As the SSI proposal indicates, “Solving sustainability problems requires a high level of interdisciplinary research integration and robust researcher-stakeholder partnerships” (SSI Proposal, 2008, p. 1). By design, SSI aims to bring together faculty members in interdisciplinary teams to solve sustainability problems with stakeholders. SSI is a complex system that is both embedded within other institutional, geographic, social, ecological, and economic systems, and that encompasses many other complex
systems including stakeholder, scientific, social, other institutional systems. Framed in this way, the goal of SSI research and knowledge-to-action applications is to develop SSI as an effective university-stakeholder system that generates innovative outputs and outcomes that make a difference in implementing sustainability solutions in Maine.
Together, two lines of organizational innovation research will investigate factors (individual, small group, and large group) that impact the ongoing progress of the Sustainability Solutions Initiative (SSI).
We have two primary aims:
- Achieving better understandings of the internal dynamics of SSI, and, in the process, seekingintegration amongst multiple research perspectives in pursuit of this objective.
- Supporting communication and interconnections amongst Socio-Ecological Systems (SES) and Knowledge-to-Action (K/A) researchers and our Organizational Innovation that can then link the internal activities of SSI with the outputs and outcomes sought in the overall enterprise.
