Cameron Norman calls for creative products that matter to those who create them, not just those who consume them. What happens when we offload this work?
Artificial Intelligence and Creative Human Capacity
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Transformation
Highlighting projects and people driving fundamental, large-scale transformations that transcend incremental change, aiming to reshape systems into sustainable, equitable, and adaptive forms that respond to emerging challenges and adaptive to emergent conditions.
What if innovation needs us to slow down?
What if, in our rush to respond to the demand for action, we are overlooking something essential: the time it takes for good ideas to become better ones?
Bothering to Wake Up
Waking up as a process and perspective and being bothered as a sign of an unawakened self. If we are bothered, can we consciously choose to act as if we matter?
The Death and Life of Professional Online Communities
Cameron Norman’s reflection is a timely and thoughtful consideration of online communities as RSD15 enters a few months of professional online encounters.
Gathering to Rise: A Lineage of Care, Courage, and Collective Leadership
Application deadline: AUG 9, 2026. Gathering to Rise is a transformative leadership and resourcing space for Black, Indigenous, Latine, Arab, Middle Eastern, North African, Asian, and Pacific Islander women and gender-expansive leaders to reconnect with their gifts, build skills for navigating change, and find joy and solidarity in community.
Let’s Wobble!
Embracing the wobble and staying with the both/and space between opposing perspectives.
What Pluribus Doesn’t Get Right
Jamborcic: The choice is not between individual and collective. The question is how to structure the space between so that groups can think well and act together.
Designing belonging
An interview with DESIS Social Innovator Fellow, Yuliia Barash, an educator, community builder, and social initiative organizer based in Lisbon, Portugal. Her work focuses on building supportive environments for families, strengthening migrant communities, and creating initiatives that combine education, creativity, and social integration.
On Hope
Sophie Keiko Hope and reflections on remaining in relationship with the future when you cannot control the future.
Re-Thinking Capitalism
This volume, the last in THE NEW series, brings together people who rarely end up in the same conversation about how contemporary economic systems can be critically examined and pragmatically transformed.
An Axial Revolution
An axial revolution challenges unquestioned beliefs, assumptions, and paradigms to address challenges posed by global environmental change.
A Course in Paradoxical Thinking
Eric Wenzel’s new book explores recurring paradoxes of organizational life that shape transformation yet receive little attention in orthodox literature (in English and German).
I need a miracle, every day
We may not see the impacts of our work right away, but we can trust that we are part of a larger whole—and that transformation is underway
Photos and Frames
Early photographs don’t actually tell us very much about people’s lives. They tell us more about cameras … it struck me that we make the same mistake with systems all the time.
Shifting Patterns
What pattern could you shift to contribute to quantum social change, and to help create a world where we greet the news each day not with “sh#*!” but with love?
From truth out of adversity to truth in good faith
Our scepticism about political truth claims and the implications of cultural diversity lend added weight to the need for restorying what we might call truth.
Transformation and Systems Change: A Primer
Mark Cabaj has authored an accessible primer that helps build a shared understanding of what transformation means—and what it demands—from those seeking to pursue it seriously.
The World We Prefer
Preferment has been on my mind lately. It’s my alternative to retirement; a recognition that now is the time to do things differently, and to consciously create a world where we all can thrive.
The Freeze Frame Fallacy
Here is the tension in Carney’s Davos speech: calling out a rupture is recognition. But when the language stays anchored to the same dominant frame it quietly limits what we are willing to question next.
Working With the Grain
I’m grateful to have learned how to learn by feel. Over the past decade, I have realized that so many of the principles I learned under the florescent lights of my grandpa’s workbench apply to my work in design and systems.
Unity through Community
The climate negotiations in Brazil were a missed opportunity for nations to express unity through clear and ambitious climate action. Moving forward, we need to build communities that care for all.
Seven Habits for Collaborative Leaders to Make it Through These Times
Here are some of the habits that have helped us and the leaders we work with stay steady and open through uncertainty.
The Path to Polycrisis
My journey into personality studies began 10 years ago when I had the unfortunate luck of having a sociopath as my manager.
The Rebels Who Keep Us Human
New on the feed! GertyGordie substack posts by Lorraine Randal. Let’s start with “Systems rely on convivial rebels to stay alive and responsive… but struggle to admit how much they need them.”
The Karma Effect
Understanding cause and effect is at the heart of responsible climate action. Karma isn’t fate but feedback, and a reminder that we matter more than we think.
Freedom vs. Order: The Decentralized Design Dilemma
In real life, generous sharing usually works better than strict rules. Heavy permission systems slow down teamwork more than the occasional trust problem costs you. When you’re already working across different groups, you’re not trying to keep everything private anyway.
Soul Searching
“Send” I hit the button this week and sent a letter to make it official that I will retire from the University of Oslo on January 1, 2026. In that moment, a wave of possibility collapsed into a particular reality.
The Astronomical Fall
Karen O’Brien reflects on Bill McKibben’s new book, Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization—”we have to deliberately transform ourselves and our societies. Quickly.”
Speaking Up
Karen O’Brien: How do those of us who still have the freedom to speak make use of our voices in powerful and responsible ways? “Speak up” sounds simple, but the truth is that using our voices can make us feel vulnerable. It can, in some cases, be dangerous.
Kate Canales and Gray Garmon launch TWOXTWO
TWOxTWO is one part design consultancy, and one part design school, working directly with leaders and teams inside organizations that want to get innovative design work done while also learning to do the work better. Congratulations, Kate and Gray!
Holding the Roots: Resourcing the infrastructure behind movements
Behind every campaign or viral hashtag, there is slow, deliberate work. Networks negotiating values, grassroots leaders navigating conflict and decision-making, and organizers choosing to stay in relationship when things get hard because they know liberation isn’t a solo act.
