Impact Networks: Create Connection, Spark Collaboration, and Catalyze Systemic Change

Networks are webs of relationships connecting people or things. When they seek to address social and environmental issues, they are called impact networks.

hierarchical structures are a poor choice for multistakeholder collaborations. By holding on to control, the people at the top of hierarchies limit the self-organizing potential of the rest of the system.

move to higher levels,” as Einstein famously said.5

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

These networks deliberately connect people and organizations together to promote learning and action on an issue of common concern. We call them impact networks to highlight their intentional design and purposeful focus, and to contrast them with the organic networks formed as part of our social lives.9

The choice in front of us is clear: either we can let networks form according to existing social, political, and economic patterns, which will likely leave us with more of the same inequities and destructive behaviors, or we can deliberately and strategically catalyze new networks to transform the systems in which we live and work.

be strategic.

While networks are not inherently strategic, they can be designed to

“A new type of thinking is essential if [humanity] is to survive and