Systems thinking for social innovation

The Learning Lunch podcast explores ideas, approaches and social innovations – creating opportunity for non-profit organisations’ teams to discover what others are learning and space to reflect on what these insights might mean for their own strategy and programme implementation.

How can we explore and create new approaches for achieving a more equal society that tackle both social and environmental challenges? How can we reimagine social systems and institutions to bring about positive change? We need to start at the very beginning, by challenging the premises on which existing social structures are based.

Systems thinking is about investigating what set of factors and interactions are contributing to or could contribute to a possible outcome. The world is complex, so our thinking should be complex as well. By making it a habit to consider and reconsider how our own role might be connected to others, we can mitigate impact and work together to create better solutions.¹

Systems thinking is a great tool to remind us to always consider the bigger picture. While it’s easy to see how to take things apart, it can be much more challenging to understand how the individual parts interact to make up the big picture. Before sitting down on your own or with a team to devise a project, make a change, or solve a problem, consider the different systems your ideas could impact.

In this podcast, we share the most helpful lessons on systems thinking for social innovation from the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The Bertha Centre is an academic centre working with leaders who are catalysts for social and economic change and human rights. The centre educates students, entrepreneurs and leaders in social innovation, social entrepreneurship, impact investing and systems change.

Having recently joined DG Murray Trust as the Innovation Director for the All Children on Track portfolio, Kentse Radebe has a keen interest in the broad study of social stratification with a sharp focus on the role that institutions and organisations play in advancing or reducing inequality. She was previously the Project Manager for Systems Innovation at the Bertha Centre and her academic background is in Sociology and Organisational Psychology. At the Centre, she focussed on identifying the processes and levers that lead to social innovation, with a focus on health and mental health.

Print a copy of this introduction here.

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Social innovators/entrepreneurs make use of existing market structures to distribute products or services – for profit, but also to fulfil a social purpose. Therefore, using this business model, an organisation – or social enterprise actually- generates income as well as environmental and/or social benefits simultaneously.

Helpful links