the basics of how to allow everyone to have an equal footing for the issue at hand. After that we can build and then scale up within the green transition of wireless for example, so it becomes more of a conversation. It means that we need to give everyone the same general footing before we start scaling up and that should be a model for all future research going forward on complex issues.

What advice would you give to a student at TMU looking to take on their own SI project?

KH: I think for me like Dana had mentioned in the previous answer it's really about starting with a micro focus and just building it out because problems seem simplistic but they're not, they’re complex.