Natural Innovation » Stories of our work

Video from the Art of Hosting Social Transformation in Egypt

simone — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 13:16:12 +0000

Check out this video from the Art of Hosting Social Transformation workshop that took place in Egypt in June 2011.

In January 2012 (11th-15th) we are co-hosting the second edition of the Art of Hosting Social Transformation in Egypt. Stay tuned, the invitation will be out soon.

Lego Serious Play at FoAM

admin — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 12:21:26 +0000

Originally posted by Dave Griffiths on Thu 3rd Nov 2011 at FoAM’s Blog

Last weekend it was the annual FoAM gathering to discuss long term ideas, some self reflection and consideration of external perceptions. We were guided on this mission by Simone Poutnik and Hendrik Tiesinga, members of FoAM and founders of Natural Innovation. They decided to trial a new method on us all, Lego Serious Play. Now, I’m a bit battle hardened when it comes to alternative business management strategies as I’ve been exposed to quite a few in various places over the years, but despite Lego’s high scoring buzzword bingo website, I can independently verify this approach as very much a success.

You start by building personal models that represent different aspects of the organisation in various states, and then work as a group to bring them together in different ways. This is done in a structured way, leading to certain questions at different stages of the process.

The core idea was to “think with your hands” and indeed the normal problem you get in these situations, a tricky question leading to an utterly blank mind, was removed as soon as you started searching for plastic bricks. Things seemed to build themselves somehow, while the indirect method of having to explain your odd constructions (usually in quite an abstract way) said a lot more than I would have managed in a more traditional situation.

The Finance Innovation Lab – Escape to the Country

admin — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 12:28:37 +0000

Originally posted by Brett Scott on his blog SuitPossum

A few weeks ago a group of wayward individuals met at Waterloo station. We hitched a ride on a train going north into the English wilderness. Bertrand was forward-thinking enough to have brought beers for the journey, a skill he learnt in his 10 years working for Deutsche Bank as a structured equity derivatives trader. Next to him was Ingo. Ingo does things that make my mind hurt, which involves channelling and managing innovation and systems design, in Sweden. Behind me was Neil. He works for the Young Foundation, helping to design things called Social Impact Bonds, ways of allowing private investors to get involved in financing early interventions that might reduce social malladies. He was chatting to David, who specialises in design, and in particular, new means of mapping and visualising the financial sector. Bertrand started talking about social CDOs, and that’s when people on the train started to look at us funny. A girl sitting next to me asked me who we were. Um, how do you explain that? We kind of work in finance, but at the same time are trying to disrupt it, alter it, play with it. I gave her my card. “Come to the dark side”, I said, “there are cool things going on”. Enter the Finance Innovation Lab….

Continue reading this great report on Brett Scott’s Blog SuitPossum

The Art of Collaborative Leadership: cultivating our capacity for hosting Systemic Transformation

simone — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:56:30 +0000

originally posted by Vanessa Reid on the Finance Lab website

Over the weekend of June 9-12, 2011 a group of twenty-six social innovators and change agents from the UK, Europe, Middle East, Canada – and from the Finance Innovation Lab itself – came together to explore the Art of Collaborative Leadership. We stayed at West Lexham, itself an ambitious, innovative model for rural social enterprise, a hub for community renewal and the homeplace of the founder and his family. And together we asked, What is the leadership needed to envision and host the fundamental systemic changes we seek for a sustainable future?

Initiated by the Hara Practice Collaborative, in partnership with the Finance Lab and Tasting the Future, this was an incredible opportunity to take a deep dive into what we have been learning together in this work – and to invite others to learn with us.

Using a wide range of methodologies, we explored the forms of relationship, organizing patterns, conceptual models, hands-on practices and processes that catalyse and support systemic shifts that will sustain people and planet. We shared real-time projects, including the learning from our work together these past 2 years in the Lab and Tasting the Future, but also from nascent seedling projects to the real-time organizing in the revolution in Greece. More than a training or a workshop, it was a participatory enquiry into the diversity of all of the participants’ experiences, projects and movements.

What did we see together?

We need to be prepared to transform ourselves. Hosting this work changes us from the inside out – and the deeper we go with our own transformation – the deeper and wider we can hold systemic transformation,

Systemic transformation is about relationship. The level of relationship we have with ourselves and with one another in our core teams will determine the depth of, and level of complexity, we can work with “out there.” Cultivating core teams that operate from a deep level of commitment and intimacy can hold the depth and breadth needed for wider transformation.

Structures and processes create pathways for change. Transforming human systems needs process architecture and design that focuses on convening people and creating a minimal/optimal structure that cannot ensure specific outcomes but invokes the highest impact possible.

The capacity to learn together is essential. Learning is a core capacity for any kind of sustained systemic change – if we are not learning, we are not changing so cultivating learning and practice grounds for successes and failures.

We look forward to our next “deep dive” – stay tuned for more learning programmes with Hara, the Finance Lab and Tasting the Future this fall, 2011.

Click here to read our initial Art of Collaborative Leadership invitation.

