Reclaiming Collective Agency in the World: “Collaboration for Complex Challenges Global Lab” - An Invitation Forward
Where this comes from
At the World Beautiful Business Forum in Athens, over 50 participants stepped into the Ministry of Regeneration session "Reclaiming Collective Agency Idea Prototyping the “Collaboration for Complex Challenges Global Lab” hosted by C3Labs.org and Envisioning.
Through Somatic Socratic dialogue and live idea prototyping with Envisioning, the room moved from sensing to making: surfacing which interconnected global challenges feel most urgent, and beginning to shape what a global learning lab could actually hold.
Ahead of Athens, we opened a global signal poll harnessing collective intelligence beyond the room. Those signals were mapped live during the session — letting the community's own sensing, rather than our framing, shape what surfaced.
The patterns are beginning to cluster. This is an invitation to keep going.
Signals dashboard: https://hobb.envisioning.com/signals
What is it about?
The challenges facing our society and planet are deeply interconnected — polarization, economic shocks, power imbalances, shifting geopolitics, disruptive tech — yet our responses remain fragmented and siloed. No single individual or organization can navigate this alone, and yet that's often the default.
This session asks: what would it take to build a global learning lab that turns deep collaboration into tangible systems interventions?
What will we do?
This roundtable picks up where Athens left off. We'll make sense of what the signals and workshop surfaced, and hold a few live questions together:
If a Global Lab existed already, what would it have to do for you to send a friend, a fellow, a colleague into it?
What does regeneration look like when it stops being a theme and starts being a working method?
Where are the seams between imagination and implementation breaking down — and what would it take to repair them?
A small group, by design — held to a size where everyone can speak without performing.
Who are the hosts?
This session is curated by the C3 Labs team — a UN-founded initiative ('Collaboration for Complex Challenges') with two country pilots launching in Kenya and Thailand in 2026–27, seeded by the Global Environment Facility and anchored in UNDP's Planet Hub. The intent is to co-generate an idea prototype of what a Global Learning Lab could look like with the House of Beautiful Business community and coalition partners.
This conversation builds on the workshops held at the Tangiers 2025 Polyopportunity Festival, where C3 Labs in pre-launch mode sourced "Deep collaboration blueprints and lessons from our future selves," and the Ministry of Regeneration sessions at the Athens World Beautiful Business Forum.
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Hosting team
Courtney Savie Lawrence — LinkedIn
Michell Zappa — LinkedIn
Irina Panovich — LinkedIn
Maciej Bulanda — LinkedIn
If this resonates and you feel a call to reach out, we are actively inviting key partners to craft a Global Learning Lab.