We know that our conversations create our futures. At the heart of our work lies the design and facilitation of “new conversations”, often referred to as deliberations. We design such deliberations to reduce complexity and ambiguity in a VUCA environment, develop shared goals and generate coordinated action among people with diverse interests, backgrounds, and beliefs.

The Co-Creating Mutual Value Collaborative is a not-for-profit action research organization that supports inclusive stakeholder capitalism. We are driven by the quadruple premise that:

• The world described in the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals is in the long-term interest of business.
• The world NEEDS the resources and capabilities of business if we are to attain the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s).
• Businesses WILL be a force for good IF they can figure out how to make attainment of the UN SDG’s possible, probable and profitable.
• And that, the strongest and most valuable businesses are those that profitably co-create mutual value with the stakeholders in their business ecosystem.

Based on this quadruple premise, and the idea that our futures are created in our conversations, our research program provides businesses with dialogical principles, tools, methods in the journey toward inclusive stakeholder capitalism. We also offer hands-on support.

At the heart of our hands-on support work lies the design and facilitation of “new conversations”, often referred to as deliberations. Such deliberations are intentionally designed to reduce complexity and ambiguity in a VUCA environment, develop shared goals and generate coordinated action – among people with diverse interests, backgrounds and beliefs.

“If we always have the same conversations with the same people, we will always produce the same results”  –  Bernard Mohr

We design and facilitate such deliberations both within an organization and between ecosystem actors, about topics that are key to inclusive stakeholder capitalism – topics such as:

• What impact do we want to have on the world as a business (or as a civil society organization, or as a community organization etc.)?
• Who is in our ecosystem?
• What meaningful challenges or common interests do we share with other ecosystem members?
• How do we define mutual value among us?
• What strengths do we and our ecosystem members bring to the table?
• Where are the opportunities to pursue our common interests/mutual value and how do we test them out at low risk, so we can learn?
• What strategic and operational changes are needed (within our own organizations and between us) to unlock the mutual value important for each of us?

For such questions to be productively addressed, intentionally designed deliberations are needed:

1. To optimize possibility thinking with practical innovations and actions.
2. To maximize understanding, engagement and commitment among participants.
3. To minimize resistance to change.
4. To develop new relationships among participants – relationships which will be essential in bringing to life the needed organizational and business innovations.
5. To engage between 3 and 3000 (or more) people at once.

• To bring voices into the conversation that are not usually part of the conversation.

• For more information about the idea that that our futures are created in our conversations we suggest An Invitation to Social Construction 2nd Edition by Kenneth J. Gergen 
• For more information about deliberation design we suggest “Designing managerial and professional work for high performance: A sociotechnical approach” by Calvin H.P Pava, November 2006, National Productivity Review