This session introduces a social innovation lens to understanding community benefits, encouraging municipalities to think beyond short-term economic gains and toward longer-term capacity-building. This includes strengthening local workforce readiness, supporting local organizations and services, enhancing partnerships, and building the conditions for communities to adapt and thrive over time.
Industrial development plays an important role in communities across Newfoundland and Labrador, bringing opportunities for employment, business growth, and investment. However, municipalities are increasingly asking how these opportunities can translate into more lasting and meaningful community benefits.
Through practical examples and discussion, the session will explore how municipalities can play a more active role in shaping benefits outcomes, working with industry and other partners to align development activity with local priorities. Participants will be encouraged to rethink what “benefit” means and to consider how even small shifts in approach can lead to more sustainable and inclusive impacts.
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- Reframe community benefits from a focus on short-term gains to longer-term capacity-building
- Understand how social innovation applies to industrial development at the municipal level
- Identify opportunities to strengthen local capacity (e.g., workforce, partnerships, services, leadership) through development activity
- Recognize the role municipalities can play in influencing and shaping benefits outcomes
- Apply practical approaches to better align industrial development with community priorities
