Catalytic Interventions: the role of “one-shot” initiatives in ecosystem development

By Andreas Ufer

Introduction

In recent months, Sense-Lab has been conducting a broad study on multi-stakeholder initiatives dedicated to the development of social ecosystems, with a focus on understanding how different collaborative arrangements create lasting and structural conditions for systemic transformation — as is the case for long-term initiatives such as the Coalition for Impact, Movimento Viva Água (MVA), Uma Concertação pela Amazônia, and Alianza del Pastizal.

Over the years, however, Sense-Lab has also implemented and observed the emergence of a diverse set of catalytic “one-shot” initiatives — short and intensive processes designed to activate networks, build capacities, and test new forms of collaboration. The purpose of this article is to classify and reflect on the role of these catalytic initiatives within a broader portfolio of approaches for the development of social ecosystems.

Among these initiatives, we can include processes such as Lab Guanabara (which led to the creation of Movimento Viva Água Guanabara and later the national MVA), Aceleradora Oásis, the Protected Areas Acceleration Program (ICLEI), Lab Amazônia, the Social Finance Lab, and more recently, the GIFE 2025 Grantmaking Round and the IA for Impact Journey, still in progress.

Why talk about Catalytic Initiatives

“One-shot” initiatives emerge from the recognition that not every ecosystem development process requires institutional permanence. In many contexts, a short but well-designed intervention can generate structural effects — as long as it activates the right levers: new relationships, practices, capacities, rules, or shared narratives.

Inspired by approaches such as Social Labs¹ and Theory U², these initiatives operate as collective experiments in real-world conditions, where multiple actors test hypotheses and generate learning through rapid cycles, instead of relying on long, linear planning processes.

The term “catalytic” describes this function well: accelerating systemic processes, sparking new connections, and creating minimum viable structures so that change continues even after the formal intervention ends. These initiatives are characterized by:

Speed in Collaborative Innovation: bringing together diverse actors to build shared understanding and develop solutions through collective intelligence.

Creation of Relational Infrastructure: reducing transaction costs by fostering connection, trust, and common language among actors.

Replicability: embedding replicable capacities and frameworks that can be adopted by other actors or larger coalitions.

Legacy Building: when well designed, they generate legacy artifacts (action plans, maturity matrices, governance models, playbooks) that remain useful beyond the short cycle.

Synergy and Complementarity with Structuring Initiatives: they do not seek to replace permanent structures, but to feed and connect them.

History and cases of Catalytic Initiatives

Over recent decades, responses to social and environmental issues have shifted from isolated actions to collaborative architectures. Along this trajectory, two complementary groups of ecosystem interventions have emerged. Catalytic initiatives function as intensive, temporary cycles that activate relationships, practices, and capacities — lighting the ecosystem’s initial spark. Structuring initiatives build the ecosystem’s “infrastructure”: governance, financing, data, and routines that sustain collaboration over time.

Between 2010 and 2020, catalytic formats gained visibility and a wide experimental platform, with innovation labs, sprints, and learning journeys. Cases such as Lab Guanabara (which generated MVA Guanabara and helped establish the national MVA) demonstrate how prototypes and alliances can evolve into lasting platforms. Aceleradora Oásis developed shared vocabulary and action plans for PES/NbS projects across several municipalities; Lab Amazônia prioritized logistical and commercial solutions for sociobiodiversity and organized pilots; The Social Finance Lab tested financial mechanisms and produced structural results such as FIIMP — a collaborative fund connecting institutes and foundations to experiment with impact investing.

In the public sector, the Protected Areas Acceleration Program (ICLEI + Sense-Lab) showed how capacity building and peer networks can create institutional conditions for development, exchange, and adoption of best practices.Learning journeys — like the GIFE 2025 Grantmaking Round and the IA for Impact Journey — shape practices, align language, and open new avenues for collaboration.

