Sharpen your focus
The Converge Roadmap hones your insight and gives you the tools to navigate uncertainty.
Step
01
Design
Brooke will help you:
- Surface & integrate team perspectives
- Clarify client value-drivers
- Generate win-win solutions
- Articulate your key differentiators
How:
- Workshops
Output:
- Strategy operating system
Outcome:
- Streamline your core value proposition & competitive advantages
Step
02
Deploy
Brooke will help you:
- Build an implementation roadmap & budget
- Clarify who is doing what, when, and how
- Engage & energize your wider team
- Monitor rollout & clear away obstacles
How:
- Team coaching
Output:
- Implementation management system
Outcome:
- Realize your vision, deliver your true value
Step
03
Evolve
Brooke will help you:
- Identify key opportunities & risks
- Manage evidence collection
- Get real about your results
- Use insights to drive decisions
How:
- Team coaching
Output:
- Continuous improvement system
Outcome:
- Deepen your advantage over time
Case Studies
By 2035, more than 25% of Canadians will be over the age 65. We need transformative solutions to prepare us for the social and medical challenges associated with an aging population. Countless startups in the healthtech space are trying to do just that — but many struggle to put forward robust business plans and attract investors.
MedTeq+ and AGE-WELL have been key players in the healthtech space for years. With nearly $50M in support from the federal government, the two organizations joined forces to launch the envisAGE program, which aims to accelerate agetech and ultimately revolutionize the way that we age. But in a complex and fragmented ecosystem, they needed to clarify their strategy: what value propositions would successfully engage potential partners, and in turn how could those partnerships coalesce into a unified agetech acceleration program?
“Everyone was just stunned by what we accomplished and how we’ve done it. It helped everyone in our team to align around a common goal. “
— Maude Theroux-Seguin | Head of Operations, Special Projects @ MedTeq+
Converge worked intensively with envisAGE’s incredible leadership team over an accelerated sprint. The focus they achieved in a few short weeks was astonishing—and it positioned them for a very successful initial engagement with their first set of partners shortly after the strategy workshops wrapped up.
“These sessions were definitely in another tier compared to what we’ve done before. You really showed us what’s possible in virtual workshops—and it’s much more than I believed!”
— Michael Chrostowski, PhD | Business Development and Industry Relations Manager @ AGE-WELL
The first call for solutions was launched in summer 2023, and the program is now poised to bring together an ecosystem supporting homegrown innovation in healthtech. With a clarified focus and vision, envisAGE is laying the foundation for a healthier, more dignified aging process across Canada.
We all have a stake in our collective future—and we all have the ability to help make it better. La maison de l’innovation sociale (la MIS) offers incubation programming to social entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs from the public sector, supporting them in articulating their ideas and bringing innovation to life.
One of the big challenges to systemic social change is mobilizing various actors to change their behaviour, and la MIS knew that behavioural insights could play a key role in equipping their entrepreneurs for success. But they were unsure about where, when, and how to weave behavioural insights into their programming.
“Brooke has an uncanny ability to ask thought-provoking questions. He shows us our blind spots and then he’s really constructive in helping us get to the heart of our strategic objectives. That makes the work with him really impactful.”
— Hugo Steben | Director of Capacity Building & Incubation @ La maison de l’innovation sociale
Converge conducted an overview of the social incubation programming and identified promising areas to integrate behavioural science. We then collaborated with the team at la MIS to reshape some internal tools and processes, anchoring their programs and activities in behavioural theory, embedding theory into practice.
Knowledge alone has marginal effects on how we act. It’s the deep integration of theories into our tools and processes that facilitates a smooth and low-effort transition to new behaviours—and ultimately improves our ability to build a collective future. Together.
Doctoral studies in the humanities have long been plagued by poor employment prospects (both inside and outside the ivory tower). Adding insult to injury is the lack of quantifiable social or economic impact associated with most doctoral research.
Since 2015, the TRaCE project has been documenting the career progressions of doctoral graduates, in an attempt to better understand graduates’ pathways to the job market and their contributions to society. The IDP Design project was launched to start putting those insights into practice, creating an entirely new model for doctoral research that emphasizes impact and employability. But what does that actually look like?
