Over the years I’ve developed a profound interest in social innovation. How can we learn to see through different perspectives at ourselves and the world around us? How can we create and innovate from a more holistic and integrated space? I live and work from the philosophy that; ‘innovation and creation is about surrendering, surrendering to your deeper will and surrendering to what wants to shape itself through you, you just have to get yourself out of the way!’

So many of today’s challenges and problems are being dealt with from the same perspective and thinking that created the challenges in the first place. Fragmented, analytic thinking disconnected from heart and body - personal disconnection - social disconnection and environmental disconnection. Lately I’ve been working with groups of people to (re) learn to focus on, give room to and support themselves and others (yes human beings) as they focus on the development of new innovative products, systems and ideas. Helping us to remember that connecting to ourselves and connecting to others is fundamental if we want to ‘create’ life affirming solutions, products, actions and systems that are integrated and supportive to our greater environment.

Related examples of relationship-based innovation include:

• Supporting an Amsterdam municipal government to promote and implement internal sustainable projects and looking for ways of first connecting to ourselves before supporting people to ‘act’ in sustainable ways.
• Presentation to students of the Creative City Lab (www.creativecitylab.com) project about exploring their relationship to sustainability and what it means in their own lives as they go through a process of developing sustainable cities.
• Participating and supporting a project group to develop a Social Innovation Community in Mali, Africa. This process includes supporting relationship based project development and implementation - rethinking and experiences our paradigms around ‘developing countries’, rich and poor, North and south, leadership and equality - rethinking and creating financial structures around so called ‘not for profit work’.