The Ecosystem Project

Are You Trying to Make Meaningful Change—But Hitting Roadblocks?

Maybe you’ve tried to shift your organization, but things didn’t go as planned. Or you see the need for change but aren’t sure where to start. You’re not alone. We’ve faced these challenges, too, and found that traditional tools just weren’t enough. That’s why we created The Ecosystem Project—a new way to navigate complexity and drive lasting impact.

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What is The Ecosystem Project?

We launched The Ecosystem Project as a joint venture between Sierra Learning Solutions and NextWAVE Innovation, driven by one big question: How do you create real change in a world that’s more complex, connected, and interdependent than ever?

What began as a collaboration on a book has evolved into something much bigger: a Practice Circle, a fresh and impactful approach to systems change, and now a dynamic consulting practice helping organizations navigate complexity with confidence.

Too often, well-intentioned efforts fail because they overlook the deep structures, hidden dynamics, and resistant forces within systems. Over the past two years, we’ve worked alongside leaders, facilitators, and change agents to develop and refine a method that works with complexity rather than against it—bringing clarity to tangled systems and designing interventions that actually stick.

How Does It Work?

We use a three-part approach that blends ecosystem mapping, strategic design, and facilitated collaboration:
Sense & Make Sense – Understand the ecosystem’s structure, purpose, and interdependencies.
Illuminate Leverage Points – Identify where and how meaningful change can happen.
Co-Design Interventions – Identify the interventions that lead to long-term transformation.

This process moves organizations away from isolated, one-off efforts toward collaborative, systemic impact—where change is more than a moment. It’s a movement.

Who We Work With

We collaborate with leaders and teams tackling complex, high-stakes challenges, such as:

  • Large-scale institutional shifts and transformations
  • Complex stakeholder networks that need alignment
  • Innovation, strategy, and social change initiatives
  • Organizations seeking to better leverage their environment and landscapes

Our approach has been successfully applied across vastly different human ecosystems, including an entrepreneurship ecosystem in the Lower Hudson Valley, a human talent network in Southeastern Minnesota, and even within complex organizations working on human resources, brand strategy, and innovation.

About Us

Our Mission

The Ecosystem Project was founded to help organizations and institutions understand, map, and transform their ecosystems. Change is most effective when it aligns with a system’s natural dynamics, leveraging relationships, networks, and strategic interventions to create a sustainable impact.

Meet the Team

Rob Brodnick and Karyn Zuidinga, seasoned practitioners in systemic innovation and strategic change, lead our work. With decades of experience in organizational strategy, human-centred design, and institutional transformation, we bring expertise, proven methodologies, and a collaborative approach to each engagement.

Our consulting services and Practice Circle are based on the Ecosystem Project Toolkit and Theory, a structured methodology for Sensing, Illuminating, and Engaging in complex systems.

 

Featured Case Studies

To develop our process and method (theory of change and toolkit), we partnered with several higher education institutions to sense, illuminate and identify potential ways to shift the ecosystem to a better fit to purpose. Here are three case studies from that work.

Hudson Valley
Entrepreneurship Ecosystem

Ecosystem Purpose: Enhance the regional economic environment by directing resources to grow the entrepreneurship and innovation economy in the seven-county region of the Hudson Valley. This should result in a greater diversity of economic activities, participants, and benefits to companies, residents, and other institutions.

Partner institution:
SUNY New Paltz

Talent Hub Ecosystem

Ecosystem Purpose:

The Mankato region talent hub ecosystem is a network of interconnected educational entities and strategic partner organizations collaborating to establish and grow a human talent hub that provides rich learning experiences for students, elevates innovation and research capabilities, encourages entrepreneurial activity, and connects students and faculty to regional opportunities with partner organizations for mutual benefit. 

