“Society faces deeply entrenched and growing challenges that are outpacing the systems we have. We provide practical insights for those who want to respond to the systemic challenges of today by stepping into the possibilities of the future.”
From Building Better Systems: A Green Paper on Systems Innovation, Charles Leadbeater and Jennie Winhall
Innovation advisor, author and speaker.
I work with entrepreneurs, governments, cities, and foundations to generate innovation for public good. Which is a fancy way of saying that I am an intellectual odd-job man.
As the co-director of the System Innovation Initiative, I am helping to develop practical approaches to shifting big public systems.
Alt Now, the system innovation agency I co-founded with Jennie Winhall, brings people together to explore big shared opportunities to create new systems for health, work, education, learning and living.
I’ve written a string of books, including Living on Thin Air and We-Think, and a slew of think tank reports on everything from the future of cities to the kind of education systems we need to equip young people with for a volatile and uncertain future.
I'm pleased to have done TED talks on innovation which have been widely watched over the years, but it’s fair to say that in my time I’ve also spoken to some quite small audiences.
Click here to read the full story of my career.
The System Innovation Initiative
The System Innovation Initiative started at the ROCKWOOL Foundation in Copenhagen and has now become an independent initiative. Our aim is to provide practical knowledge and insights to people undertaking deliberate efforts at system innovation, to create the new social, health, welfare and learning systems we will need in the future.
In 2020 and 2022, we organised and hosted two Learning Festivals, which consisted of an array of insightful sessions by leading system innovators around the world. These recorded sessions tackled issues such as funding and investment, how we can shift perspectives to find new approaches to learning, why evaluation is so important in system innovation and how small interventions can open up big possibilities.
Please click on the button below and watch the sessions in full.
Below, three pieces I’ve written as part of the System Innovation Initiative:
Building Better Systems
This paper sets out the framework for our approach to system innovation, focussing on how mounting systemic challenges can become huge systemic opportunities; how breakdown can generate the conditions for breakthrough, to better, different systems. The paper sets out our fundamental models for how system change is unlocked by our four keys: power and purpose, relationships and resources.
Access the Green Paper here.
Investing in System Innovation
Critical to the prospects for change in many other systems is the system of finance itself. Finance is an enabler of change through investment in the real world of new systems, technologies and business models. But finance is not just a tool, it is also a frame. It frames how we think about change: who calls the shots, what their goals are, how we should think about the outcomes we seek. We cannot hope to shift other systems unless we shift the system which controls our investment in and capacity to bring the future to life.
Too often the financial tail wags the much larger real world dog.
Read the working paper here.
The Power to Shift a System
This article explores how we can think and act on power in systems to bring about a system shift. It is based on four critical distinctions about how power works. These four perspectives should help system innovators see where power lies and how it can be redirected, and where power can be mobilised in the name of creating better, different systems: The Powerful and the Powerless, “Power over” and “Power With”, Resistance and Initiative and finally Hard and Soft power.
Read the full paper here.
“We need a long wave of social innovation to develop a new philosophy, practice and organisation of welfare. This wave of innovation must develop a problem-solving welfare system, to take over from the current system that often simply maintains people in a state of dependency and poverty. It must be an active welfare system designed to create social capital by encouraging people to take greater control over their lives.”
From The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur, Charles Leadbeater
From the back catalogue.
This is a selection of my writing relevant to contemporary issues and debates.
To visit the archive of many of my other reports, pamphlets, articles and books, please click here.
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Making Money and Meaning
Redesigning the economy from the ground up to reduce inequality requires not just addressing inequalities in income and wealth but restoring people’s sense that they can make meaning in their lives.
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The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur
One of the first reports on social entrepreneurship ever published, this Demos paper looks at five exemplary social entrepreneurs devising new solutions to pressing social challenges and draws out lessons for how social entrepreneurship can be fostered.
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When Love Meets Power
The most effective solutions to entrenched social challenges often combine love with power. Commitment to a cause, person or community can bring into being a power that grows by being generous but also focussed, professional yet caring. It comes from work that is not just a set of tasks but a calling. The innovators profiled in this essay understand that love and power can be like a renewable, generative resource which grows outside themselves, by empowering others.
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Systems and Empathy: The London Recipe
Written in the wake of London’s 2012 Olympics, this report hones in on the recipe that makes for great cities and organisations: the right combination of systems that operate at scale efficiently, and empathy, which makes them richly relational and feel human in scale.
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Ten Lessons in Student Agency
In a more volatile, uncertain world of challenges and opportunities, we need to equip young people to be agents of change, to come together to solve complex problems and to create new, more sustainable ways to live. This report is based on a three-year collaboration among 18 schools to develop practical tools for student agency.
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The Future of Foundations
Decisions we take in the next decade will shape our future for the rest of the century and perhaps beyond. We face transitions which are profound, interconnected and urgent. What role should philanthropy play in helping to shape these transitions to be more just, inclusive and sustainable?
“The threat posed by COVID-19 brought about an abrupt change in our priorities, the tone of public discourse and our sense of ourselves. Saving lives and supporting health care workers became the absolute priority rather than making profits. Generosity has become more important than selfishness. Our response has been a collective expression of love combined with power.”
From When Love Meets Power, Charles Leadbeater