GRASSROOTS
GRASSROOTS places design power at the core of systemic change within the Dutch food system. In the face of pressing sustainability challenges such as soil depletion, biodiversity loss, and climate change, technological innovation alone is insufficient. What is needed is a fundamental redesign of values, relationships, institutions, and infrastructures. In this project, design is not seen as styling or optimization, but as a strategic capability to configure new perspectives for action and transition pathways in complex societal systems.
A key issue in circular innovation is that many initiatives fail to move beyond the experimental phase due to a lack of a supportive context for scaling. Design offers a structural response by creating Minimum Viable Ecosystems (MVEs): purpose-driven, minimally functional configurations of actors, processes, and values that do not build on existing markets, but instead design new collaborations and value structures. MVEs function as temporary but strategic constructs that anchor and scale pioneering initiatives systemically.
In the project, design is applied as an integrated approach: designers work with entrepreneurs, researchers, and societal stakeholders in iterative processes where ecosystems are not only conceptualized, but tested, adapted, and validated in practice. Creative coalitions play a key role in shaping roles, interactions, forms of governance, and shared narratives. The design-driven methodology is grounded in principles from the KEM agenda, including imagination, co-creation, behavioral intervention, and monitoring. This approach enables the project not only to design solutions, but also to create the conditions for change.
While the MVE concept is theoretically supported by ecosystem thinking and innovation studies, a knowledge gap remains regarding how MVEs can function as purpose-driven design interventions within transition processes. This project develops and deepens the concept through design practice, by addressing concrete food-related challenges and generating transferable design knowledge.
GRASSROOTS demonstrates that design is an essential and strategic tool for transition—not complementary to innovation or policy, but constitutive in shaping new futures. The project directly contributes to the ambitions of the Design Power Agenda and CLIKKNL by deploying design-based research to achieve structural systemic change. For the creative industry, this project offers a strategic application domain in which design not only creates user-centered value but actively contributes to societal system transformation—leading to new roles, business models, and forms of collaboration for design practices.