Meanwhile, structuring initiatives matured, providing the backbone for continuous collaboration and resilient ecosystem formation. Examples such as Movimento Viva Água (multi-level governance, funds, and territorial councils), the Coalition for Impact, and Cidades +B illustrate the role of these platforms in consolidating rules, metrics, and routines anchored in public policy, financial instruments, and information flows.

From 2020 onward, overlapping crises and technological acceleration reinforced the logic of a hybrid portfolio. Instead of choosing between catalytic or structuring initiatives, effective strategies combine and sequence both: a discovery sprint feeds a prototyping lab; which requires a network acceleration; which then integrates into a structuring platform with governance and financing. Periodic gatherings sustain the pulse of collective learning, while thematic journeys (such as IA for Impact) update repertoires and open new avenues for public policy and investment.

The key lesson from this evolution is one of strategic design: use catalytic initiatives to generate movement (relationships, practices, capacities, resources, narratives) and structuring initiatives to retain and amplify that movement over time. Combined, the two approaches convert short-term energy into shared capacities, rules, and assets — turning isolated initiatives into living ecosystems, capable of responding quickly to crises and producing enduring systemic change.

As this article focuses on exploring catalytic initiatives, we briefly describe below a few examples implemented over the past decade.

Guanabara Lab: a social innovation lab applied to the Guanabara Bay watershed that generated a portfolio of projects and governance arrangements for nature-based solutions. It evolved into the Movimento Viva Água Guanabara and, together with MVA Miringuava, laid the groundwork for the National MVA through its council architecture and expansion to other watersheds.

Oásis Accelerator: an intensive network-acceleration program (FGB + Sense-Lab) that combined maturity diagnostics, mentoring, and peer exchange for PES/NbS projects, leaving behind action plans, a shared repertoire, and an active community of practice.

Protected Areas Acceleration Program (ICLEI + Sense-Lab): an institutional acceleration initiative for public managers of protected areas, including capacity-building tracks, governance design, and implementation tools. It resulted in a replicable methodology and a network of multiplier managers.

Amazon Lab: a prototyping lab developed by Idesam in partnership with Climate Ventures, focused on logistics and commercialization of socio-biodiversity products. It prioritized solutions (collaborative logistics routes, distribution centers, platforms, branding, and market access) and structured partnerships for pilots and scaling.

Social Finance Lab: an innovation journey implemented by ICE, the Social Finance Task Force, and Aoka Labs, bringing philanthropy, investors, and government together to test impact-finance mechanisms. It generated structuring outcomes such as FIIMP, acceleration tracks, and connection platforms for impact businesses.

GIFE 2025 Grantmaking Round (ongoing): a catalytic convening to strengthen grantmaking practices across different funder profiles (companies, corporate, family, and independent foundations), aligning criteria, processes, and learning metrics for the field.

AI for Impact Journey (ongoing): an ecosystem learning journey that connects civil society organizations, academia, tech actors, and funders to advance responsible AI for socio-environmental impact—validating barriers and levers for the field and developing initial prototype ideas for collaborative initiatives.

Types of Catalytic Initiatives

Catalytic interventions are intensive and temporary processes that build capacities, relationships, and minimum viable structures so the ecosystem can continue evolving after the cycle ends.

Based on the study of different cases, at least six categories were identified:

Catalytic Meetings — Intensive gatherings that align purpose and set next steps, leaving principles, criteria, and stewards.(E.g., GIFE 2025 Grantmaking Round.).

Discovery Sprints — Short diagnostic cycles mapping actors, bottlenecks, and leverage points, generating opportunity portfolios and experiment agendas.(E.g., Aliança pelo Impacto; IA for Impact – discovery phase.).

Prototyping Labs — Co-creation journeys that test solutions through rapid pilots, producing one-pagers, pilot plans, and evidence for scaling.(E.g., Lab Amazônia; Lab Guanabara; Social Finance Lab.).

Learning Journeys — Training pathways with case studies and light mentorship to build capacities, minimum standards, and active communities of practice.(E.g., IA for Impact Journey.).

