The Cambridge Co-Creation Approach: Tools for Systems Change and Impact

Contemporary global challenges such as climate transitions, artificial intelligence governance, and food system fragility are characterised by complexity, uncertainty, and deep interdependencies that render linear, reductionist approaches insufficient. This webinar advances the Cambridge Co-Creation Approach as a rigorous transdisciplinary, action-research methodology for generating decision-relevant evidence within complex adaptive systems. It conceptualises co-creation not as participatory consultation, but as a structured epistemic and methodological framework that integrates heterogeneous knowledge systems, including quantitative data, qualitative insights, institutional logics, and lived experience. Grounded in principles from complexity science, political economy, and social psychology, the Cambridge Co-Creation Approach operationalises systems thinking through instruments such as the Cambridge Policy Boot Camp and the Policy Simulation Lab. These tools enable the identification of system dynamics, feedback loops, and emergent properties, while facilitating the structured exploration of trade-offs, risks, and distributional consequences. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of power, governance, and exclusion, interrogating how dominant actors and institutional arrangements shape both the production of knowledge and the design of interventions. The session will critically examine how co-creation can enhance epistemic robustness, stakeholder alignment, and implementation feasibility in contexts of uncertainty and contestation. It will also reflect on methodological implications for evidence generation, including the integration of plural data sources and the co-production of knowledge across sectors. An application of the System-based Collective Action Framework under this umbrella of methodologies will also be presented using evidence from Gilgit-Baltistan, showing how systems thinking and collective action by diverse stakeholders can help achieve flood resilience as an ongoing learning process that links past experiences, present constraints and opportunities, and uncertain future risks. The webinar is intended for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to advance systems-oriented approaches to designing scalable, context-sensitive, and socially legitimate pathways for sustainable and resilient development.