About

The need for systems change

I work with trade, sustainability and the transition towards a circular economy.  

Trade within today’s linear system has proven not to be the answer to the challenges our world faces, and not to be sustainable.

There is a need for systems change, and encouragingly there are goals to transit towards a circular economy where waste and pollution are designed out.

The task ahead is huge, because we are not starting from scratch. We are starting from the system, or rather overwhelmingly many interconnected systems, that are in place in today’s global world.

This poses two major challenges. One, in a global, interconnected world, we need to include everyone in the transition. Two, we must let go of our old thinking and open up our minds towards new ways of doing things. This is easier said than done…

The need for opening up our brain

The human brain works based on recognition, which is good when you quickly want to identify immediate danger, but not so good when you want to change systems.

The tendency for the human brain to favour known pathways is why it is so hard to get out of the known, to move away from the familiar, and why change in general is also scary. Venturing into the unknown.

What if we could find a way to open up our minds? To assist this process by providing our brains with some food for thought in form of clearly defined parameters? What if brainstorming and thinking “outside the box” could be sped up by bringing in relevant perspectives?

It started as an initiative on Instagram, with small mind openers. It has since moved on to a work-in-progress development of a model that would bring in perspectives at the start of a project, revision, change trajectory or evaluation of the current situation. We call it SCUPER, and it can be applied to products, services, projects or organizations.

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