As the world becomes more globalized, markets and places find they are increasingly becoming interdependent on factors arising elsewhere. Today’s economies are extremely complex, and the factors that affect the performance of firms, industries, markets and indeed societies are all interwoven into multiple vicious and virtuous feedback loops. It is becoming increasingly difficult to separate cause and effect, symptom and root cause.

In order to stimulate or facilitate economic growth, development practitioners should be able to think in a systemic way. Narrow fields of specialization lose their meaning in a world where everything seems to be connected to everything else. Finding interventions points, or levers, that will improve the performance of economic sub-systems are becoming more necessary where production systems span the globe, connecting economic spaces with major markets and supplier networks in other spaces.

Mesopartner develops instruments, and equips development practitioners to design intervention processes that must achieve change within complex socio-economic systems. To connect the dots illustrate an ability to associate (relate) one idea with another, to find the “big picture”, salient feature or hidden pictures within a mass of data and market signals. It is not possible to connect different dots without seeing both the big picture (the whole) as well as the patterns that emerge between dots. It is a cognitive or thinking ability that is supported by tools, but is mainly about looking at things with a new or different perspective, searching for meaning in the patterns that emerge. It is about finding a rhythm in noise, or recognizing organic designs. It is also about recognizing that traditional one dimensional intervention that do not consider the broader system will not result in meaningful and positive change in societies.

Connecting the dots could also illustrate a learning ability. It requires a person to try something, and if it does not work (a pattern does not emerge), then to retrace the steps and start from a different point.  It requires learning from what works and what doesn’t work.

In children education, connecting the dots is often used to complete a puzzle containing a sequence of dots. When a line is drawn through certain dots an object is revealed. However, this is rather linear. Although it is difficult to see the pattern before the dots are connected, it is difficult to miss once the connections are made.

We chose this as our “strapline” to encourage our customers to connect the dots. To move beyond narrow diagnosis to understanding the systems they are working in. We also use this to promote sensitivity to the systemic relationships that exist between various seemingly disconnected economic and social factors. We want to urge our customers to search for the patterns, and to approach their interventions in a process that support learning and reflection. With this strapline mesopartner is broadening its focus beyond territorial development. This is not a new development, it is simply a recognition that we often work as process facilitators that help our customers weave different pools of knowledge and practice into change processes that must operate in a complex environment.