Resilience in action – why co-design matters

Co-design may be one of the few approaches capable of producing resilience across organisations, communities and ecosystems. The empirical point of departure for this article is the workshop “Resilience in action – why co-design matters,” organised as a Think Tank on social innovation at the Euclid Network Impact Summit 2026. The workshop can be framed as an empirical experiment in collective sensemaking and co-design: rather than treating resilience as a predefined organisational attribute, it staged a structured process through which participants were invited to articulate, test and synthesise situated understandings of what resilience means in practice when systems are under stress.

Its explicit aim was not to define resilience once again, but to examine how adaptive capacity is built in practice and why co-design may be one of the few approaches capable of producing resilience across organisations, communities and ecosystems. In this sense, the workshop generated an empirical setting in which resilience could be observed as a relational, communicative and design-oriented accomplishment.

Methodologically, the workshop was designed not as a conventional panel or discussion forum but as a collective intelligence exercise structured through a Me–We–Us roadmap. In the “Me” phase, participants engaged in arrival, framing and individual reflection; in the “We” phase, they moved into small-group clustering and sensemaking; and in the “Us” phase, the room produced a plenary synthesis and continuation of the discussion.

The process unfolded through a sequence of facilitated steps: an opening framing organised around the guiding question of what actually makes communities resilient when systems are under stress; an individual reflection and shared mapping exercise in which participants recorded brief observations on sticky notes; a small-group phase in which contributions were clustered into patterns and tensions; and a final plenary synthesis in which groups presented key insights, unresolved questions and design implications. The workshop thus offers a particularly useful empirical arena for analysing how resilience is constructed, communicated and collectively oriented toward action.

The empirical analysis is structured through three interrelated analytical dimensions that render the theoretical framework directly operational within the findings section. First, the analysis examines resilience as socially constructed meaning; second, it investigates resilience as systemic communicative capacity; and third, it addresses resilience as normatively grounded coordination.

This analytical strategy makes it possible to treat the co-design process not as a merely illustrative case placed alongside the theory, but as the empirical site through which the theory is enacted and made observable. This is particularly appropriate in a setting where resilience is explicitly understood as a collective capacity to adapt, learn and reorganise, and where co-design is framed as a means of redistributing sense-making, strengthening shared ownership and expanding adaptive capacity across actors.

Resilience as a socially constructed meaning

The first analytical dimension, resilience as socially constructed meaning, draws on Berger and Luckmann’s (1966) understanding of social reality as constituted through intersubjective processes of externalisation, objectivation and internalisation. From this perspective, the workshop process is analytically significant because it begins not from a fixed or expert-imposed definition of resilience, but from participants situated observations of practice.

This analytical strategy makes it possible to treat the co-design process not as a merely illustrative case placed alongside the theory, but as the empirical site through which the theory is enacted and made observable.

The opening framing invites participants to address a guiding question – what makes communities resilient when systems are under stress – while explicitly stating that the aim is not to reach instant consensus, but to surface patterns and tensions from practice. This is followed by a period of individual reflection and shared mapping, in which participants write short responses to questions such as where resilience holds, where it breaks first, and what enables communities to adapt successfully. The insistence on one idea per sticky note and on postponing discussion at this stage is methodologically important, because it allows a broad, practice-based map of experience to emerge before meanings are stabilised collectively.

In Bergerian and Luckmannian terms, this phase captures the movement from subjective experience toward intersubjective articulation. Resilience is not treated as a prior empirical fact; rather, it begins to take shape as a socially produced category through the expression, juxtaposition and eventual recognition of multiple situated understandings.

This meaning-making process becomes more visible in the Me–We–Us sequence itself. In the “Me” phase, participants surface practice-based observations before discussion begins; in the “We” phase, these observations are brought into relation through small-group clustering and sensemaking; and in the “Us” phase, the room builds a shared picture of resilience in action. Read through Berger and Luckmann, this sequence can be interpreted as a carefully staged passage from dispersed individual experience to collectively objectified meaning. The workshop therefore does not simply collect opinions about resilience; it organises the social production of a shared reality in which observations become recognisable as patterns, tensions and collectively meaningful insights.

Resilience as systemic communicative capacity

The second analytical dimension, resilience as systemic communicative capacity, is informed by Luhmann’s systems theory (1995). Here the analytical focus shifts from what resilience means to how communication enables a system to process complexity under conditions of uncertainty. This is where the workshop’s small group sensemaking phase becomes especially important.

