We humans think in stories. We remember them, retell them, and use them to understand change. Yet many organizations try to communicate their journey through strategy documents, job descriptions, and bullet points. The result is often accurate but flat. The Hero’s Journey is a simple but powerful framework that helps […]
Monthly Archives: February 2026
11 posts
There is a point where more thinking no longer helps. Where more analysis does not create more clarity but rather more delay. That point occurs more often than we think. When the complexity of a system increases, the world changes faster than our plans. The conditions shift. Actors react. New […]
We love simple explanations. Something happens. We point to a cause. We feel satisfied. Sales went down because the market was tough. The project failed because the team lacked resources. I procrastinated because I’m lazy. The problem is that the world doesn’t work linearly. It works in circles. It’s not […]
There are urban planners who design neighborhoods. And then there are visionaries who redesign the entire relationship between humans, nature and the city. Paolo Soleri was one such visionary. Back in the sixties, he started talking about something he called arcology. A word he himself coined as a merger of […]
When Elinor Ostrom received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009, it was not because she had invented a new market model or defended central government control. She did something more radical. She showed that people, completely without a superior manager or an invisible hand, can organize themselves and manage […]
There is a state that almost all successful innovation leaders share, but which is rarely mentioned in the job description. It is not creativity per se. It is not methodological knowledge. It is a feeling. An inner pulse. A feeling that something has to happen. Now. It is called urgency. […]
Storytelling is one of those concepts that sounds like a positive thing in theory. Everyone talks about telling a story to get people to understand, engage, and act. But the reality is more complex. Stories can be amazing tools for understanding, community, and creative change. At the same time, stories […]
We often talk about the need to think outside the box. Less often we talk about how we actually do it. Creativity rarely arises just because we decide. The brain needs nudges, disruptions, new angles. It needs triggers that help us shift perspectives. An unexpected but powerful shift in perspective […]
The concept of scale has long been used in social innovation to understand how ideas and solutions spread, enlarge or deepen within social systems. In particular, research has pointed to three different ways of working with scaling as complementary paths to real system change: scaling up, scaling out and scaling […]
System innovation may sound technical and structural, but in practice it often starts with something very human. A story. When many organizations, professions and interests are to move in a new direction, reports, calculations and logical reasoning are rarely enough. Rational arguments are important but they are almost never sufficient. […]
It sounds like a contradiction. Breaking the law and at the same time strengthening democracy. But that’s exactly where civil disobedience lives. In that strange borderland where someone says “this is not okay anymore” and does it in a way that is open, conscious and non-violent. Not to destroy society […]