Tri Sectoral Engagements

These engagements involve multiple clients or stakeholders across the private, public and civil society sectors. They come together – either willingly or out of some form of pressure or urgency – to work on shared problems or issues. Governments, multilateral agencies like UN, and corporations, or grassroots efforts tend to be sponsors of these projects.

Usually these issues are "stuck" or intractable with few solutions in sight because of clashes in values and perceptions, but often the impasse is a result of incomplete knowledge or experience. Whether it be AIDS, climate change, declining biodiversity, tackling immigration and integration tensions, genetically modified foods (GMOs), or the creation of a new clean technology market: it's clear that some of the most important problems and opportunities facing the present and future can't be effectively solved by just one organization or actor but rather require a collaborative and systemic approach. As Kevin Kelly, former managing editor of Wired Magazine put it, "No one is as smart as everyone!"

Over the last couple of decades, an emerging group of global practitioners have been developing new processes and practices – some call them "social technologies" – that enable diverse, often bitterly polarized, groups to work more productively together on shared issues or problems for a better future. The role of scenario planning, for instance, in bringing about a peaceful end to Apartheid in South Africa is a powerful example of how this can happen. (See Adam Kahane's article, The Mont Fleur Scenarios and his most recent book, Solving Tough Problems.

Given this context, Adaptive Edge's is doing more of these types of engagements in recent years. This builds upon Nicole Boyer's past experiences at GBN which pioneered some of these approaches. For a good example of an approach Adaptive Edge is adapting and learning from, see Generon Consulting's Global Leadership Initiative and specifically, the Sustainable Food Lab.