Neo didn’t know from the beginning what was wrong. Just that something was wrong. A feeling that the world wasn’t quite right, that reality was a shell, a backdrop. That’s exactly how the work of system innovation begins. Not with solutions. Not with strategies. But with doubts. You sit there, […]
Monthly Archives: December 2025
14 posts
Measuring is a fundamental part of organizational management. What we measure tends to get done because we focus on what is visible, explainable, and evaluable. But innovation is something completely different from production and improvement work. Innovation is a creative and uncontrollable process that does not grow from measurement but […]
As societal challenges become more complex, the way we organize innovation, value creation and collaboration is also changing. Traditional organizations with clear boundaries, hierarchies and ownership structures have difficulties dealing with issues that span industries, sectors and geographies. In this landscape, the concept of a keystone organization has emerged as […]
There is one evening every year when the world becomes a little softer. You know the one I mean. When the snow muffles all sounds, when the lights in the windows twinkle as if whispering secrets to each other and when time, for a moment, decides to slow down. That’s […]
It rarely starts out pretty. Innovation never does. It starts more like Die Hard: late at night, wrong place, wrong people, and a system that looks stable on the surface but is rotten behind the glass facade. You walk in with good intentions, maybe even a smile, and suddenly you […]
Causal Loop Hackathons are popular tools in systems innovation because they combine rapid problem solving with visualization of system dynamics. They give participants the opportunity to openly explore, question, and hack the assumptions that govern a complex system. The result is often a deeper understanding of drivers and levers that […]
Outcome Harvesting is a method for identifying, analyzing and understanding changes that have already occurred in a system, regardless of whether they were planned, unplanned, positive or negative. Unlike traditional impact measurement, the method does not start from predetermined goals but from observed results in reality. This makes it particularly […]
System innovation is not just about creating new solutions. It is just as much about getting the solutions to spread, integrate and become part of the new system. A pilot can be fantastic, but without scaling it does not affect the whole system. By the time a solution reaches the […]
System innovation depends on actors with different logics, drivers and goals being able to collaborate. But in practice it is often difficult to see these differences because each actor primarily understands the world from their own horizon. Role-playing is therefore one of the most effective tools for making the logic […]
Systems innovation is fundamentally about people. Technology, policies and structures can change, but if behaviours do not, the system will continue to produce the same results. Therefore, the behavioural level is not a side track in systems innovation, but a central hub. Understanding how behaviours are formed, how they spread […]
System innovation occurs in complex, dynamic and often unpredictable environments. This means that traditional measurement methods do not capture the changes that actually matter. Classic KPIs are based on linear assumptions where input leads to results in a predictable chain. In system change, reality works differently. Effects often arise as […]
Designing complex systems requires methods that can handle many actors, long time horizons and interwoven dependencies. In this context, it is not enough to develop a single service or product. Tools are needed that make it possible to prototype relationships, roles, incentives, processes, policies and market logics. System-adapted sprints are […]
Backcasting is a method that reverses the traditional way of planning development. Instead of starting with the current situation and gradually trying to identify ways forward, backcasting starts from a desired future. You define a goal that lies beyond today’s limitations and work backwards to identify the steps, conditions and […]
The Theory of Change has become an established method for describing how a desired future can be achieved through a chain of assumptions, interventions and mechanisms. The method is often used in project logic, social development and sustainability work. Basically, the Theory of Change is about mapping a logical chain […]