Natural Innovation » systemic change

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.

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

admin — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 20:37:00 +0000

Norfolk, United Kingdom, 9th June 6pm - 12th June 4pm 2011.

For those hosting emerging movements, networks, or systems change and asking how to deepen them or scale up. For those holding projects and visions beyond our own local reality who want to connect up the dots and see the bigger whole. For those of us interested in taking our lives and work to the next level and seeking to seed or scale up our initiatives. For people who are already practicing art of hosting and want to go to their next level.

Change is on! It’s time to come together!

This participatory learning and practice space offers a training in hosting and harvesting conversations that matter; noticing and shifting individual, team and systemic ‘patterns’; learning principles and practices for taking social innovation to scale; experiencing working with complexity and emergence – and connecting with others leading change, innovation and systemic transformation in Europe and worldwide.

Transformation is essential, how do we live it wisely and fully?

Hosting Team: The Hara Practice Collaborative is a group of international practitioners who are themselves experimenting with working as a “field” in two systemic transformation projects in the UK: The Finance Innovation Lab and Tasting the Future. This event is a collaboration between all three

Click here for the full invitation and here for the registration form

To register, please send the registration form to aocl2011@natural-innovation.net

(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

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

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/

Transitioning to sustainable material flows

simone — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:59:50 +0000

October 2009

Plan C (Transition Network for Sustainable Management of Materials) is an ambitious network in Flanders of people from the private, civil society, academia and public sector that share a common vision of a world that manages its usage of materials in a sustainable way. Natural Innovation was invited by I-Propeller , a lead partner within Plan C, to design and facilitate the innovation studios at their annual gathering ‘Plan C accelerates’ in October.

The innovation studios focused on developing green music festivals and local economies centred on local material flows using new technologies such as 3D printing.

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’.

Supporting Organisations

admin — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 14:11:40 +0000

We support organisations to build their capacity to innovate and learn on a systemic level. We design generative and safe containers or ‘labs’ where the collective intelligence and creativity that exists in a system and its people can be harnessed to tackle a particular question or challenge. To do that we incubate and host learning and innovation spaces where a social ecology can come together, experience and learn about itself and the wider systemic context of its challenge. From there we provide support and empower the participants to innovate, co-create and implement the life-affirming solutions that they themselves believe in.

These cross-sector or interdisciplinary labs can be short lived (several days up to several months) and focussed on a clearly defined challenge such as a strategic review, a conference, workshop or a design challenge. Or they can be (semi) permanent and focused on a broader theme such as a sustainable financial system or urban agriculture.

In each case we will make use of a combination of participatory research, design and innovation approaches to convene, design and facilitate these spaces, such as: the U-process, art of hosting, story telling, bio-mimicry, systems thinking, action research, improvisation theatre, nature retreats, deep democracy, rapid prototyping and embodied learning.

Developing New Capacities

admin — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:58:44 +0000

Collaborative innovation is both ancient and new, inspired by practices as old as humanity as well as cutting-edge social technologies. We are committed to the evolution of our field of practice. We believe our practices need practising, exploring, questioning and evolving.

We do this by sharing our skills through trainings and workshops on the one hand (click here for recent events), and co-initiating and supporting collective inquiries and action research into the new capacities needed to tackle the worlds most pressing challenges.