Incubation Program for Systemic Shift

The incubation program is for philanthropists, foundations and societal actors who want their resources and position to catalyse effective systemic solutions — and who want to understand how the rules of the game itself can be changed.

The program is meant to lead to action, not just insight. Project-based learning is at its core: participants should be able to use their resources and position to bring about real societal improvement. Participants can start projects already during the program, supported by the program’s tools, network and blueprints. Systemic solutions are understood by being built — not just by being studied.

What the program covers

The program goes through the system dynamics behind today’s outcomes — and the alternatives that exist. Topics include:

• How we run the economy. Ownership, governance and how they shape outcomes. Alternatives to venture capital, exit strategies and shareholder primacy — models that shift businesses towards greater societal service.
• How decisions are made. More conscious and humane options like Sociocracy — consent-based decisions and working groups — deliberative democracy, collective intelligence, and new voting methods such as rated approval voting, which gathers decisions around the broadest possible common ground instead of polarization.
• How money works. How money is created and what it does to society. Mutual credit and complementary currencies — local systems of exchange that capture hidden value, legally complement the national currency, and reward what serves local and global goals.
• How resources are allocated. The question behind the methods: how do we allocate resources for the greatest societal benefit? E.g. Matching funds as a democratic tool — pooled resources that match the means people mobilise themselves.
• Self-sustaining systems. Chain reactions where every success funds the next. Reinvestment, where the surplus stays and keeps working in the ecosystem. Feedback loops, where the system learns from its own results. Self-sustaining systems that, after a catalytic start, are driven by their own engine — with the mechanisms built in from the beginning.
• Community wealth building. How local institutions direct procurement, investment and employment towards the local community, so the economy builds the societal benefit instead of leaking from it.
• How value is counted. How we value and reward real effects on people, society and nature — incentives where the price of an action is proportional to its effect on society.
• How future generations and nature get a voice. Processes, roles and rights built into the structures.
• Transitioning financial & funding mechanisms. From old financial tools and structures to new ones, step by step. From short-term project grants to lasting financing mechanisms that let society act more effectively.
• How the law steers. What is possible and impossible within current legal frameworks, and what needs to change for innovations to become possible. We are careful about the legal framework: what gets built must be legally sound from day one. Where the framework blocks a good solution, the conclusion is to change the framework — not to find loopholes.

System-shifting solutions

There are many solutions for systemic change that can be driven in practice. The incubation program strives to bring in actors who can realise such systemic solutions:

• Local societies with their own thriving economy. Local businesses and actors form mutual clusters, share services and resources, and become more resilient — while contributing to local funds that enable deliberative democracy at the local level. This lets the local community solve its own problems and invest in development, without relying on short-term project grants and short-term political swings.
• Complementary systems for exchanging value, incentivizing social impact and mobilizing around common needs. The Swedish krona is a limited tool that misses out on so much competence, potential that people and businesses possess — scarcity of liquidity limits circulation and stops the flow. We build on legal frameworks and working examples of complementary systems, and want to explore systems that value and reward actions according to their effect on society. So that money is seen as a tool for allocating, mobilising and coordinating resources for the common good — not as an end in itself with financial return as the primary goal.
• A fund for affordable housing and community land trusts. A public-benefit fund that buys properties and land; the income goes back into the fund, which finances further purchases. Over time, a portfolio of affordable housing, premises and land grows — taking essential needs off the speculative market, following the community land trust model.
• Conversion at generational shift. Saving businesses whose owners are retiring, by converting them into democratically owned businesses.
• New paths for savings, pensions and investments. Funds that invest only in cooperatives, steward-owned companies and other enterprises with a purpose beyond shareholder profit — and funds that invest in whole ecosystems rather than individual companies. The effects: resilience, better social and financial returns, cohesion, and the common good.
• Procurement & Supply chain. Public purchasing that favours local cooperative businesses that strengthen their communities.
• New paths for inventors and entrepreneurs. Alternative ways to launch and deploy inventions, innovations and startups, with alternative forms of incorporation, ownership, funding, exit-strategies… shifting all of that from just financial return to societal return on investments.
• A legal toolbox. Open templates and blueprints for models and how to set them up by mixing the association forms, agreements, and ownership and governance rights allocation. E.g. answers to questions of how do you legally setup circular funds, matching funds or cooperative ecosystems? so that those can be setup all over the place, accelerating the transition.
• Impact tracking and fair valuation. Measuring and rewarding the savings and benefit that mission-driven enterprises create for society — social return on investment research and development.
• Long-term societal trusts. Structures that can steward shared resources over the long term, beyond short political cycles.

Examples from around the world

Such systems have proven to work well in many places around the world. There are many examples:

• Grassroots Economics, Kenya. Since 2010, they have helped local communities exchange goods and services through commitments — without depending on scarce national currency.
• WIR, Switzerland. A credit system that since 1934 has let small businesses trade with each other even when cash is scarce; today it has tens of thousands of participating businesses.
• Emilia-Romagna, Italy. A region where cooperatives are a large part of the economy — and which counts as one of Italy’s most prosperous.
• Mondragón, Basque Country. A network of cooperatives that has reinvested in education and new cooperatives, and built its own university, its own bank and its own safety net. The system is built to take care of people — among other things by moving workers between cooperatives when one runs into difficulty.
• Community wealth building, Cleveland, Preston and Scotland. Local institutions direct procurement, investment and employment towards the local cooperatives and civil organizations that benefit local community, so that the economy builds the local society instead of leaking from it. Scotland has made the approach part of its law.

More examples at convivial.systems.

We learn from failures

Good initiatives are rarely stopped by bad ideas. The obstacles are identifiable and follow a pattern: legal prohibitions, flawed monetary design, failure of adoption, and market pressure. In the program, we map the obstacles before we build.

The law as course content

A recurring part of the program is mapping the legal system: what is possible and impossible under current rules — the role of the Financial Supervisory Authority, tax rules, association law, procurement rules — and what needs to change for innovations to become possible. The mapping is not a lecture but shared work: participants learn to read the system themselves, assess what holds, and formulate which rule changes are needed.

What we are working towards

We want to create socioeconomic systems that serve the community of all living beings and deliver:

• More fair jobs and better livelihoods
• Lower costs of survival and access to needs for people and businesses, through shared services and pooled resources
• A more resilient local economy that can withstand crises
• Societal savings: safer neighbourhoods, less exclusion and lower costs for welfare
• Economic democracy — our collective effort producing shared benefit
• Security for future generations and a greener development
• Adaptive structures that can respond to today’s great challenges: climate change, the environment, sustainability, AI and inequality

Participation

Philanthropists and other participants pay for the education and incubation programme itself: the knowledge, the tools, the network and the legal blueprints. That is the core product. Participants are not expected to contribute capital to the systemic solutions that grow out of the program. Though it is possible for those who want through:

• Matchmaking. The program can act as a matchmaking platform connecting philanthropists with effective initiatives. Participants can get to know initiatives during the program and judge for themselves whether they want to proceed.
• Follow-up after the program. We are happy to help those who want to launch self-sustaining systems, as a separate effort after the program ends.

Pilot in spring 2027

The incubation program is being built. We are open to conversations with our target audience to learn more about how to best set up a pilot — starting in spring 2027 with the base Scania, the southern region of Skåne in Sweden.