(R)evolution 2.0

simone — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 10:30:31 +0000

Like many people Hendrik and I were following the Egyptian revolution through the media and were very touched by the stories and pictures. Hendrik got inspired to write an article about the EU and the mediterranean democratic awakening. The uprisings in the Arab world stimulated a wave of thoughts and conversations about what this could mean to the world and especially to relations between the ‘Middle East’ and the ‘West’.
A friend from Iran said to me: “There are wounds in this region. Some of them are rooted in the way people and the land are seen. Unfortunately many people who step from the West into this part of the world embody an attitude of ‘knowing’, ‘expert’, ‘professional’, ‘fixer’, ‘solver’… How would it be to make it more visible for everyone, from the Arab world and also the West that it’s possible to simply witness and be witnessed by the other, and respect the borders of identity? That by itself would be a huge source of healing for all of us.”

This is the story of our learning journey that wasn’t planned. It just happened. It is also a story about witnessing as a way of showing up differently in the world, not as the one who knows, but as the one who listens deeply, reflects and respects. My dear friend Helen wrote in a blog post ‘In essence, witnessing is the simple act of resting one’s naked attention on an object – be it a person, a scene, a thing of any kind. Without judgement, but with a simple intention to bear witness.’

Here to download the full story (R)evolution_2.0

World Café at the European Consumer Summit

simone — Fri, 21 May 2010 12:32:41 +0000

Brussels, March 2010

The European Consumer Summit is a multi-stakeholder event in Brussels organised every year by the Health and Consumer Directorate (DG Sanco) of the European Commission. This event used to be, what we would call a ‘classical conference’: with lots of plenary presentations, little opportunities for participants to contribute and networking happening only in the breaks.

The conference was 1.5 days long with ca. 420 participants in total, which were split up in 6 workshops of 35-75 people on topics as diverse as ‘Banking fees: how to ensure transparency and choice?’ to ‘How to improve urban sustainable mobility?’. We were invited host these parallel workshops using the world café method. We designed and facilitated the 6 workshops in collaboration with colleagues form the Art of Hosting network and practitioners from within the European Commission. Each of the workshops had its unique challenging context either through having very polarised stakeholders in the group or being very broad and open. However participants were very enthusiastic about the new approach taken by this more participatory way of working pioneered by the European Commission.

As the regulator of the world’s largest economy, decisions taken by the Commission often have a global impact, improving its engagement with stakeholders is not a minor issue. This was the first time that a more participatory approach was taken in such a large conference with external stakeholders.

Read more about this on the World Cafe online community

Nano Dialogue in the Netherlands

admin — Fri, 21 May 2010 10:45:05 +0000

Netherlands, Jan 2010 – Oct 2010

In 2009 the Dutch government initiated a social dialogue around the future potential and ethical dilemmas around the rapidly developing field of Nano-technology. In collaboration the Nano Technology Platform, Create2Connect and Cordes we are organising a highly interactive multi-stakeholder conference using art, participatory video and the U-process to help participants from the high-school students, technology experts, business and citizens to learn about each other perspective and together co-create possible pathways to the future.

Tasting the Future

simone — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 02:28:32 +0000

London, since April 2009.

If the world lived and ate as we do in the UK, we would need three planets to support us. Tasting the Future is a process to enable business, government, social enterprise and civil society to take practical steps together towards a “one planet” food system. This calls for transformational change, including the way we consume.

Together with Hara Practice Ltd. we are supporting WWF UK to design, convene and host Tasting the Future, a long term systemic change process to shift we way we consume and produce food in the UK. The aim is to build a community of food innovators who will take practical action and use their collective influence to advocate a “one planet” food system. In a series of assemblies over a period of 12-18 months, it will bring together people from business, government, social enterprise and civil society who are willing to change the way we produce and consume food so that what we eat is within the limits of our planet. More info at

http://tastingthefuture.ning.com/

Transition to Resilience Training

admin — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:49:17 +0000

A European Learning Partnership

Through the Hub Brussels, Natural Innovation is one of 8 partners in this EU financed project, together with GEN Europe (Germany), Center for Human Emergence (Holland), Permakultur Institut (Germany), Transition Network (UK), Damanhur (Italy), Findhorn Foundation (UK), Sustainable Projects Ireland (IR).

We are developping a 2-year learning programme to support those people who work in local government, NGOs and the community in the creation of sustainable living environments, both urban and rural.

The Transition to Resilience training concept is built around action learning communities.

Facilitating peers in collaborative learning and supporting each other on their journey towards becoming effective change agents, in their various fields of endeavour.

Whether a Learning Communities forms for a day, a weekend, a week or a series of meetings over one or two years, T2R is a growing European wide network of flexible experienced sustainability facilitation practitioners at the cutting edge of the global resilience movement. For more info stay tuned on www.Transition2Resilience.org

The Finance Innovation Lab

admin — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

London, since Jan 2008

Together with Reos Partners and WWF-UK and others we put together the foundations for the Finance Lab an initiative designed to take practical action to stimulate transformational change in the financial system so that it serves society and the environment. Over the course of the year we conducted in-depth dialogue interviews with stakeholders and potential allies in the financial system primarily in based in the city of London as well as internationally. We facilitated several multi-day workshops helping WWF making sense of how to initiate change in a rapidly changing financial system and building trust with new partners of the Lab. In March 2010, together with Hara Practice Ltd, we co-facilitated the first Finance Lab Assembly with over 100 participants and we are supporting WWF-UK and the Institute for Chartered Accountants England and Wales (ICAEW) in building the community of finance innovators that can shift the financial system. More about the Lab http://thefinancelab.ning.com/