nuPOLIS is the Internet presence of the Innovation Network for Communities (INC), a national non-profit helping to develop and spread scalable innovations that transform the performance of community systems such as education, energy, land use, transportation and workforce development.
The start-up of INC was supported with funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Mission. To develop and spread scalable innovations that transform the performance of community systems.
Vision. Communities are supported by an integrated national system that helps them import, develop, scale and export social innovations with transformative potential.
Strategy. INC organizes networks that design, prototype, launch, and scale place-based social innovations. These networks come in two types:
- National networks focused on developing innovations for national distribution.
- Place-based networks focused on organizing social innovation capacity in a specific community or region.
INC Founders. INC was founded by Pete Plastrik, John Cleveland and Richard Anderson. We have been engaged in researching, brokering and developing social innovations at the community scale for the past 20 years, with a wide range of partners: community-based organizations and other nonprofits; family, community, and large private foundations; private businesses; for-profit and nonprofit financial institutions; social enterprises; public agencies; school districts; and community colleges. We have also developed expertise in the redesign of many community systems: economic development, education, land use and urban planning, government, philanthropy and work force development.
Our experience has given us the ability to work across many different sectors, fields and practice areas, and to understand the process of innovation from public, institutional, independent and private-market points of view. It has also taught us how to work successfully in a variety of communities of practice. We have come to value different cultural, commercial and intellectual perspectives, because they force us to clarify, modify and improve our own.
We intend INC to be a network that is diverse in several ways: It will be cross-sectoral, bringing together people and organizations from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. It will be multi-disciplinary, assembling expertise from various specialized knowledge areas. It will be far-reaching, connecting and connected to an extensive network of communities of place, color, and practice.
INC Board Members. Joining Peter Plastrik on the founding board are:
 Richard Anderson, president of V.I.O., Inc., a technology company in Marquette, Michigan.
Keith Cooley, President of Next Energy in Detroit and former director of the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Growth.
Alvaro Lima, Director of Business Research for the City of Boston. A Brazilian economist, he was a senior executive of Michael Porter’s Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) organization.
Juan Olivarez, President of the Kalamazoo Community Foundation and former president, Grand Rapids Community College.
Janet Topolsky, Director of the Aspen Institute’s Community Strategies Group, which works extensively with rural development organizations and, particularly, with rural community foundations across the U.S.
We intend to expand the Board slowly as INC grows, and to continue to build its multiple dimensions of diversity.
Key Partners. INC is building partnerships with key social innovators across the country. We are actively developing relationships with:
- The Council on Adult and Experiential Learning (Chicago, IL)
- New Urban Learning (Detroit, MI)
- The Aspen Institute Community Strategies Group (Washington, DC)
- The Center for Neighborhood Technology (Chicago, IL)
- Sustainable Systems (Oakland, CA)
- Nebraska Community Foundation (Lincoln, NE)
- Greater Detroit Network for Social Innovators (Detroit, MI)
- R.W. Ventures (Chicago, IL)
- Center for Asian-Pacific Leadership, University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA)
- Tillotson Trust (northern New Hampshire)
- Madeleine Taylor (Boston, MA)
- William Shutkin (Boulder, CO)
- Karen Wolf (Grand Rapids, MI)
- Brian Tell (Ann Arbor, MI)
- Greg Berry (Boulder, CO)
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