The Hub is a social enterprise with the ambition to inspire and support imaginative and enterprising [...]]]> 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.

]]> http://www.natural-innovation.net/the-hub/feed/ 0 http://www.natural-innovation.net/theory-of-change/ http://www.natural-innovation.net/theory-of-change/#comments Sun, 08 Mar 2009 14:33:18 +0000 admin http://www.naturalinno.net/testsite/?p=39 February – March 2009

How to do you co-create a new work environment and culture that encourages collaboration amongst a team of over a hundred staff, make the majority happy with less space and more people in one office? A sub-division of Siemens came to us with that challenge. We designed and [...]]]> February – March 2009

How to do you co-create a new work environment and culture that encourages collaboration amongst a team of over a hundred staff, make the majority happy with less space and more people in one office? A sub-division of Siemens came to us with that challenge. We designed and facilitated a human-centred collaborative design process, inspired by the U-process. A core team of 10 staff was formed, which represented the diversity of the whole team in terms of gender, seniority, time spent in the company, type of work etc. After a one day vision building for this process and interview training, the team interviewed a majority of their colleagues to get a more systemic perspective of the needs and requirements for the new office design and working culture. People said afterwards they really enjoyed interviewing each other as it allowed them to get to know their colleagues better and understand their context more. In another workshop of 1.5 days, we mapped all the issues and discovered the underlying patterns and themes together; we developed and proto-typed new design concepts and work methods. The new design concepts co-created by the team became the basis of the new interior design and working culture of the department. The division has now moved into the new office and people are happy with the result.

It was interesting to see the pattern of the design was not too far from how tribal villages were constructed: a round kitchen (fire place) and meeting spaces at the center with access to the garden, teams to sit together, the whole space to be personalised and with more warm but calm colors, plus a ‘cosy corner’…