BUILDING CAPACITY

200+ People have gone through N Square trainings

10+ N Square courses designed and delivered

A key part of N Square’s work to cultivate the field’s capacity to achieve effective outcomes has been connecting nuclear professionals with new tools, approaches, and partners for doing so. From our early days, we have designed and delivered courses7 that collectively create a new “lingua franca” for innovation in the field, giving nuclear professionals (including next-generation leaders) a shared set of methods and tools they would have been unlikely to encounter otherwise.

2 New courses created in 2022

Our first wave of courses, launched in 2017, introduced N Square Innovators Network fellows to a host of design-based practices to support creative problemsolving. Over the last several years, we have added other courses that, taken together, serve as the bedrock of the Innovation Fellowship program. This roster of skill-building courses included modules on:

Human-centered design and innovation methods: A survey of the methods at the core of N Square’s approach, from problem identification to audience segmentation, from rapid prototyping to effective critique process

“I think presenting nuclear experts with new tools for thinking about the way the field works and what its future might look like [is] invaluable. Absent such tools, pre-existing mental models stay stuck, even as the world around us changes. Capacity building work like this catalyzes creativity, and the nuclear world strongly benefits from such creativity.”

“I really, really appreciate the hundreds upon hundreds of hours that y’all have devoted to this process…. Lord knows, NGOs such as mine are in dire need of additional strategizing tools in our toolboxes.”

“I think anyone working in NGOs or on complex, large-scale issues (thinking of climate change, poverty, public health, etc.) would greatly benefit from [the wicked problems] training because it helps to put the problem you’re trying to solve in perspective and provides new ways of problem-solving/the tools to do so.”

Design research:

A module on qualitative research and fieldwork for the purposes of designing new programs, tools, and services that actually get adopted because they meet both tacit and explicit needs of their users

Persuading, engaging, and communicating: Created through a partnership with The Nucleus Group, a module on building new types of messages and reaching new audiences about nuclear threats

Exponential technologies: Offered in partnership with TechChange–The Institute for Technology and Social Change, courses introducing blockchain, quantum computing, and other emergent technologies for nuclear experts

New Courses

Meanwhile, within and outside the fellowship, demand for our courses has continued to grow, leading us to create additional modules to share with the field.

Wicked Problems

In September 2022, we piloted a new six-module learning experience on wicked problems designed to stimulate new kinds of problem-solving in relation to nuclear challenges. Led by N Square managing director Erika Gregory, the course was created in direct response to requests from our growing network to focus on building the capacity of both existing and emerging leaders so that they are better equipped as a field to generate and act on powerful strategies that disrupt the status quo. The course helps participants understand the characteristics of wicked problems and techniques for working with them and then begin applying that learning to current, real-world work.

Systems Thinking

“I would recommend this course to all policy practitioners, regardless of policy specialisation, because I think that systems thinking is far too rare in policy even though it’s extremely applicable.”

Our new course on systems thinking for the nuclear weapons system, developed for N Square by Jewlya Lynn, focuses on three characteristics of systems: visible systems behaviors, hidden systems dynamics, and the interconnections between systems that are influenced by similar behaviors, myths, metaphors, mental models, and worldviews. The course gives participants familiarity and practice with three specific tools for systems thinking: systems mapping, storytelling, and the “futures mindset.” During the

Problems

Every

Can take a long time to evaluate solutions

Solutions are not right/wrong, but better/worse