Generative Change Community

The Generative Change (GC) Community was launched in 2005 as a global community of practice focused on strengthening the world's capacity to address complex challenges collectively through dialogic processes. Following Einstein's much-quoted insight that problems cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created them, many people have noted that our ability to address the complex challenges we face today will largely depend on whether we can move to a new level of thinking about them. At the same time, we can be sure that new challenges, unknown today, will emerge to confront us in future.6 This presents a developmental challenge for humankind: to build our capacity to rise to a new level of collective thinking and action when needed. The turn toward multi-stakeholder processes suggests that many people recognize the need for this capacity. The vision of change brought about by the heroic individual leader or elite team continues to inspire many, but an alternative vision has arisen along with the rise of multi-stakeholder engagement. As one practitioner has described it, "Through . . . dialogue you basically assure ownership of the process, and ownership is a commitment towards reform. Without ownership, reform remains a bit of a superficial exercise. But when that ownership is assured, people really take issues forward, and that produces remarkable results compared to other experiences." From this perspective, the best hope for effective responses to complex challenges such as threats to food security, persistent poverty and inequality, widespread conflict, environmental degradation, and climate change lies in processes that engage stakeholders in collective decision making and action.