Another Reality Check
Are we underestimating or overestimating our collective capacity for social change? Our expectations shape how we see the world, and sometimes we need a reality check to shift perspective.
The DesignS: World Design Cities Shanghai Manifesto 2024
This document redefines the role of design in addressing contemporary polycrises by advocating for a human-nature engagement paradigm. Introduction by John Thackara.
Skills Society Annual Report
The 2025 annual report is a case study in transformative work in support services to children and adults with developmental disabilities, surviviors aof brain injuries, and their families.
Let’s be Abnormal
Karen O’Brien: When chaos, confusion, and cruelty become hypernormal, it’s time to challenge normality. Let’s be abnormal and embrace our quantum nature—relational, paradoxical, and entangled to the core.
Six actions for ecologists in times of planetary crisis
Nathalie Pettorelli et al. (2025) suggest that the discipline of ecology doesn’t lend itself to addressing systemic issues. They suggest six actions that are needed to place the ecological community at the forefront of the response to the global environmental crisis.
Self-Organization Needs Activators: The 9% Who Turn Networks into Movements
Following the development story of socialroots, a worker-owned software cooperative building a data commons for networking, collaboration, and communication.
When the Culture Is Strong, the Movement Is Strong
A powerful reading of Marge Piercy’s poem by Staceyann Chin. A celebration of what is possible when we work and imagine collectively.
Together We Stand: Building a Bigger “Us” for Justice, Equity and Fairness
IISC and Food Solutions New England hosted a Spring Gathering focused on the bridging work of people engaging in work to address hunger, poverty, economic decline, and physical violence.
Peak Nature: Let’s go on a journey
Soulprint is a monthly guided integration. The idea? Step into our highest-selves, help us to remember. Second Saturday of the month. Online with Simon Divecha.
Writing here for joy, juice and connection
Related to Soulprint, Simon Divecha’s Substack: “I’m looking to connect with, and amplify, all that seeks to create positive influences. I mean that broadly.”
Through the portal we go; mapping for the new world
Strong communities are made up of rich and complex relational systems of feedback and support that develop over time. This is the story behind Understory.
Attachment Economics: Everyday pioneers for the next economy
The challenge of creating a new economic story from the ground, rippling up from the ‘bottom’, from the experiences in communities but capable of reaching outwards and upwards.
When Waters Rise, Networks Matter – Orchestrating Disaster Response Across Scales
Hurricane Helene: what worked, what failed, and how strategic network design can help close the gap, and better prepare us for when waters rise again.
Food as a System, Connector, Healer and Pathway to Our Better Humanity
A report the first ever food justice track for the national conference hosted by The Privilege Institute highlighting more humane, dignified and eco-logical alternatives for our collective food future.
Reimagining Scaling
How grassroots innovators across five countries — Guatemala, Indonesia, the Philippines, Brazil, and Cameroon — are re-imagining scale on their own terms. An inquiry on how to shift dominant global north models of scale.
Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems: The Catalytic Power of Radical Engagement
NEW BOOK. Adam Kahane: I started to wonder about everyday habits for transforming systems, and to realize that I needed to write this book—not only for others but for myself.
Part Two – Building multiscalar networks: Workshop Reflections
On March 27th, the Network Coordination Commons and Socialroots hosted Part 2 of the Socialroots series with June Holley, a workshop on convening multiscalar networks.
Liminal Economics: Swimming at the Edge of the Economy
The very vulnerability and openness of liminal space allows room for something genuinely new to happen. We are empty and receptive—erased tablets waiting for new words. Liminality keeps us in an ongoing state of shadowboxing instead of ego-confirmation, struggling with the hidden side of things, and calling so-called normalcy into creative question.
Intimacy Gradients: The Key to Fixing Our Broken Social Media Landscape
Intimacy gradients are the natural progression of privacy and social interaction that exists in well-designed physical spaces. They represent how humans naturally organize their social relationships and information sharing.
Building a Stronger We: Lessons on collaboration and care
If we don’t make space for joy, movement, and real connection, we won’t last … social and racial justice work is long-haul work. This isn’t a distraction from the work; it literally is the work.
Against the Machine
Forthcoming book by Paul Kingsnorth “is a deep dive into the dehumanisation of the world at the hands of techno-capitalism, spiritually rootless technologies and a culture that has lost its moorings in place, time and faith.” Iain McGilchrist calls it brilliant.
Connecting Hope for Alternative Futures
The second essay in the Onion Collective series: the power of social networks in creating new worlds and an ecosystem map of the UK’s alternative future practitioners
Trends in Employee Ownership and Not-for-Profit Fiscal Sponsorship Management Models
Social Innovations Journal, Vol 29. An overview of emerging nonprofit management and employee ownership models to address economic mobility and racial wealth gaps.
Launch of the Planetary Civics Inquiry
All four events from the launch of the Planetary Civics Inquiry (Feb 2024). Hosted by Dark Matter Labs, Politics for Tomorrow, and RMIT University; with support from the RISD Center for Complexity.
Rethinking food systems with the Food Systems Compass
The Compass for Change is a systems change tool designed to help navigate the complexities of the food system and imagine new ways forward.
Exploring multiscalar networks: What makes networks effective and transformative?
Resources from June Holley’s Network of Networks talk. Second session is March 27—several networks of networks will share their experience.
Why Weave Networks Now?
March 27 training session “Network Weaving for Social Healing in Times of Great Change.” We survive and thrive because of networks; when we are cut off, we can lose a sense of aliveness.
Reclaiming Hope for Alternative Futures
Proposing a new model for systems transformation beyond capitalism. Part 1 — Transition Models and Metaphor.
How to (non) intervene in complex systems?
An invited talk by Tobias Luthe hosted by Innovation North in February 2025. Video and transcript.