Natural Innovation » collective intelligence

Collaborative Entrepreneurship Workshop in Dublin

admin — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 18:10:46 +0000

A Weekend Workshop for Change Makers

In these challenging times how can we use collaborative forms of leadership, innovation, fundraising and community building to strengthen our entrepreneurial and change projects?

This workshop introduces:

The U-process, offering a set of principles and practices for collectively creating the future that wants to emerge; a breakthrough methodology for collaborative innovation and accessing deeper wisdom
How to best use social networking to create business possibilities and to stimulate inspired actions
Crowd Funding: Rethinking the way we finance our projects and initiatives, beyond bank loans, through collaborative efforts that make full use of the internet and new social media tools
Community Enterprise models that are more than just individuals pursuing their own interests
Green Entrepreneurship with a focus on upskilling the workforce for the growing opportunities within Ireland’s Green Economy

This workshop is highly interactive and features short presentations from leading practitioners. Our learning will grow out of everyone’s contributions and presence. We will
support each other as co-learners. We will learn by observation, through stories from experienced practitioners, through reflecting on our own experience and practice, using interactive processes to build a safe and inspiring learning environment. We invite you to a collective inquiry.

The Art of Collaborative Leadership Training 25-27 September

admin — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 11:12:25 +0000

Belgium, September 2010

Many of us are leading transformative initiatives in civil society, business, government, culture and the arts. Across sectors and organisations to improve the well-being and sustainability of our communities, and places of work. Bringing movements for the common good together in new and collaborative ways.

As our initiatives grow and meet new challenges, of complexity, diversity and rapid change, we are challenged to work on many levels simultaneously. We need to cultivate perseverance and resilience – practices for strengthening and deepening, ourselves, our communities, and our movement.

We sense the need to bring together our initiatives, and to share our learnings and questions in the context of a highly engaging training, with diverse participants. We invite you to the Art of Collaborative Leadership, part of the family of Art of Hosting trainings, we create a transformative space for collective learning and practice.

Click here to download the full invitation (pdf)
Click here to register

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

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

Spaces for Social Innovation

simone — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 10:58:57 +0000

Since 2006 we are actively supporting the Hub Brussels, Hub London, Hub World and other start-up Hubs in Europe and around the world as advisers, community builders, hosts, facilitators of co-creative meetings, strategists, co-founders and members.

The Hub is a social enterprise with the ambition to inspire and support imaginative and enterprising initiatives for a better world. It is a global community of people from every profession, background and culture working at ‘new frontiers’ to tackle the world’s most pressing social, cultural and environmental challenges.

The Hub believes that there is no absence of good ideas in the world. The problem is a crisis of access, scale, resources and impact. It felt vital to create places around the world for accessing space, resources, connections, knowledge, experience and investment. There are currently over 20 Hubs on 4 continents and 50 more in the making.

E-campaigning forum 2009

simone — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 10:27:40 +0000

March 2009

The E-campaigning forum is a global network of (and for) practitioners of campaigning / advocacy using a growing range of electronic / digital media, initiated by Fairsay. Together with Sophia Bustamante we facilitated this year’s 6th edition. Using open space and twitter we created a thriving peer learning environment for e-campaigners from around the world.

Key note speakers included Sam Graham-Felson, Chief Blogger and Director of Blog Outreach for the Obama Campaign, who gave us an insider view and illustrated what an important role story telling, creating opportunities for participation online and offline have played. From the open space sessions we learned that campaigning is also becoming more and more about community building and participation.

Evolving Education Systems

admin — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:31:51 +0000

March 2008 – March 2009

Together with Reos Partners we supported WWF-UK with exploring the possibility for initiating a multi-stakeholder change lab in the English Education system. After having worked for many years with change initiatives on a local level, WWF felt the need to bring together the disparate initiatives and initiate a system wide movement. With the purpose to shift it from a 20th century education system geared towards a industrial society towards a more holisitic education system, responsive to the environment and a changing post-industrial globalised world. A first step of convening such a project consists of deeply sensing into the need that exists within the system and finding potential allies. We conducted in-depth dialogue interviews with stakeholders across the system and facilitated several 3-day U-process workshops for WWF to develop a comprehensive strategy to achieve their ambitions. Click here to read the synthesis report from the interviews, ‘the primacy of the personal’.

Art of Hosting trainings

admin — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 18:43:48 +0000

Since 2006 we have been calling and co-hosting trainings on the Art of Hosting (AoH) meaningful conversations in Germany, Belgium and the UK.

The Art of Hosting is about engaging the collective intelligence of diverse groups through dialogue that leads to wise solutions and actions for the future.

It is a living pattern, a network of practitioners, as well as a training experience for deepening competency and confidence in hosting group processes in Circle, World Café, Open Space and other forms, that support groups to go from strategic conversations to wise action and systemic change.

It is a response to a world that is becoming increasingly complex and fragmented, where true solutions and innovation lie not in one leader or one viewpoint, but in the bigger picture of our collective intelligence, in the wisdom between us.

To read more about the AoH www.artofhosting.org