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Breakthrough Capitalism Our financial, environmental and social systems are heading towards breakdown. But some visionary organisations in the corporate and investment communities are stepping beyond traditional corporate social responsibility (CSR) and socially responsible investment (SRI) and driving systemic change with breakthrough ventures. This is the focus of Phase II of the Breakthrough Capitalism program: see Progress Report. To contribute to the upcoming report Betting on Breakthrough: Top Team Agendas for Transformative Change, or to get involved with a Breakthrough Labs, please contact breakthrough@volans.com

California will soon launch its cap-and-trade program, which uses a market-based mechanism to lower greenhouse gas emissions. California's program will be second in size only to the European Union's Emissions Trading System based on the amount of emissions covered. In addition to driving emission cuts in the ninth largest economy in the world, California's program will provide critical experience in how an economy-wide cap-and-trade system can function in the United States.

Across the country, and throughout the world, many large and small groups of individuals and families, in partnership with businesses and governments, are in the process of making a new system - where people know what they are entitled to and can allocate the money that is assigned for their benefit.. This system is called Self-Directed Support, or Consumer-Directed Care. Variations of these terms are used in Education and Health Care. Internationally, this trend towards personalisation of funding is well-advanced. In Australia it is beginning in disability, accident compensation, aged care and soon in technical and vocational education. But Australian governments and institutions have been very slow to pick it up. We aim to pull them into the 21st century.

Community Health Centers serve the primary health care needs of more than 22 million patients in over 9,000 locations across America. They play a crucial role in the nation's health care system, providing affordable health services for millions of uninsured, the working poor and newly jobless Americans. Health centers are good for the country. They lower overall health care costs, improve the health of their patients and generate economic opportunities in the communities they serve by providing jobs and training for local people. Community Health Centers create savings in health care every time a patient opts for an exam and treatment at the first sign of a health issue instead of waiting until a costly emergency room visit or hospitalization is the only option. Each health center takes a tailored approach to meet the unique needs of the people in its surrounding community. That local approach to health care, combined with an emphasis on comprehensive preventative care, generates $24 billion in annual savings to the health care system - for the American taxpayer, local, state and federal governments and public and private payers alike.

The problem is that we use these powers in historically/culturally path dependent ways so the tensions become more acute. The rationalism of the nation-state as a system-hierarchy is good when talking to other states (treaty writing as per Kyoto or the Treaty of Rome), or when universal rules are needed (eg tax collection) but bad at the particular (eg helping troubled families). Passion-populism is critical for mobilisation but can also be corrosive as it fails to offer any real solutions (see UKIP et al). Creative-civic power is good at adapting resources, institutions, and policies to particular needs or ambitions but it is bad at universal welfare and justice. It can also be just as failure prone as passion politics and hierarchy (it's hard and complex to confront particular, local and personal challenges).

In today's economy, successful communities are creating transportation systems that can do the job of moving people and goods while simultaneously improving the quality and character of their town. They recognize that building a strong and more vibrant economy relies on expanding mobility choices. In short, great communities have great transportation systems.

Stockholm Resilience Centre advances research on the governance of social-ecological systems with a special emphasis on resilience - the ability to deal with change and continue to develop.

Time in complex systems operates concurrently at different scales, runs at multiple rates, and integrates the function of numerous connected systems. We describe these processes as "complex time" as opposed to the simple, regular clock time of physical phenomena. In complex time age includes explicitly the coupling between information gain and information loss.

"The Continuous Improvement effort is developing a prototype process for improving how state and federal agency systems that fund, regulate, or organize ecosystem recovery might improve services to local actors working on ecosystem recovery. It is inspired by Gemba Kaizen theory, initially developed within the Toyota Production System, where improvement opportunities are identified by the people who do the work on the "factory floor" and rapid improvement efforts are enabled through standard practices, and encouraged by leadership. We work with the resources we have, because self improvement in an intrinsic part of good government. The current iteration has received support from the Puget Sound Partnership's Ecosystem Coordination Board and is being guided by Lead Entities, Local Integrating Organizations and Ecosystem Recovery coordinators. "

"IPEN is working to increase beneficial collaboration and cross-pollination in the development of permaculture education systems internationally.   To achieve this IPEN is building an international network and platform to enable permaculture education resources to be more easily shared, translated, accessed, enriched and adopted by a global teaching and learning audience. The aim is to expand and accelerate the growth and development of permaculture education on the ground for tutors, in national and regional permaculture education systems, and within demonstration projects that deliver permaculture education."

Despite its remarkable achievements during the 20th century, the economic system of the past cannot continue into the future without a fundamental transformation. The science is irrefutable. The exponential growth of compound investment returns and, by extension, the exponential growth of the economy's material throughput demanded by the financial system, has positioned our global economy on a collision course with the finite physical boundaries of the biosphere. At the same time, this relentless and narrow pursuit of exponential growth of returns on invested capital, without reference to universally acknowledged moral and ethical values, is contributing to an ever-widening and destabilizing wealth gap, and security crises around the globe.

sumApp is the front-end data-gathering tool we designed to enable us to make live, evergreen Social System Maps with a minimum of fuss. Works with the data-viz platform Kumu with no extra wrangling needed. Available by subscription to network leaders and sponsors.

The Santa Fe Institute is a nonprofit, independent research center that leads global research in complexity science. SFI scientists seek the shared patterns and regularities across physical, biological, social, and technological systems that give rise to complexity-in any system in which its collective, system-wide behaviors cannot be understood merely by studying its parts or individuals in isolation. Insights from complexity science are increasingly useful in understanding questions far beyond the boundaries of traditional academic disciplines-urban sustainability, disease networks, and financial risk, to name a few.

"CrowdDoing is a joint initiative of Reframe It Inc. and Match4Action Foundation that is focused on helping address the UN Sustainable Development Goals and beyond through micro-leadership, massively multi-disciplinary collaboration, and service learning to support social innovation and social enterprise to achieve systemic change. "

WHAT IS ENERGY JUSTICE? Energy justice refers to the goal of achieving equity in both the social and economic participation in the energy system, while also remediating social, economic, and health burdens on those disproportionately harmed by the energy system. Energy justice explicitly centers the concerns of communities at the frontline of pollution and climate change ("frontline communities"), working class people, indigenous communities, and those historically disenfranchised by racial and social inequity. Energy justice aims to make energy accessible, affordable, clean, and democratically managed for all communities.

"En-ROADS is great for workshops and role-playing games to enable people to explore climate solutions from changes in our energy choices to adoption of new technologies in carbon removal. Our food system plays a significant part in strategies to address climate change, because it drives energy use through moving and producing food, and can be both a source of greenhouse gas emissions and removals. This post will help you talk about the food system with audiences when you are using En-ROADS. "

What constitutes a sustainable localized food system for a rural community? Source as local as possible from locally owned and operated to benefit the community. A Kumu Group Modeling Project

Healing Living Systems drives climate stability through agroecology. Agroecology includes shared fulfillment, social justice, and food democracy.

But here's the paradox: the immune system that has given large institutions extraordinary resilience in the past may be the very thing that makes these institutions so vulnerable today.

"Below you can find our resources which explore intersections of the COVID-19 crisis, climate change, equity, and beyond. Dr. Elizabeth Sawin, Co-Director and Co-Founder of Climate Interactive, reflects on how systems thinking approaches are necessary during this time. Her ideas highlight the need for applying a multisolving lens - emphasizing that as we find solutions to address one crisis, we can remediate and prevent other issues. "