ABSTRACT. Global environmental change requires responses that involve marked or qualitative changes in individuals, institutions, societies, and cultures. Yet, while there has been considerable effort to develop theory about such processes, there has been limited research on practices for facilitating transformative change. We present a novel pathways approach called Three Horizons that helps participants work with complex and intractable problems and uncertain futures. The approach is important for helping groups work with uncertainty while also generating agency in ways not always addressed by existing futures approaches. We explain how the approach uses a simple framework for structured and guided dialogue around different patterns of change by using examples. We then discuss some of the key characteristics of the practice that facilitators and participants have found to be useful. This includes (1) providing a simple structure for working with complexity, (2) helping develop future consciousness (an awareness of the future potential in the present moment), (3) helping distinguish between incremental and transformative change, (4) making explicit the processes of power and patterns of renewal, (5) enabling the exploration of how to manage transitions, and (6) providing a framework for dialogue among actors with different mindsets. The complementarity of Three Horizons to other approaches (e.g., scenario planning, dilemma thinking) is then discussed. Overall, we highlight that there is a need for much greater attention to researching practices of transformation in ways that bridge different kinds of knowledge, including episteme and phronesis. Achieving this will itself require changes to contemporary systems of knowledge production. The practice of Three Horizons could be a useful way to explore how such transformations in knowledge production and use could be achieved.

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This paper outlines climate emergencies facing universities and, by drawing on research on system transition, provides insights about how change to overcome the challenges might be stewarded. Climate change brings three interconnected and urgent emergencies for universities: (1) Manifest emergencies such as risks to operations and business models; (2) Conceptual emergencies that arise because assumptions, ideologies, systems, and structures cannot match the scale of the manifest challenges; and (3) Existential emergencies where current identities and sense of purpose are incapable of supporting the changes needed to overcome the conceptual challenges. To be viable leaders in the world, universities will need to renew their commitments to serving the public good, be dedicated to an unwavering challenge-orientation, create post-disciplinary structures, and be the change one seeks to see in the world. Importantly, universities will need to overcome the emergencies on the inside if they are to help society address the scale of the challenges on the outside, to which both universities and human capacity are seriously cognitively and emotionally ill-prepared. Fortunately, new insights from research on system transition provide helpful advice on how to steward transformational change. This work highlights that successful transformation requires strong adherence to transformational intent and, in the case of universities, working with all three emergencies simultaneously. Successful transformation will also require harnessing opportunities to disrupt the status quo; supporting an interplay of different forms of management and orientations to the future; developing appropriate infrastructure to support transformation; and rapidly accelerating the development of capacities for transformational change. By actively developing capacities for transformation on the inside universities will then be in a much better position to help and lead others beyond the halls of the academy.

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