Network Acceleration — Programs that strengthen governance and capacities of collectives or public agencies through maturity matrices, workshops, and pacts.(E.g., Aceleradora Oásis; Protected Areas Acceleration Program – ICLEI.).

Action Platforms — Continuous orchestration arrangements connecting multiple actors, organizing portfolios and co-execution agreements, and preparing pathways for policies and scale.(E.g., Collaborative Action Platform – BMW Foundation / Sense-Lab.).

These strategies can be combined in sequences (e.g., discovery sprint → prototyping lab → network acceleration), forming portfolios adapted to the ecosystem’s stage and gaps.

Type	Duration	Core purpose	Example
Catalytic Meetings	2–3 months	Bring actors together and build a shared vision	GIFE 2025 Grantmaking Round
Discovery Sprints	3–6 months	Map the system and identify leverage points	Leverage-building stages of Aliança pelo Impacto; AI for Impact Journey
Prototyping Labs	6–12 months	Co-create and test solutions	Amazon Lab / Guanabara Lab / Social Finance Lab
Learning Journeys	4–6 months	Build capacities and shared repertoires	AI for Impact Journey
Network Acceleration	6–9 months	Strengthen governance and capacities of collectives or public bodies	Oásis Accelerator; Protected Areas Acceleration Program (ICLEI)
Action Platforms	12–24 months	Connect and orchestrate multiple actors	Collaborative Action Platform (BMW Foundation / Sense-Lab)

Levers of catalytic interventions for ecosystem development

Each type of catalytic intervention acts upon different ecosystem levers — points capable of generating movement and transformation in a complex social system.

Some operate primarily on relationships, promoting connection, trust, and belonging — typical of Catalytic Meetings or Network Acceleration. Others focus on practices and capacities, building shared repertoires that become part of participants’ daily work, as in learning journeys.There are those that activate resources and collaboration flows — financial, technical, or institutional — or that transform narratives and cognitive structures, redefining how actors perceive problems and their own agency.

Across all cases, catalytic initiatives share a logic of rapid learning and multiplier effects: they generate visible short-term changes that expand through appropriation, replication, and adaptation by ecosystem actors. The main levers include:

1. Relationships: focus on connection, trust, and belonging — building the relational infrastructure that sustains collaboration.

2. Practices: focus on consolidating collaborative ways of working — design methods, prototyping, shared management, participatory decision-making.

3. Capacities: focus on developing individual and institutional competencies, especially for public managers and ecosystem leaders.

4. Resources: focus on activating financial, technical, and institutional support flows — co-financing, technical assistance, and inter-institutional partnerships.

5. Narratives: focus on creating shared language, purpose, and mobilizing stories — giving coherence to dispersed actions across the ecosystem.

Results of Catalytic Initiatives

The results below illustrate the positive ripple effects generated by “one-shot” catalytic initiatives: instead of merely producing events or reports, these interventions left behind collaboration infrastructures that continue to operate over time — funds and financial mechanisms (such as FIIMP – Impact Innovation Fund), permanent tracks and programs (e.g., impact-focused acceleration), matchmaking platforms between supply and demand, project portfolios with replicable protocols, and governance architectures that connect territories and actors (as in the case of Movimento Viva Água).

What they all share is the ability to turn a mobilization sprint into shared capacities, rules, and assets, expanding both the scale and durability of the ecosystem.

• FIIMP – Impact Innovation Fund: a collective fund (22 organizations) that invested ~R$ 700,000 to test financial instruments and strengthen the social finance field — creating shared governance and thematic public calls.

• InovAtiva de Impacto: design and launch of a dedicated acceleration track for impact businesses, directly stemming from the Social Finance Lab agendas.
  

• Empáctico: aplatform/marketplace connecting large organizations’ needs with impact businesses — a digital matchmaking infrastructure that remained beyond the lab cycle.
  

