In a special crossover event with the online RSD14 Festival, the 136th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario featured Greg Van Alstyne and Peter Scott from OCAD University.
Here’s the description that was posted in advance of the session. Zaid Khan served as moderator. Scheduled in Pacific Edition of RSD14, Tim Tompson of the Snowmelt consultancy opened the session for the morning in Australia.
Tracing sLab’s journey, and reinvigoration for the systemic design community
This session offers a reflection on the history of the Strategic Innovation Lab’s (sLab) at OCADU. We’ll discuss the potential for its renewal in the context of a vibrant systems thinking and design community, both locally and nationally.
sLab, at OCADU, was host to an active community of students, alumni, faculty, and stakeholders from 2002 to 2020. In this time, it produced notable projects such as Digital Governance, Economic Futures of Ontario 2032, Design Jams, amongst others. These projects and workshops used many strategic foresight methods, which have since become more well-known.
In this discussion, Greg Van Alystyne (co-founder of sLab) and Peter Scott (former graduate research assistant at sLab, OCAD U faculty in entrepreneurship & social innovation) reflect on the history and achievements of sLab, while exploring the relevance and opportunities of the lab in today’s systems thinking and design community context.
The session will be hosted by Zaid Khan, graduate of Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCADU (2020) and co-organizer of Systems Thinking Ontario.
See the full announcement at https://wiki.st-on.org/2025-10-09
A description of the session also appeared in RSD14: Paper Talks > Day Three on Zoom.