Resourcing Systems Innovation
In Building Better Systems, we introduced four keys to unlock system innovation: purpose and power, relationships and resource flows.
These four keys make up a set. Systems are often hard to change because power, relationships and resource flows are locked together in a reinforcing pattern to serve the system’s current purpose. Systems start to change fundamentally when this pattern is remade so that a new configuration can emerge, serving a new purpose.
In this essay series we delve deeper into these four keys and provide practical advice on how they can be put to use. This essay is about how making new, different and better systems means creating more productive, sustainable flows of resources.
The character of economic and social systems are shaped by the resources that are critical to it, whether that is land in agrarian feudalism; factory labour and machines in early capitalism; oil, and to a lesser extent gas, in the era of mass mobility and consumerism; knowledge, information and intangible assets such as brands in the early 21st century economy; or the role of renewables and decarbonisation in the green economy towards which societies are trying to move.
The nature of the system takes its cue from the kinds of resources that are critical to it, whether they are found fixed in the ground and extracted from it, or created fluidly in culture and grow through innovation. Different kinds of resources – whether they are extracted or created – lend themselves to different kinds of systems.
Related publications
![interventionsrapport](https://rockwoolfonden.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/RFI_Ikoner_Interventions-rapport-300x200.png)
Interventions report
Building Better Systems
GO TO INTERVENTIONS REPORTMore about the initiative
![](https://rockwoolfonden.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/SII-Initiativ-billede-e1670231439948-300x180.png)
Initiative
System Innovation
GO TO INITIATIVELatest releases on the same welfare topic
![](https://rockwoolfonden.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/raopport213_4x3-768x576.png)
Research
Research report
Immigrants and the Benefits of Urban Experience
July 2024
![](https://rockwoolfonden.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/RFF_Forskningsrapport_Kommunesammenlaegning_4x3-768x576.png)
Research
Research report
The Domino Effect: Exploring Residential Mobility in the Aftermath of Municipal Mergers
July 2024
![](https://rockwoolfonden.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/RFF_Vidensoverblik_Kommunalreformen_5x3-768x461.png)
Research
Knowledge overview
The municipal reform created emigration and falling house prices in the municipalities that lost the town hall
July 2024
![](https://rockwoolfonden.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Vidensoverblik_Ulighed-i-uddannelse-skyldes_5x3-768x461.png)
Research
Knowledge overview
Educational inequality is more attributable to disparities in soft skills rather than solely to differences in intelligence
July 2024