Sustainable solutions to complex problems

This course is organized by Odisee's Center for Sustainable Entrepreneurship and the Flemish Institute for Agricultural, Fisheries and Food Research (ILVO).

This course is for you if you are a professional working on or interested in processes aimed at sustainable change.

We offer you tools to devise interventions, in co-creation with stakeholders and from a systemic perspective. In this way, you learn to identify the right actions. Useful for those who have responsibility for a team, for those who want to better substantiate policy advice or decisions and for those who want to apply systems thinking to a professional case. Some experience with change in a professional context is recommended as this gives you a stepping stone to hang what you learn on.

This course is your hands-on introduction to systemic change. You will learn to look beyond the tip of the iceberg. You will learn to identify what is visible and what is not immediately visible so you can initiate appropriate interventions in the system. You will be given the insights and tools to tackle and follow up on complex sustainability issues.

This training will provide you with the necessary tools to work with your organization and others on a sustainable society, to take up social challenges and to facilitate transformation.

In this course you will gain knowledge about the importance of systems thinking, the vocabulary of the systems thinker, and techniques & tools to use systems thinking in systems change.

You will also learn how to apply all this in practice. You will gain insight into how systems work, how to intervene in a system and follow up on change using the UNITE framework. You will be challenged to apply systems thinking to real sustainability cases. Systems thinking requires an open, creative and inquisitive mindset. Thanks to this mindset, you learn to consider your role in the bigger picture and understand the importance of relationships in dynamic systems. This way, systems thinking becomes your guideline in your personal and professional actions. In short, this training will make you a successful system innovator.

Prof. Dr. Ir. Fleur Marchand is Scientific Director at ILVO (Flemish Institute for Agricultural, Fisheries and Food Research). She leads a team of nearly 60 scientific researchers with diverse disciplinary backgrounds and manages several, often European, research projects there. She uses her expertise as a systems thinker and her experience with systems innovation and transdisciplinary work mainly so that research and innovation benefit a transition to more sustainable (food) systems. In addition to her work at ILVO, Fleur is also a guest lecturer at IMDO, the Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development at the University of Antwerp.

Prof. Dr. Bart Henssen is head of Odisee's research center CenSE (Center for Sustainable Entrepreneurship). Bart is also an affiliate researcher at the Center for Family Entrepreneurship and Ownership at the Jönköping International Business School in Sweden. He holds a PhD in Applied Economics, a Masters in HRM and a Masters in Social Work and Welfare Studies. He is also a subject matter expert in research on family businesses, sustainable business practices, corporate governance and sustainable HRM practices. Bart has been advising and guiding SMEs and family businesses in their systemic transformation for several years.