I still have it, an old silver teaspoon, slightly warped at the handle from being bent. I think I got it from my grandmother, and I now remember how she once said:
“You know, you don’t just stir the cup. You also stir the time.”
I didn’t understand then. Now I do. And that’s exactly what we have to do. Stir time.
Now it’s 2025, and I have that feeling again. The one that comes when something is about to burst. Not in a destructive way, but like when a seed cracks, or when the ice finally gives way after a long winter. I get the feeling that we have a window of opportunity now. And it’s about to close. I feel a recurring “urgency” that we need to create something better.
In a few months, new social plans will be presented. “Future system solutions for sustainable development.” Does that sound familiar? Many want to talk about system innovation. Few know what it actually means.
System innovation a paradox?
This is where we encounter our first paradox:
- System sounds stable. Like something you build up, screw in, measure, scale.
- Innovation is fluid. Messy. A child tearing out the kitchen drawer to test, play and maybe understand how the cutlery and other things work.
System innovation is building something stable out of the messy. Stirring the cup, but without knowing what you are going to taste.
Are we running the right project?
When I was young, I was at a youth center in a small town. A leader engaged everyone in building their own solutions for public transportation, housing issues and schools. All on pieces of cardboard and a table.
One guy designed a system where teachers swapped places with students every month. He called it the “knowledge circle”. Another suggested a parallel economy, where you could “pay” with good deeds. This was long before crypto and customer points.
Those projects probably never came to realization. But I don’t forget it. Because there, in the naive, there was truth. A kind of basic understanding that real solutions don’t just require new words, but a new way of being human together. Participation, and creating together.
Meanwhile, the world rolls on. AI models write poetry. The earth is burning. Children and young people demand a future through protests, while adults go to conferences to “anchor narratives”.
We live in a conflict: We know more than ever and yet we behave as if we know nothing at all.
A system innovation in which projects we start
But let me be honest. I didn’t think I would write this post. I started writing a project application. I was going to do what you usually do then: formulate chains of effect, define target groups, do a SWOT analysis.
But then the teaspoon fell out of the drawer when I was going to get a pen. And I remembered. That real change never starts with templates. It starts with people. With stories. With someone who dares to ask: What if we do the opposite?
So, here is my new application:
Let’s switch places. Let’s let the apprentice lead. Let’s let the small things show the way. Let’s see system innovation not as something we create, but something we remember how to do, something that contains humanity.
And maybe it’s true that if we just dare to hold something crooked and silvery and stir it with the right hand, that new thing doesn’t taste so strange after all.
