MAPA: Co-Creating New Narratives for the 21st Century

Abstract

This article presents the MAPA Social Innovation Lab and elaborates on the elements that influenced and/or led to constructing new narratives based on a plurality of views and multiplicity of people from different classes, gender and age, in different positions of power. It addresses the short period during with the lab itself was held, the tensions that arose on account of the very characteristics / particularities of the group’s participants, and the breadth and complexity of a co-constructed narrative. The social innovation lab was held in 2019 and was based on Theory U. It consisted of 37 leaders invited to rethink a social model anchored in the feminine-masculine duality starting from the central question: What does the new narrative of feminine and masculine values for the 21st century look like? We present three central principles that underpin the process and, from the point of view of a movement still under construction, we consider important issues for developing a MAPA experience as well as the limitations and possibilities that became (and have become) evident over the course of our MAPA journey.