Our Story, Our Science

Our Story: developing learning communities

Contented emerged in 1999 from a community of entrepreneurs, investors and advisors who felt intuitively that society needn't be the way it was. So they set out to learn about change.

While developing stakeholder communities for corporate clients across Europe, a call came from a small town in rural England building a wireless broadband network to enable better interaction among locals and the outside world.

The entrepreneurs discovered they were able to catalyse social, environmental and economic development by supporting partnerships across business, education, health and the voluntary sector.

Turning our attention to urban council estates, we developed business models for innovative learning environments in real-life collaborative enterprises. Ranging from radio to music and film technology production, we designed these to support the national curriculum and adult education, cultural and religious integration, and disadvantaged groups. Ideas followed for projects in leisure & tourism &mdash including a bankrupt football club &mdash construction, retail and finance, that could help deliver economic and social benefit, as well as supporting the environment.

Now, with schools, colleges and universities striving for a more enterprising culture,
we have designed an incubator to encourage sustainable change, where private, public and voluntary enterprises of any size can invest for an ethical return. We call this approach making WAVES.

Our Science: complexity & emergence

Experts now talk about organisations as living systems. Learning from nature, sustainable enterprises incorporate environmental & social responsibility. Quite simple maths often gives rise to complex patterns, and the smallest variations in the rules can lead to dramatic changes.

Communities of practice emerge when local people work together, following their own or institutional rules. These community groups are called self-organising because they emerge, evolve and dissolve according to their own learning.

The reasons why enterprises appear, lie in the non-linear mathematics of complexity theory and in the way network structures are produced when living cells communicate. Recent thinking sheds new light on the benefits and challenges of cultural diversity.

Understanding this science can help develop leadership, innovation and learning across organisations, consortia and communities.