Centuries before modern democracy, medieval water authorities successfully managed to unite all farmers, villagers and citizens for flood prevention. Their secret was a revolutionary governance model. Surprisingly this model has no name, but it holds a crucial key. It has inspired a novel, research-based transition approach, designed to mitigate the polycrisis.

The core is equality-based coordination between five transition task groups. In short: task-democracy. It enables to mobilise all of society while strengthening the innovation power of industries. The concept integrates with public administration and easily scales from local to global. It helps balancing economic efficiency and ecological-social responsibility. You can use it to make sustainability transitions on your agenda work smarter.

Together, we’ll do a role play on multiple, facilitated round tables. Our case is radical acceleration of wind and hydrogen technologies in the North Sea area. We’ll explore how the model works out for agenda-setting and transition project matchmaking. Key factors such as international collaboration, labour markets, global finance, geopolitical safety, environmental protection, citizen involvement and niche industries come into play.

Your takeaway will be an understanding of benefits and pitfalls of the task-democratic method, as well as manageable action perspectives on upscaling and accelerating transitions in your industry, your sector or your territory. Extra option: join a new community of practice.