The Coach for Innovators Amplifiers, a small group of global business game changers, started engaging in monthly dialogue sessions in 2022. As alumni of the Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program™, we intended to apply our knowledge, skills, and experience to discover and explore how we might collaborate to support countries, organisations, and education institutions in achieving the World Economic Forum’s Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals by innovating for good.
We are a small, cohesive, committed group of corporate executives, consultants, educators, coaches, and trainers who connected and maximised the differences and diversity of our group by debating how to apply innovation as the glue to achieve sustainable change everywhere. We set a mission to amplify and catalyse innovators, organisations, and communities to stimulate and achieve sustainable development everywhere. Our mission was based on the values of ethical practice, systems thinking, social entrepreneurship, civic change, alignment, deep learning, humanity, collective action, openness, curiosity, courage, experimentation, and well-being by innovating for good.
We set about adding value to the quality of people’s lives by engaging and influencing people to lead the transition towards co-creating societal shifts ethically, equitably and sustainably.
Our target market consists of passionate and energetic young people engaged in learning to teach the core elements of the Being side of social entrepreneurship to enable them to be ecologically resilient by innovating for good.
A different approach to innovation
Our approach was based on three core principles that emerged during our research and testing process:
- Innovation is like drinking water; it is essential for life and belongs to all life to sustain it in all contexts.
- Innovation is a duty; people have no right to pollute and destroy all life and the planet.
- Innovation allows us to consciously manifest different ways of being and doing to co-create a future we want to have and sustain.
This requires people to unlearn old mental models and irrelevant perspectives in a 21st-century disrupted world and relearn and learn to adopt an innovative mindset. Which focuses on supporting sustainable and positive economic growth and degrowth and on developing circular economies to do better with less by:
- Challenging people’s illusions and inertia regarding the future, confronting harsh realities, and addressing problems to enhance people’s quality of life.
- Transitioning from competition to co-petition within ecosystems, fostering genuine collaboration across boundaries to co-create solutions on a global scale.
- Moving away from competition towards co-petition in ecosystems, embracing collaboration across boundaries to co-create global solutions.
Meta-learning model – Innovating for good
This became the basis for developing a meta-learning model constructed on what we had encountered as the key systemic problems that largely inhibited innovation. We tested and validated it using a small, diverse target market sample of global students studying here in Australia.
We incorporated our findings into pivoting The Start-Up Game™ Boardroom Version and into the book Janet Sernack is currently writing – “Conscious Innovation – Activating the Heart, Mind and Spirit of Innovation.” Both are due for release in June 2025,
| Concept/Stage | Problem/Explanation | Question |
| Awakening process Igniting the light of consciousness | Many people don’t know how to make sense of innovation and are not aware that all change and growth require innovation of some type to be effective and sustainable. | How might we alert people to the importance of innovation? |
| Letting it go Exposing the landmines | By applying various approaches and methodologies, people can shift their values, beliefs, and mindsets to develop the new perspectives required to innovate. | What do you think people might need to let go of to make the space and time to innovate? |
| Initiating the shift Embracing new perspectives | Actions speak louder than words. What types of activities, exercises, and challenges will mobilise people to participate in the innovation challenge? | How might we best introduce and engage people with embracing new perspectives on innovation? |
| Communicating Shifting gears | Communication is key. People need clarity and coherent messages to understand and appreciate the importance and benefits of innovation. | What are the key messages that might resonate with you? |
| Sharing the story Setting the torch alight | Stories inspire us and provide evidence of success; what stories do you consider important to share to ignite people’s motivation to innovate? | What kinds of stories might inspire you to take up the innovation challenge? |
| Catalysing change Lighting the fire | Actions speak louder than words. What activities, exercises, and challenges will mobilise people to participate in the innovation challenge? | What might inspire you to engage in an innovative change process? |
Inner development supports outer development – Innovating for good
The Inner Development Goal Framework was initiated in 2023 by the 29k Foundation, Ekskaret Foundation, IMD Business School for Management, LUCSUS Center for Sustainability Studies | Lund University, Stockholm Resilience Center | Stockholm University, The New Division, Flourishing Network at Harvard University, World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). It has been set up as a not-for-profit initiative to address the pressing need to increase our collective abilities to face and effectively work with complex challenges. Based on the pre-supposition, “without a foundational shift in human values and leadership capacities, external solutions to our global challenges may be limited, too slow, or short-lived”.
Inner Development Goal Framework
The framework consists of five dimensions across twenty-three skills:
- Being; relationship to self,
- Thinking, cognitive skills,
- Relating, caring for others and the world,
- Collaborating, social kills,
- Acting, enabling change.
This great initiative inspired our group, as it was closely aligned with ImagineNation’s™ approach that the group members had learned in The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program when innovating for good.
Our goal was to enhance the quality of people’s lives, specifically focusing on “being the change” you wished to see in the world. We aimed to develop people’s confidence, capacity, and competence in being change-ready and responsive, accepting responsibility, and becoming emotionally energetic, agile, and adaptive.
These six elements are foundational and learnable in developing an innovation mindset to help people make mandatory, impactful, ethical changes aligned with the seventeen sustainable and five inner development goals dimensions when innovating for good.
We co-created a toolkit to enable us to mentor, teach and coach a tribe of doers/young people to create a movement that:
- It encapsulates their dreams and inspires their hopes and optimism about the future.
- It fosters a safe space for healing and for their voices to be heard.
- It cultivates their potential through innovative uncertainty tolerance to co-create new forms.
- It instils a sense of urgency to collectively advocate for the changes essential to shape and own the future they desire for their children and grandchildren.
Power of Agency, Development and Hope
In a recent article, “Five Global Trends in Business and Society in 2025,” Insead identified the top five global trends for 2025: climate change, geopolitical crises, income and wealth inequality and social instability, and inflation or recession. How we react to and manage these five trends by innovating for good will test the resilience of our global society and economy, our governments, academic institutions, corporations, and civil societies in an increasingly uncertain, unstable world.
To have any sense of agency in the face of these emerging challenges, our Coach for Innovators Amplifiers group and the Inner Development Goal group have boiled it down to a fundamental principle: “To be the change you wish to see in the world,” develop your skills and be hopeful, believing and even trusting that by innovating for good, things might eventually turn out well for everyone, everywhere.
This is a short section from our new book, “Conscious Innovation – Activating the Heart, Mind and Spirit of Innovation”, which will be published in 2025.
Please find out more about our work at ImagineNation™.
Please find out about our collective learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, presented by Janet Sernack, it is a collaborative, intimate, and profoundly personalised innovation coaching and learning program supported by a global group of peers over 9-weeks, and can be customised as a bespoke corporate learning program.
It is a blended and transformational change and learning program that will give you a deep understanding of the language, principles, and applications of an ecosystem-focused, human-centric approach and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation. It will also upskill people and teams and develop their future fitness within your unique innovation context. Please find out more about our products and tools.
