Disruptive Change Ahead?

This project aims to identify potential threats and opportunities disruptive change may bring for ICSOs. It seeks to explore how ICSOs should position themselves in order to survive and thrive under new conditions.

To date disruptive change has not been a major topic for international civil society organisations (ICSOs). There are no examples of disruptive change which forced major ICSOs to close down and, until recently, there has been little debate about the possibility of such a threat looming. But of late, there have been an increasing number of indications that ICSOs may be facing disruptive change from a variety of angles.

Some of these changes may become major challenges which a number of ICSOs may find difficult to overcome. At the same time these possible developments hold enormous opportunities which may allow ICSOs to go far beyond running projects and setting examples and become more influential actors, working for a more equitable and sustainable world. No longer ignoring disruptive change as a possibility for our sector is the first step in tackling potential threats and welcoming opportunities.

To facilitate this step the Berlin Civil Society Center invited experts and leaders from our sector to undertake an initial systematic exploration of where disruptive change may come from and how ICSOs can manage change in order to avoid disruption and turn potential threats into opportunities. For further information on the Disruptive Change Ahead? project, please read the concept paper.

The Disruptive Change project has four objectives:

• To create awareness among ICSOs that disruptive change is a very real possibility for our sector.

• To provide an initial overview of the sources of potentially disruptive change.

• To identify a number of general measures to detect and address potentially disruptive change early on.

• To devise approaches for specific areas of potentially disruptive change and develop work plans for tackling such.

The project will be run by a working group with up to 19 participants and several advisers from the following areas:

• Leaders of key ICSOs;

• Specialists in areas such as digital communication, knowledge management, strategy development, etc.;

• Researchers/authors on disruptive change.

The output of the project will be a written report on the project’s findings containing concrete recommendations to leaders of ICSOs.

The project is kindly supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Robert Bosch Foundation.

For members of the working group and advisers only, please click here to access the project’s workspace.