Pioneering a university degree for organizations

Seeking collaborators! We envision creating an entirely new genre of university course, one that recognizes organisations as organisms that learn and as vital sources of innovation. The course will support organisations in making their learning more conscious, systematic and informed and help them draw on the crisis of sustainability present in human and ecological systems as a creative source.

Cleaning in Cape Town

“Cleaning is the process of removing dirt from any space, surface, object or subject, thereby exposing beauty, potential, truth and sacredness.” Ever since I had the above epiphany, I have spoken it countless times in many places. Each time I do, I get washed by it, as the essence of cleaning is invited into the space to do its work. This happened again and again while I was in Cape Town recently for Cleaning workshops and conversations organized by […]

Becoming a festival

In a letter to her fellow organizers, Katherine Therese Whaling offers a heartfelt reflection on her experience organizing last year’s Muizenberg Festival, a week-long celebration of community-led development in the seaside town of Muizenberg, South Africa. We were struck by how beautifully her reflection illuminates what it means to live an event as a process rather than simply plan it as an outcome.

Sneak preview of ‘A Delicate Activism’

One of the gifts of being based in South Africa has been the opportunity to get to know Allan Kaplan and Sue Davidoff and their work at The Proteus Initiative. We’re excited to share a sneak preview of their soon-to-be-launched short book A Delicate Activism: A Radical Approach to Change.

Join us for a webinar

As a follow-up to our article Social Innovation From the Inside Out, the Stanford Social Innovation Review has invited us to share our learnings around the concept and practice of ‘inscaping’ through their next SSIR Live! Webinar offering. We’re excited to have Marlon Parker, founder of the Cape Town-based organization RLabs, join us to share his organization’s experience. Twenty complimentary tickets available!

Gestalt at the South African Treasury Department

I’m stumbling along, trying my best to remain in the single file line the path has forced us to form. We crest the hillside, overlooking a quiet river freckled with boulders and dragonflies. I overhear Jonathan and Kirsten chatting in front of me. They are introducing themselves, having only just met on this day hike organized through the Cape Town Hiking Group. I hear Kirsten say that she works for the National Treasury […]

An interesting response to our recent talk

The first thing that struck me from the talk and that had me celebrate inwardly was that these insights are now surfacing at various points through various people who have all been keenly and committedly observing their environments and coming to similar conclusions: That organisations are […]

Social innovation from the inside out

We are excited to share this talk that Warren gave last month at University of Cape Town exploring the organizational dimensions of social innovation. In our experience, few social purpose organizations spend much time looking at how their own organizational cultures support or hinder the kinds of changes in the world they are working so hard to create. In this talk, Warren challenges us to consider how much of our current difficulty in fostering and scaling social innovation is bound up in this disconnect. What kind of change might we create if […]

Experiencing the giving field

After a talk we gave recently, we had a brief chat with Marion Adamson, a facilitator here in Cape Town. A few days later, after having checked out the Organization Unbound website, Marian sent us the following email:

I read the blog post of the Giving Field – and immediately my son’s preschool came to mind. It’s the place I find myself being drawn to when I’m most struggling with […]

At The Change Collective

Last week we convened our first workshop in Cape Town, at the invitation of the Change Collective Cape Town. It was definitely one of the more engaging workshops we’ve ever done. It seemed to get under people’s skin- both positively and negatively- in more of an immediate way than we have previously experienced.