Partner institution: Minnesota State University, Mankato

Science and Civic Engagement Ecosystem

Ecosystem Purpose:

To improve science learning through cross-sector, cross-discipline collaboration by focusing on real world problems and extending the impact of learning across the curriculum, through lifelong learning, and to the broader community and society. Individual educators experience professional growth and development in the form of training, networking, and support to enhance the work they do in their classrooms, on their campuses, and in their communities.

Partner institution: National Center for Science and Civic Engagement (NCSCE)

"From the start, the Venture Hub sought to map the entrepreneurial ecosystem of the Hudson Valley. In fact, it was a central part of our strategy-- to link people, services, and resources across a widely dispersed, large geographic area. Without a methodology, or specific know-how in this area, we were hampered in our attempts, until we met Rob and his team at The Ecosystem Project. Rob’s project was a perfect opportunity for us to explore and capture the nuances of the entrepreneurial ecosystem so that we could more effectively illustrate what our region has to offer and work more cohesively. The Ecosystem Project methodology, relying on Miro, the collaborative tool, enabled us to rapidly capture and share knowledge, and visualize the intricacies of our regional ecosystem. Now that we have a visual representation and a set of value propositions, we are in a position to advance hypotheses about the ways the relationships can be strengthened, how various players can be strengthened, and how the Venture Hub can leverage momentum to meet our end goals—increased investment in promising startups, revenue, and job growth, and economic growth of the Hudson Valley. "

– Kristin Backhaus, Dean, School of Business

"Given the multitude of demands on higher education institutions—enrollment shrinkage, financial shortfalls, curricular innovations, accreditation, graduation rates, etc.—it is understandable that many leaders find it challenging to deliver on strategic partnerships with external constituents. How is there time to collaborate with external partners on transformative projects when there is so much campus-based work to do?! And yet, not prioritizing external partnerships puts higher education at risk with society that increasingly questions the relevancy and value of college degrees. I have 30 years of higher education experience—equally split between being a faculty member and an administrator— with my academic discipline situated at the intersection of organizational behavior and strategic management. I found the Ecosystematic Project founded by Rob Brodnick to be a powerful new approach for understanding complex systems. Using an ecosystemic approach to study the shared goal of regional human (talent) development yielded key insights and interventions with an incredible efficiency and effectiveness. Rob and his team curated and developed technology tools (e.g., Miro), canvases, questions, and visuals that illuminated great insights (it made the invisible, visible!) and yielded a wide diversity of interventions. The Ecosystematic Approach is the type of framework needed by any leader facing complex situations—and this most obviously includes higher education leaders."

 – Brenda Flannery Dean Emerita, Minnesota State University, Mankato

"I began by feeling slightly overwhelmed and unsure about whether my contributions made sense, and curious about how such a diverse group of leaders—with such a widespread and complex ecosystem—would co-journey together and make sense of our shared knowledge. By the end of the first session, I was no longer uncertain and felt eager and energized. As the work progressed, I was both able to add my perspective and details in the ecosystem and apply what I was learning in the process to my daily leadership. I would like to “telescope down” into specific parts of the ecosystem and understand smaller components of work and collaboration: adding details about the bark, ferns, and moss (to continue the metaphor). I have begun doing this for my own unit by utilizing Miro and applying what I’ve learned to help us understand the wider picture and collaborate asynchronously. And, I would like to continue to “telescope out” to see how my organizations relate to others in my region/place or in similar contexts. What can I continue to learn by looking in new ways and with deepened understanding? I learned so much from hearing my colleagues put language and meaning to questions I either thought I knew the answer to or had my own answer to. I observe that subsequent collaboration is more agile and fruitful because we have experienced this “making visible” together. I also became more empowered in my own perspective because I could see its value to others and to the wider story."

-Stephanie Varnon-Hughes, Dean of Teaching, Learning & Leadership at Claremont Lincoln University

Let’s Build a Stronger, More Adaptive Future—Together!

If you’re facing a challenge that feels too complex to tackle alone, let’s talk. We’re looking for partners who are ready to rethink how change happens and make a lasting impact.