• Lab Guanabara – Climate Adaptation through Nature-Based Solutions (NbS): generation of seven integrated projects involving 37 organizations, including the creation of the Guanabara Bay Fund for NbS as a permanent mechanism.

  
  

• Applied projects with structural effects (Guanabara): Produzir para Conservar (network of demonstration units and forest-based production practices) and Florestar em Pé de Serra (technical foundations and arrangements for restoration), leaving installed capacity and replicable protocols.

  
  

• Movimento Viva Água: the territorial lab Oásis Lab Baía de Guanabara (84 organizations) laid the foundation for MVA governance and its national framework — expanding to six critical watersheds through councils and regional coordination.

These results share a common feature: they establish mechanisms, capacities, governance structures, and tools that endure over time (funds, platforms, tracks, methodologies, and councils), creating collaboration infrastructure that continues to generate value long after the “one shot.”

While structuring initiatives (such as Coalizão pelo Impacto, Cidades +B, or MVA) build long-term infrastructure — executive secretariats, funds, councils, indicators — catalytic initiatives function as activation modules capable of:

• quickly testing new approaches before scaling them;

• bringing actors closer and reducing collaboration barriers;

• producing inputs and models that feed more robust initiatives;

• keeping innovation alive within ecosystems that are already institutionalized.

  
  

Although short, these initiatives can lay the groundwork for more enduring arrangements. The case of Lab Guanabara is exemplary: originally conceived as a social innovation experiment, the lab gave rise to Movimento Viva Água Guanabara which, together with MVA Miringuava, provided the methodological foundation for the National Viva Água Movement — today a mature coalition with its own governance and fund.

Similarly, the Oásis Accelerator, by supporting local collectives and networks, produced matrices, toolkits, and learning processes that continue to be reused across new initiatives by Fundação Grupo Boticário and territorial partners.

In a balanced ecosystem-development portfolio, both catalytic and structuring approaches have essential roles: catalytic initiatives ensure adaptability, experimentation, and continuous learning, while structuring ones provide durability and long-term coherence.

Challenges and Learnings

The main challenges of these initiatives include:

• risk of superficiality (producing events and meetings without continuity or consequence);

• asymmetry of engagement among actors (power imbalances);

• absence of legacy mechanisms.

  
  

Overcoming these risks requires intentionality: planning the post-program phase, creating knowledge stewards, and linking the intervention to mother-institutions or broader cycles that can ensure continuity.

Conclusion

Catalytic initiatives are a powerful part of ecosystem-development engineering. They act as both antenna and accelerator: detecting emerging movements, testing new forms of collaboration, and often opening entirely new fields of practice.

In a world where complexity demands both stability and flexibility, the combination of structuring and catalytic initiatives is what enables ecosystems to evolve in a living, learning, and collaborative way.

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This article is part of the Study on Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives for the Development of Impact Ecosystems, focused on knowledge and experiences related to collaborative processes. Its findings are consolidated in three formats: 1. podcast episodes (T1); 2. articles; 3. a full publication on the topic — bringing together both the mapping of networks, coalitions, and multi-stakeholder arrangements dedicated to ecosystem development, and a deeper understanding of the people and organizations that are currently accelerating solutions to collective-interest challenges.

Actors from Brazil’s positive socio-environmental impact ecosystem who support the initiative.

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References

[1] Hassan, Z. (2014). Social Labs Revolution: A New Approach to Solving Our Most Complex Challenges. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

[2] Scharmer, O. C. (2009). Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

[3] Ufer, A. (2019). Social innovation labs — a practical case in Guanabara Bay. In: Nature-Based Solutions and Water Challenges (ch. 5.3). Klabin–Iniciativa (org.). pp. 154–161.

[4] Sense-Lab. (2024–2025). Study on Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives for Ecosystem Development (working document).

[5] Fundação Grupo Boticário, BMW Foundation, ICLEI & Sense-Lab. (2023–2025). Project reports and materials: Oásis Accelerator, Collaborative Action Platform, Protected Areas Acceleration Program, and Movimento Viva Água.