Six months into the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama, the term “change” aptly defines the essence of our current collective predicament.

So profound is the reality of change all around us that the term itself has become a mass mobilization tool across the world as people everywhere have come to realize that we cannot continue doing what we’ve been doing, and that we have to change the way we live and do things.

Intimately linked to the term “change” is “social innovation,” which has also come into vogue in recent years. While most people have an intuitive sense of what these two terms mean, it is necessary to explore their meaning more deeply.

“Change” is about a broader concept and implies transformation in a general sense; whereas “social innovation” refers to actively experimenting with new ways of doing things and, if the experiments work, sharing the findings with as many people as possible. Social innovation is about responding to the need for change by actually implementing new ways of doing things.

Googling “social innovation” nets over half a million hits. The top links are to those organizations across North America and Europe that are focused on developing social innovation. The Centre for Social Innovation (CSI) in Toronto, at the top of Google’s list, is arguably the most energetic and effective organization of its kind. It is shining a light on what the best mechanisms are through which people, communities, and organizations can collaborate to tackle the most urgent challenges we face.

How can collaborating organizations, especially those in the social sector, achieve maximum impact while minimizing waste and duplication? In short, by sharing – ideas, resources, encouragement, and capacity.

Through innovative and participatory group work, CSI shows how it is critical to move beyond the bureaucratic paralysis that bedevils so many well-funded and established institutions. Its open, non-corporate structure allows energy to be focused on the task at hand, as opposed to the maintenance of an organization.

The driving engine behind CSI is Tonya Surman, its founding executive director, who had led a number of seminal social, environmental, and web-based initiatives in Toronto and other Canadian cities for well over a decade prior to CSI’s launch in 2004.

Surman has developed a repertoire of experiences related to how social innovation can be fostered optimally. Having seen her methods work in practice, she is now turning orthodoxy on its head and asking, “It may work in practice, but does it also work in theory?” That is: can we generalize from our positive experiences and achieve innovation in the abstract as well?

The core of Surman’s model is outlined in a think piece entitled “Constellation Collaboration: A Model for Multi-organizational Partnership.” The paper describes the nuts and bolts of how to design teams or constellations of people with overlapping interests and common goals.

Here is how Surman defines the model:

The Constellation model is a complexity-inspired governance framework for multi-organizational collaboration. It is a way of organizing a group of interested parties to meet a need without having to create a new organization to “hold” the issue. It is a tool to help us recognize and become conscious designers in a complex ecosystem of organizational collaboration.

The experience that fuelled Surman’s fascination with the Constellation Model was the leadership role she played in launching the Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment (CPCHE).

In 2000, a dozen Canadian NGOs, including childcare agencies, women’s physicians and hospitals, and community health organizations, became collectively concerned about the unacceptable level of environment health risks to children. But no group had the mandate or resources by itself to launch a nation-wide campaign to ensure environmental health standards attentive to the needs of children.

They knew that to gain influence and extend their reach they had to work together. What brought the group together was a desire to create healthy living and educational environments for all children in Canada. This, in Surman’s terminology, was “the magnetic attractor,” or the main motivating factor.

With Surman acting as the “outside leader” and task-master for the group, CPCHE came into being and began establishing 15 “constellations” or clusters of activity in which partners voluntarily participated based on interest and/or ability. This flexible and organic approach allowed participants to galvanize quickly around urgent issues and then disband and change the constellations when the specific issue was addressed. This type of flexibility enabled the partners to easily reallocate resources and benefit from each other’s feedback.

With the help of the constellation method, the Partnership managed to harness its collective energy and engage in highly productive work which, over the succeeding years, transformed the way hundreds of organizations in Canada – from childcare facilities to community centres and schools – address the issues of children’s environmental health.

Like the stars in the sky, Surman’s constellations are loosely connected but well coordinated. Partners come to each other’s aid on a voluntary basis. They focus on those tasks in which they have a comparative advantage and are guided by the principles of transparency, openness, and flexibility.

Even though numerous organizations such as the Ontario Non-profit Network and the Ontario Social Economy Initiative have successfully employed the constellation model, Surman remains cautious about its applicability to all collaborative pursuits in the social sector.

But judging by the enthusiasm it has generated, her view may be a reflection of Canadians’ characteristic modesty rather than the actual potential of the model.