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

be strategic.

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.

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

Impact networks take three primary forms: learning networks, action networks, and movement networks.

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

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

It is in the interactions between the parts that something new is created. This process is, in a word, emergence. Emergence is the magical quality that gives networks their exponential potential for impact. To tap into the boundless creativity that emerges when people from different parts of a system interact with one another, network leaders avoid

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

It is in the interactions between the parts that something new is created. This process is, in a word, emergence. Emergence is the magical quality that gives networks their exponential potential for impact. To tap into the boundless creativity that emerges when people from different parts of a system interact with one another, network leaders avoid

be strategic.