Panelist
Parallel Session 2.1: By Taking Advantage of the Digital Age
Louis Cousin is a researcher and consultant in cooperative digital innovation.
Louis believes in the power of ICA principle 6: Cooperation Among Cooperatives. For the past ten years, he has conducted projects aimed at creating the conditions for a deeper and more dynamic international cooperation among cooperatives. He is currently focusing on the potential of digital technologies to increase inter-cooperation, especially through open-source solutions and open interoperability standards. He joins and contributes to initiatives requiring collective action among groups of cooperatives, which entail coordinated participation from autonomous humans and computers. His work leads him to deal with topics such as the future of work, the collaborative economy, and the big data economy. Louis is a sales director at Startin’blox, an IT cooperative that develops open-source and interoperable web applications used to facilitate inter-organizational collaboration. In parallel, Louis is doing a Ph. D. research in Quebec (Université Laval) and France (Université Paris-Saclay), about cooperative associations’ contributions in the dissemination of open interoperability standards. He is a fellow researcher at the Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy. He has designed and delivered projects, training and consultancy services for cooperative start-ups and associations, higher education institutions, as well as governmental and inter-governmental organizations.