Participants do not merely report experiences; they cluster contributions, identify and name patterns, and highlight tensions such as skills without power, participation without resources, or strong networks with fragile funding. Each group is then asked to formulate key insights, an unresolved question and a design implication.

From a Luhmannian perspective, these are not simply facilitation steps. They are communicative operations through which the social system increases its capacity for self-observation. The naming of patterns and tensions broadens the system’s interpretive repertoire, while the identification of unresolved questions keeps complexity open rather than prematurely closed. In this sense, the workshop expands internal variety and enables the ecosystem to register contradictions that more hierarchical or expert-driven formats might suppress.

This systems-theoretical reading is reinforced by the conceptual framing of resilience itself. The workshop defines resilience in social innovation ecosystems as the collective capacity to adapt, learn and reorganise when conditions change, and links this capacity to three features: distributed intelligence, shared ownership and adaptive capacity. It also explicitly contrasts this with top-down approaches, which are described as socially brittle and prone to narrowing intelligence precisely when systems are under stress.

Co-design, by contrast, is presented as redistributing sense-making across stakeholders, building relational infrastructure, trust and shared language, and turning participants into stewards rather than temporary consultees. In Luhmannian terms, the significance of co-design lies precisely here: not in the normative appeal of participation alone, but in its capacity to increase the communicative complexity through which a differentiated system can reproduce itself, learn and reconfigure under changing conditions.

Resilience as normatively grounded coordination

The third analytical dimension, resilience as normatively grounded coordination, draws on Habermas’s (1984; 1987) theory of communicative rationality. If Berger and Luckmann help explain how shared meanings are formed, and Luhmann helps explain how systems process complexity through communication, Habermas directs attention to the legitimacy of the communicative process itself. This dimension becomes especially visible at the point where the workshop moves from insight to design implication.

Participants are explicitly asked: if this insight is true, what should we design differently to strengthen resilience? A design implication is defined not as an abstract recommendation, but as a concrete change in how collaboration, governance, learning or resources are organised in social innovation ecosystems. The examples are telling local knowledge should shape curricula and recognition; communities should participate not only in implementation but also in decision-making through shared governance structures; short-term funding problems should be addressed through longer-term collaboration platforms; and successful local practices should spread through peer-learning networks and communities of practice. These examples show that the workshop is not only concerned with interpreting reality, but with generating more legitimate and collectively owned orientations to action.

A Habermasian reading also helps illuminate the significance of the plenary synthesis and continuity phase. Each group shares its outputs, which are then captured on a visible synthesis chart under headings such as emerging principles, shared challenges and design questions for the future. The synthesis is not treated as the end of the process, but as something to be kept visible in the Summit space, enriched by further reflections during the event, and developed into a post-event synthesis based on the photographed flip charts and participants’ contact details. This extension beyond the immediate workshop moment is theoretically important. It suggests that communicative rationality is not exhausted in face-to-face dialogue alone, but continues through processes of collaborative validation, public synthesis and ongoing reflection. Coordination becomes normatively grounded not merely because people have participated, but because the procedure recognises them as epistemically relevant contributors to shared problem definition and future-oriented action.

From theory to practice

Taken together, these three analytical dimensions provide a coherent operational logic for the empirical chapters. The analysis first examines how participants construct the meaning of resilience through individual reflection, shared mapping and the gradual stabilisation of collective interpretations. It then investigates how communicative interaction builds distributed and adaptive capacity by enabling the system to identify patterns, articulate tensions and formulate design-oriented responses.

Finally, it explores how these processes generate more legitimate and collectively owned orientations to action in relation to governance, learning, resource coordination and longer-term collaboration. In this form, the theoretical framework does not remain abstract or external to the empirical material. It becomes directly traceable in the unfolding sequence of the workshop itself: from the articulation of lived experience, to collective sensemaking, to the communicatively legitimised formulation of future design choices.

References

Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Anchor Books.

Habermas, J. (1984). The theory of communicative action: Vol. 1. Reason and the rationalization of society (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Beacon Press. (Original work published 1981)

Habermas, J. (1987). The theory of communicative action: Vol. 2. Lifeworld and system: A critique of functionalist reason (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Beacon Press. (Original work published 1981)

Luhmann, N. (1995). Social systems (J. Bednarz Jr. & D. Baecker, Trans.). Stanford University Press. (Original work published 1984)

Kirjoittajat

Harri Kostilainen

Senior Advisor, D. Soc. Sc

Harri Kostilainen: Kaikki Dialogin kirjoitukset

Niina Karvinen

Project Manager

Niina Karvinen: Kaikki Dialogin kirjoitukset

Kuvaaja Sirpa Anundi