Natural Innovation » U-process

U-Process & Sustainable Innovation Training

admin — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 21:35:31 +0000

The Netherlands, 31 March – 1 April 2011.

Sustainable Innovation in Complex Systems.

As a follow-up to our highly successful training last year, Natural Innovation will offer a second U-process training together with Create2Connect in The Netherlands. The course will be offered in Dutch.

For more information please see the full invitation (pdf).

If you are interested in joining an English language U-process training let us know and drop us an email (hendrik@naturalinno.net).

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 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/

U-Process & Sustainable Innovation

admin — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 10:11:17 +0000

The Netherlands, 31 March-2 April 2010

Sustainable Innovation in Complex Systems

Together with Create2Connect, Natural Innovation offered a 3 day course in on the practical application of the U-process for sustainable innovation. The course was offered in Dutch. For more information please see the full invite:

U-process training Netherlands full invite (pdf)

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’.

Co-designing a new work environment

admin — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 14:33:18 +0000

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’…

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.