“One of the things that Converge is able to do is broaden the network [of program partners], make the network larger and more robust. And this has to do with the way Brooke presents ideas, the way he engages people in conversation. He’s added a very strong new dimension to the way I connect with potential partners.”
— Paul Yachnin | Principal Investigator @ TRaCE, and Tomlinson Professor of Shakespeare Studies @ McGill University
Converge served as the key architect of IDP Design, collaborating closely with the TRaCE team to leverage and build key partnerships and bring the program to life. The IDP Design structure is crafted around three core concepts: bringing students together in community with non-academics, supporting these nascent groups with structured design workshops to give their collaborations form, and using key tools of implementation science to help students manage their projects through to impactful, timely completion.
“Brooke is one of the most creative thinkers I know. And his thinking is very different from any of the really smart people that I have worked with in the past.”
— Paul Yachnin | Principal Investigator @ TRaCE, and Tomlinson Professor of Shakespeare Studies @ McGill University
The results of the pilot cohort will be published in the summer of 2023, along with all the workshop materials—which will be available for use under a Creative Commons license. In these ways, Converge and TRaCE aim to support more impactful outcomes and brighter professional futures for doctoral students.
Case Studies
By 2035, more than 25% of Canadians will be over the age 65. We need transformative solutions to prepare us for the social and medical challenges associated with an aging population. Countless startups in the healthtech space are trying to do just that — but many struggle to put forward robust business plans and attract investors.
MedTeq+ and AGE-WELL have been key players in the healthtech space for years. With nearly $50M in support from the federal government, the two organizations joined forces to launch the envisAGE program, which aims to accelerate agetech and ultimately revolutionize the way that we age. But in a complex and fragmented ecosystem, they needed to clarify their strategy: what value propositions would successfully engage potential partners, and in turn how could those partnerships coalesce into a unified agetech acceleration program?
“Everyone was just stunned by what we accomplished and how we’ve done it. It helped everyone in our team to align around a common goal. “
— Maude Theroux-Seguin | Head of Operations, Special Projects @ MedTeq+
Converge worked intensively with envisAGE’s incredible leadership team over an accelerated sprint. The focus they achieved in a few short weeks was astonishing—and it positioned them for a very successful initial engagement with their first set of partners shortly after the strategy workshops wrapped up.
“These sessions were definitely in another tier compared to what we’ve done before. You really showed us what’s possible in virtual workshops—and it’s much more than I believed!”
— Michael Chrostowski, PhD | Business Development and Industry Relations Manager @ AGE-WELL
The first call for solutions was launched in summer 2023, and the program is now poised to bring together an ecosystem supporting homegrown innovation in healthtech. With a clarified focus and vision, envisAGE is laying the foundation for a healthier, more dignified aging process across Canada.
Data is essential for gaining visibility on a problem, and ultimately solving it. For over a decade, the CanROC initiative has been building and maintaining an invaluable dataset on cardiac arrest events across Canada. And while that data has contributed to notable advances in research, it holds so much more potential for improving cardiac arrest survival rates.
But putting these insights into action takes coordination of many players across the country. The Heart & Stroke Foundation has been a national leader in cardiac health for more than 60 years. Recognizing the opportunity that CanROC represents, the Foundation has taken on a leadership role once again, aiming to bring stakeholders together to generate insights from the data, identify opportunities to improve practice, and make the necessary changes to training and policy. But how do we get stakeholders energized about a completely new way of interacting with each other?
Bringing these stakeholders to the table requires a clear value proposition and operational role for each of the various actors.
“What Brooke brought was a structure to my thinking. … It feels like we’re in it together.”
— Sandra Stabel | Director of Digital Health @ Heart & Stroke Foundation
Converge has been supporting the Heart & Stroke Foundation through the process of building a clear strategy, value proposition and operational model for operating this new community of practice. With these tools in hand the Foundation is now in a position to begin engaging these partners—putting evidence into practice, and improving outcomes for victims of cardiac arrest from coast to coast to coast.
