Steve Waddell

Responding to the 21st century’s enormous global challenges and realizing its unsurpassed opportunities require new ways of acting and organizing. I support organizational, network, and societal change and development, through consultation, education, research, and personal leadership. In particular, I focus upon intersectoral (business-government-civil society), inter-organizational collaboration and networks to produce innovation, enhance impact, and build new capacity.
I have done this for more than 30 years, working with others as clients, funders, and project partners. This includes the Global Knowledge Partnership, the UN Global Compact, World Bank, Global Reporting Initiative, Ford Foundation, Humanity United, Civicus, International Youth Foundation, USAID, International Development and Research Centre and Forest Stewardship Council. I do this as Principal of NetworkingAction. Currently I am aos deeply engaged with development of the Potsdam Initiative: Emerging Potential…an Initiative to Address Complex Challenges at Scale.
Three key concepts are associated with my work: “societal learning and change,” which is a deep change strategy to address chronic and complex issues; “global action networks”, which are an emerging form of global governance that addresses issues requiring deep change; and “complex transformational change” which deals with profound shifts in individual orientations, organizational structures and societal institutions.
Dozens of publications include the books Societal Learning and Change: Innovation with Multi-Stakeholder Strategies (2005); and Global Action Networks: Creating our future together (2011); and lead editor of a special issue of the Journal of Corporate Citizenship on large systems change (June 2015). I have a Ph.D. in sociology and a Masters in Business Administration.

Joined 2015

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