Complex change rarely succeeds alone.
In organisations, institutions and municipalities, we identify what is already there — experience, knowledge, a readiness to engage — and help turn it into shared action.
What we do
Or, to put it more theoretically: to match the complexity around it, a system needs comparable complexity within — a range of perspectives, skills, experiences and backgrounds, brought together so the system as a whole can deal with complex challenges. In practice, that means developing living networks and second circles, researching how communities work, designing events, guiding transformation processes, and sharing what we know through our trainings.
Why emergence
The new cannot be decreed. But you can create the conditions in which it emerges.
The challenges facing organisations, municipalities and societies aren't just getting bigger, but more complex: more dependencies, more uncertainty, more interaction. And the more complex the challenge, the more helpful the principle of emergence: it describes how, in living systems, new things can arise through interplay – new patterns, surprising solutions, workable answers.
We work with models that help make sense of these dynamics and handle them in practice: the Berkana Two-Loop Model for transitions between old and new systems, the Adjacent Possible for feasible next steps, Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety, social tipping points, and approaches to social fields, resonance and living systems. Not as a theory programme, but as a toolkit for real change processes.
Emergence can't be controlled or decreed. It needs conditions in which people perceive, connect and act differently. That is exactly where our work sits: we design the processes, spaces and experiments where diversity becomes orientation and complexity becomes a shared capacity to act.
Work with us
We show where change is already beginning and help it grow into shared action — by developing living networks, or as critical friends to existing communities.
Whether a new network or an existing community: the next step begins with a conversation.
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Activating formats for local engagement
For a municipality, as part of its Klimafrühling ('climate spring') programme, we design and run a format built to reach people locally and make it easy to take part. The event creates first contacts, brings shared concerns into view and shows where a willingness to engage is emerging. From individual impulses come concrete next steps: smaller working groups and new opportunities for joint action in the community.
Building resilient communities for collective agency
We help communities, towns and organisations involve people locally and bring existing potential into view. Individual perspectives turn into shared themes, and participation can grow into responsibility. Local energy, knowledge and relationships become the basis for resilient communities and collective agency.
Supporting a soil-health initiative across the German-speaking region
We support a soil-health initiative across Germany, Austria and Switzerland in becoming effective as a living network. People from science, innovation, politics, law, art, culture and philosophy come together to make soil health visible, connect perspectives and develop concrete projects. The focus is less on individual benefit than on a shared question: how the network can serve the cause and give the soil a strong voice.
Building a bottom-up community for the smart-city transformation
Together with the Smart City office of the city of Kassel, we develop a bottom-up approach to the smart-city transformation. Starting from the districts, we gather ideas from residents, bring the relevant players together and make local needs visible. Workshops and facilitated district labs become the starting point for a lasting smart-city community.
Cross-departmental circles for climate action in public administration
For the administration of a major German city, we help build a climate alliance. After identifying the key interest groups, a second circle forms as a core team of leaders and experts from across departments, complemented by a second circle among staff in the departments most affected. From a joint kick-off workshop, three cross-departmental circles grow at different levels of the hierarchy — from a project team and a leadership team to a steering team that builds trust, learns from one another and decides together.
Self-organised innovation labs after restructuring and a change of leadership
For a major city's IT service provider, we support open participation formats after a period of profound change. Employees volunteer their perspectives, name the weak points, and in self-organised innovation labs develop concrete improvements to processes, technology and products. Working with the works council, the results are fed back into the organisation and lay the ground for a shared restart.
Activating, identity-building event formats for international expert communities
For an international network of insurers, we design and facilitate conference formats that don't just inform participants but actively involve them. Together with the client, we develop relevant themes, well-paced programmes and interactive methods that open up exchange, make collective knowledge visible and build connection between members. The result: events that stay in the memory, strengthen a sense of belonging and carry professional impulses well beyond the day itself.
Activating employees for shared transformation
We support organisations facing profound change that recognise central steering alone isn't enough. Together with leadership and staff, we develop formats that give orientation, make participation possible and encourage people to take responsibility for change. That sets the organisation in motion — not as change decreed from the top, but as a shared process that strengthens energy, ideas and the capacity to act.
Meet the team
Rike Pätzold advises, writes and teaches on living networks, communities, emergence and dealing with uncertainty. She is fascinated by how movements begin, how energy arises in systems and how single impulses become shared action. Her thinking is shaped by Daoism and the concept of the potential of a situation: recognising possibilities that are already emerging. Rike has written a book on uncertainty, studied Sinology, Japanology and philosophy of language and lived in Taiwan for several years. How collaboration succeeds under pressure she learned as a blue-water sailor on a circumnavigation of the North Atlantic, where on the calmer days she most enjoyed reading science fiction. Today she lives between Munich and her boat.
Vanessa Ludewigs is fascinated by building networks — bringing together people who can shape something new together. Her work centres on how systems and organisations can be rethought. She is especially intrigued by groups, how they collaborate and how they can be supported. Vanessa is a trained industrial clerk with an MBA in change management and many years of experience in classic management consulting. Change and transformation have always been her specialty. Together with Kerstin Gollner she leads EQU:WIN and loves taking on, delivering and leading demanding, complex projects.
Kerstin Gollner is passionate about change management, organisational development and transformation processes. She has worked in this field for 30 years, guiding large and complex changes in organisations. As managing director of EQU:WIN she now puts her experience at the service of organisations, cities and municipalities to set in motion the change dynamics needed to meet the great societal challenges of our time. She has been engaged with emergence and social dynamics since her studies. Kerstin holds a PhD in ecological economics and lives with her family near Munich.
Our partners
Lena Tünkers explores how people and organisations deal with unpredictable futures — and how new possibilities emerge in such situations. In her work she combines strategic thinking from her background in innovation and futures studies with an artistic sensibility rooted in her passion for music and dance. A love of experimentation and a pragmatic, hands-on mentality shape her approach. Lena was born in Düsseldorf and now lives in Zurich. She has lived on several continents, which has lastingly shaped her curiosity about people, cultures and the unknown.
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