Background research

Thinkit is the product of over twelve years’ practical development, including seven years’ cutting-edge research at the University of Manchester. While focused on planning for sustainability, this research has allowed Thinkit to be tested in a variety of settings. The research has been sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council, Mersey Basin Campaign, Irk Valley Project and the Environment Agency.

It is widely accepted that planning for sustainable development – that is, meeting the needs of today’s society, without compromising the needs of future generations – can be complex and difficult to achieve in practice. Research by Thinkit’s founder, Joanne Tippett, has explored the challenges posed by sustainable development and explored new ways of combining participatory processes with ecological planning; all which has contributed to the development of Thinkit.

Many participatory processes ask people’s opinions on pre-formed solutions, instead of helping them to develop their own ideas. This limits the mutual efforts of ‘professional experts’, stakeholders and citizens to learn from each other, which in turn leads to disillusionment.

Consideration of sustainability is also, in many cases, an after-thought – i.e. something that is added to the end of participatory process, rather than being integrated from the start. There is now a growing awareness of the need for new approaches to involving people in sustainable development – approaches in which the relationships between people and nature are reinforced, and where ‘waste’ is designed out of the system, rather than being swept under the proverbial carpet.

Our approach is to enable people to “think like an ecosystem”. For example: any process involving people – whether it’s a business, a project or a community group - can be thought of as a system in terms of its inputs (eg. raw materials and labour), the flows of materials (eg. transport logistics) and outputs (eg. both finished products and waste materials). By thinking in these terms, and considering the knock-on effects of different processes and decisions, we can help to ensure that our human systems are efficiently managed, environmentally sound and capable of adapting to changing circumstances (such as climate change and the effects of globalisation). In short: not only good environmental sense, but good business sense too.

More information about the research behind Thinkit, as well as references to publications authored by its founder, Dr. Joanne Tippett, are available on the University of Manchester website.