Propelling Ideas That Have an Impact
TIESS is Quebec’s leading authority on knowledge transfer in the social economy. Its mission? To provide organizations with the tools they need to meet the different challenges facing our society while transforming their practices. Through a continuous process of innovation—whether it be food self-sufficiency, the circular economy or democratic governance—TIESS seeks to maximize the socio-economic impact on communities while responding to major societal issues.
Our Key Approach: Co-construction
It is within this framework that TIESS’ initiatives are being deployed. Through its liaison, monitoring and knowledge-transfer mandates, it promotes learning, based on co-construction, with a territorial development perspective.
It recognizes that academic and practical knowledge complement each other, and that bringing researchers and practitioners together enables a better understanding of societal issues, the construction of new knowledge to address them, and the widespread appropriation of solutions based on this knowledge.
TIESS has been active for ten years, but its approach goes back much further, and is rooted in a willingness to work in partnership, and in many collaborative experiments. These collaborations have gradually taken shape within a well-developed and well-organized network, one of the organization’s greatest assets.
Working Together for the Common Good
To respond to the societal issues we face—the climate crisis, the housing crisis, food insecurity—social transformations and new ways of doing things are needed. TIESS, in collaboration with its community, captures social innovations, documents them and transfers them to different territories. While known for the thoroughness and creativity of its tools and resources, its ultimate aim is to accelerate social innovation processes to maximize their transformative potential. By combining social and climate justice, TIESS is definitely positioning itself in favour of an innovative, fairer, greener and more inclusive Quebec.