Nobody likes to think about the end of their life, never mind talk about it. But when we avoid having these difficult conversations, we’re leaving ourselves unprepared to face the financial, medical, and social challenges that come with later life.
Financial planners, estate lawyers and other similar professionals help clients to put their decisions into action—but only Viive Planning offers support to families to actually help them navigate those difficult conversations and make informed, intentional choices. But creating a new niche in the market is hard, especially because clients are so accustomed to the old offerings (and therefore prone to misunderstanding something truly groundbreaking).
“Brooke forced me to do a lot of self-reflection just by asking questions that no one had asked me before. … He’s like my business guide through this crazy entrepreneurial journey. … I think it’s been a really good challenge because it’s taught me to be more of a boss.”
— Mallory McGrath | CEO @ Viive
Converge led Viive through an extensive process of clarifying their distinct value proposition, identifying the pain points that existing offerings simply could not address and spotlighting the places where Viive has a clear competitive advantage. Subsequently, Converge has continued to support Viive through a series of carefully designed marketing experiments designed to validate the new strategy. Armed with a revamped investor business case and suite of core capabilities, Viive is prepared to deliver service at a greater and greater scale—and better positioned than ever to support people through crucial conversations about one of life’s most end.
We all have a stake in our collective future—and we all have the ability to help make it better. La maison de l’innovation sociale (la MIS) offers incubation programming to social entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs from the public sector, supporting them in articulating their ideas and bringing innovation to life.
One of the big challenges to systemic social change is mobilizing various actors to change their behaviour, and la MIS knew that behavioural insights could play a key role in equipping their entrepreneurs for success. But they were unsure about where, when, and how to weave behavioural insights into their programming.
“Brooke has an uncanny ability to ask thought-provoking questions. He shows us our blind spots and then he’s really constructive in helping us get to the heart of our strategic objectives. That makes the work with him really impactful.”
— Hugo Steben | Director of Capacity Building & Incubation @ La maison de l’innovation sociale
Converge conducted an overview of the social incubation programming and identified promising areas to integrate behavioural science. We then collaborated with the team at la MIS to reshape some internal tools and processes, anchoring their programs and activities in behavioural theory, embedding theory into practice.
Knowledge alone has marginal effects on how we act. It’s the deep integration of theories into our tools and processes that facilitates a smooth and low-effort transition to new behaviours—and ultimately improves our ability to build a collective future. Together.
Doctoral studies in the humanities have long been plagued by poor employment prospects (both inside and outside the ivory tower). Adding insult to injury is the lack of quantifiable social or economic impact associated with most doctoral research.
Since 2015, the TRaCE project has been documenting the career progressions of doctoral graduates, in an attempt to better understand graduates’ pathways to the job market and their contributions to society. The IDP Design project was launched to start putting those insights into practice, creating an entirely new model for doctoral research that emphasizes impact and employability. But what does that actually look like?
“One of the things that Converge is able to do is broaden the network [of program partners], make the network larger and more robust. And this has to do with the way Brooke presents ideas, the way he engages people in conversation. He’s added a very strong new dimension to the way I connect with potential partners.”
— Paul Yachnin | Principal Investigator @ TRaCE, and Tomlinson Professor of Shakespeare Studies @ McGill University
Converge served as the key architect of IDP Design, collaborating closely with the TRaCE team to leverage and build key partnerships and bring the program to life. The IDP Design structure is crafted around three core concepts: bringing students together in community with non-academics, supporting these nascent groups with structured design workshops to give their collaborations form, and using key tools of implementation science to help students manage their projects through to impactful, timely completion.
“Brooke is one of the most creative thinkers I know. And his thinking is very different from any of the really smart people that I have worked with in the past.”
— Paul Yachnin | Principal Investigator @ TRaCE, and Tomlinson Professor of Shakespeare Studies @ McGill University
The results of the pilot cohort will be published in the summer of 2023, along with all the workshop materials—which will be available for use under a Creative Commons license. In these ways, Converge and TRaCE aim to support more impactful outcomes and brighter professional futures for doctoral students.
