Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute
Supporting movements to get in right relationship with change
About
The Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute (ESII) is a hub to experiment, think, facilitate, learn and share emergent strategy. ESII exists to help groups, organizations and movements bring/increase the principles of emergent strategy into their work through facilitation and training. We are a collective of facilitators, mediators, coaches and trainers interested in this specific approach.
Emergent strategy is a humble philosophy and a way to acknowledge the real power of change. It speaks to practices, responses, visions and plans that embrace complexity interdependence and transformation. This strategy has been observed from the natural world and is both ancient and constant.
The principles of emergent strategy include:
- fractal
- adaptation
- interdependence and decentralization
- nonlinear and iterative change
- transformative justice and resilience
- creating more possibilities
Work

Mediation Resources is a simple crowdsourced free directory of people willing to hold conflict in movement.
Mediation is the work to hold people through conflict, disagreement, misunderstanding or relationship change. It can be legally mandated, but for the purposes of this document we are just speaking about community efforts to intervene on and support community through these moments of dissonance.
In 2020, we posted a call for mediators, and from the responses we began this resource. We are thrilled by just how many people want to support conflict and tension in movement spaces! We cannot vouch for each person, but we are trusting the good intentions of each person making their offer and including all of the information they shared.
This is a living document primarily populated thru comments, so if you want to update your information or add yourself, there’s a link within the resource to do so.
We have partnered with @_beamorg to identify Black mediators and there is a link in the resource to go and add yourself to the Black mediation directory which lives on their site.
Book Testimonials
“This book is fucking gorgeous. And brilliant. It reminds me of Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands.”
– Morgan Mo Willis
“All my friends are reading Adrienne Maree Brown’s new book Emergent Strategy, and we talk over and over again about how we can’t know what a new world will look like, how we are crafting it on the run.”
– Leora Fridman, Entropy
“If you haven’t read it yet, get it. Immediately. Emergent Strategy is an examination of where our movements have been and an offering of a framework for resistance that is rooted in the miracles of nature, decentralized, collective leadership, and personal, relational, organizational, and movement-wide transformation. Brown not only inspires me to resist, but to do in the most beautiful, joyful, creative, sustainable, collective and effective ways.”
– Andrea J. Ritchie, Bustle
“Emergent Strategy is so amazingly awesome. I have admired your work for a long time and so was so excited when I saw this book. I am encouraging my Women’s Studies students to read it. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. Be well.” – Beth Berila
“The text has had a tremendous impact on my organizational facilitation lens.”
– Michael Tekhen Strode
“adrienne maree brown is transforming me page by page. I’m deeply grateful to adrienne maree brown and excited to gift my copy to a younger person (as recommended by the brilliant author).”
– Matsuda Riku
Shop
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by adrienne maree brown, shares the lineage, core principles and elements of emergent strategy. It features interviews with activists, and a toolbox of spells, rituals and emergent strategy activities that anyone can use in their creative and organizing work. Published by AK Press. 280 pages.
$35
Shop Our StoreResources
Click the links below to view the listed Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute resources:
- adrienne maree brown speech on emergence (AMC 2013)
- adrienne maree brown Solespace event recap
- Imaging the Future of Climate Change World-Making through Science
Emergent Strategy Book Addendum
Please view additional reference materials for Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds below: