“In 2025, the Global Innovation Coop Summit (GICS) will be in Torres Vedras, Portugal, for an exceptional edition, in partnership with Caixa Agrícola de Torres Vedras. Organized by the International Cooperative Innovation Network (ICIN), a solidarity cooperative based in Montréal, Québec, Canada, the GICS stands as the flagship event of the cooperative and mutualist movement.
Since its creation, ICIN has worked to strengthen the international cooperative movement by fostering research, knowledge sharing, and cooperation among its members.
I believe that GICS perfectly illustrates this mission: it offers a unique platform where leaders, innovators, and researchers from around the world can meet, exchange, and co-create concrete solutions, while encouraging collaboration among participants. True to cooperative values, it is open to all who are interested in this proven, resilient, and stable economic model, embodying the cooperative spirit and the capacity of cooperatives to generate lasting impact.”
Stéphane Bertrand, co-founder of GICS and President and co-founder of ICIN
Why is GICS crucial in 2025?
This year holds particular significance: 2025 is the International Year of Cooperatives, proclaimed by the United Nations to celebrate the essential role of cooperatives in economic and social development. In a global economic context marked by uncertainty, geopolitical tensions, and environmental challenges, cooperatives once again appear as a resilient and innovative model. The theme of the summit, “Facing Tipping Points through Cooperative Innovation.”
While the global economy is grappling with new waves of tariffs, competitiveness of enterprises (cooperatives and others) being heavily affected, rising input costs, and closing markets, the cooperative model will once again face new challenges. This model, which proved its worth during the last financial crisis and subsequent recession, will again be called upon to play a key role for local and regional economies. Cooperative enterprises have an essential role to play in offering concrete and innovative solutions that respect their communities.
Unlike the purely capitalist economy, the cooperative economy is not subject to the constraints of speculators, market growth expectations, or the fluctuating opinions of market analysts. The cooperative economy lives in the real economy. An economy adapted to the market realities in which they are called to evolve. This is the foundation of their resilience.
Cooperatives also have the responsibility to be leaders in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. This lies at the heart of the 7 principles that govern them.
A program
Through three concrete axes, GICS 2025 provides a strategic framework to reflect on collective and collaborative responses to these challenges, while promoting the exchange of best practices, social and technological innovation, and the strengthening of international networks.
Empowering people to act, Building trust together, Co-creating inclusive and lasting change — GICS 2025 will allow participants to find solutions at the local level and amplify them globally, embodying the strength of intercooperation and the resilience of the cooperative model.
Why Portugal?
Portugal is not only a country of spectacular landscapes: it is also a vibrant home of innovative cooperatives. From agriculture to finance, healthcare to the social economy, these organizations create real impact but remain largely unknown internationally. GICS 2025 offers them a unique showcase to shine, exchange with global leaders, and inspire practices that can be replicated everywhere. We all have something to learn from one another. In a world undergoing major economic and geopolitical changes, Portugal becomes the ideal ground to show how cooperation and innovation can shape the future.
An innovative and immersive program
GICS 2025 stands out for its interactive and forward-looking programming, structured around three main formats:
Plenaries and conferences: dynamic sessions where international experts and cooperative leaders share their vision on the sector’s challenges and opportunities, in a global context integrating economic, social, and environmental issues.
Interactive workshops: participants co-create around discussion tables, delve deeper into the topics presented by experts, and collectively identify concrete solutions.
Innovation Factories: at the heart of the action, all participants remain in plenary and interact directly with experts on stage via Mur Web, a collaborative digital tool. These immersive sessions stimulate creativity, encourage idea sharing, and enable the co-creation of strategies that can be applied immediately. Mur Web’s features — Q&A, polls, quizzes, word clouds, real-time statistics — guarantee active participation between experts and participants.
An international summit
50 speakers — keynote speakers, panelists, and lecturers — from 15 countries, including 6 from Portugal.
A carefully balanced diversity of gender and generations: every detail has been designed to maximize exchange, inspiration, and impact at the summit.
Key themes addressed
- Social and technological innovation: how can cooperatives adopt new technologies to better serve their members while strengthening their social impact?
- Responsibility and transparency: building a culture of ethics and accountability at all organizational levels.
- Ecological transition and sustainable finance: how to align cooperatives’ financial and operational activities with sustainable development goals and climate imperatives?
- Digital transformation and technological sovereignty: challenges and opportunities linked to cooperatives’ digitalization and data security.
- Strengthening international networks: facilitating collaboration among cooperatives and mutuals worldwide to pool resources and expertise.
Shouldn’t there also be a discussion on the global situation shifting towards a new world economic order, market retrenchment, marked political instability, and growing insecurity… How can cooperatives contribute to a better world?
A platform for action and inspiration
GICS 2025 is not limited to the transmission of information: each session is designed to generate directly applicable ideas. Discussions are synthesized into a document delivered to participants a few weeks after the summit, allowing them to continue the exchanges and adapt the solutions to their own organizations.
Why participate?
Participating in GICS 2025 means:
- Being at the heart of discussions on the crucial issues cooperatives face in today’s global context.
- Discovering innovative and concrete solutions implemented by leaders from all sectors.
- Creating international partnerships and expanding your professional network.
- Being inspired by concrete examples of successful cooperation, both in Portugal and internationally.
- Contributing to the International Year of Cooperatives 2025 by exchanging and co-creating with other committed actors.
More than a conference
“For me, GICS 2025 is much more than a conference: it is a laboratory of cooperative innovation, an international crossroads of exchanges, and a driver of change for a solid, human, and solidarity-based cooperative economy. Participants do not simply attend, they become actors and co-creators of the solutions that will shape the future of the global cooperative movement.
Whether you are a cooperative leader, a researcher, a social innovator, an engaged member of a mutualist organization, or simply curious to learn more about the cooperative business model, GICS 2025 is for you. It is the opportunity to join an international community to exchange, learn, and above all act together, as the entire cooperative and mutualist ecosystem faces major tipping points — ecological, economic, humanitarian, and political — in a context where nothing is certain anymore.”
Joanne Lechasseur, Director of Programming, co-founder of GICS and Secretary General, co-founder and Secretary General of ICIN
For more information visit: Global Innovation Coop Summit
To learn more about ICIN and become a member: https://icin.coop/
