Systems Entrepreneurship (Platinum Award)
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Overview
Systems Entrepreneur (PLATINUM)
After achieving a Gold level in either Pillar 1 or Pillar 2, you might be ready to be recongised as a Systems Entrepreneur. The highest level of achievement in the programme.
What does “Systems Entrepreneur” mean?
The problem with the concept of simply “Social Entrepreneur” is that this tacitly accepts that there are different and separate zones inside our society. In the bluntest terms, we can divide everything into a public space and a private space.
This division is problematic for several reasons:
1. Climate change will affect the traditional, private economy, at both a personal level and at a global GDP level, with the same force that it will hit our social fabric. The private sector is not immune to the laws of physics and chemistry.
2. This ‘private zone’ of our society needs entrepreneurial thinking and action as much as the ‘public zone’. Indeed, even in the traditional private metrics of property, profit and prosperity, there are tremendous advantages of living and acting in a systems-informed way.
3. One of the deepest myths about climate change and sustainability is that it is somehow marginal. It is something on the fringe, often just an afterthought. By pushing sustainability into the margins, often into a space of voluntary action, humanity fails to recognise that a collapse of Earth Systems will lead to a collapse of everything else.
The sustainability crisis is a Super Wicked one that cuts across, not just the public and the private, but every dimension of our society. In a world of specialisms and silos, we need thinkers and agency, strategies and solutions that operate on multiple levels.
The first boundary to cross is that deeply entrenched one between the public and private spheres, in which the flow of assets has moved, with some considerable weight, from the public to the private in recent decades. After transcending this division, there are many others: generational, gender, racial, class, geographic location, neurodiversity...
Clearly, this Platinum award cannot possibly expect someone to address all of these issues through their work. There is no expectation that a project would deliver on so many fronts; it could just address one of these issues.
But it will address this issue with wonderful depth. A Platinum award is due to a Climate Academy project that has navigated some of the institutional, social, political, and psychological barriers that often arise when trying to deliver bold systems-informed climate projects.
It will typically have a legacy to it. It will typically be resonant. It will be informed by these systems' stresses and imbalances, but hold on to key principles or truth and justice.
Achieving this badge would be a recognition of your deep achievement and resilience. It signals that you’ve proven your ability to mobilise systemic understanding at scale and inspire transformative action.
After participation (Bronze), Expertise (Silver) and Autonomy (Gold), the Platinum badge recognises true leadership.
The Challenge
So in summary: as a Systems Entrepreneur, you will have designed and delivered work that is typically marked by being:
- Truly intersectional — cutting across disciplines, sectors, and communities.
- Barrier-breaking — overcoming significant personal or social obstacles to create real change.
- Legacy-building — projects that leave a lasting positive impact.
“Right to Know” video
This coverage of a Climate Academy protest, outside the European Commission in 2018, was filmed and edited by Katerina Surquin (a Finnish/Belgian Climate Academy Student). The sheer quality of the filming and editing makes it qualify for a Platinum Badge.
This video has been shown many times at Climate Academy events and conferences and always creates a significant impact.
A GAP year, Italian style
Sara Pastina graduated from the Climate Academy and went on to do her university studies in Environmental Science. After graduation (cum laude), she wanted to do something meaningful and impactful in her Gap year before going on to Oxford University for her Master's degree.
Sara established and ran an Italian Climate Academy group inside her old secondary school, which had an Italian section. This group followed the programme and organised a trip to Italy, aimed at promoting the Climate Academy programme for different schools in the cities they visited – Varese and Parma.
Today, there is a thriving Climate Academy in the Secondary Art School, Liceo Frattini (Varese). Which, itself, is designing and delivering new Climate Academy projects that have an artistic focus.
Sara’s energy and commitment had an amazing legacy and leverage.
The Writings on the Wall
The momentum of the school protest movement was stopped by the COVID 19 pandemic. The Climate Academy students in Brussels translated their democratic energies into a giant climate justice mural.
Over a week of the Easter holiday, with some relaxation of the national lockdown rules, the students came to an empty school to design, paint, and often eat together... all with funky music in the background. It was a special bubble of time.
The project pulled together science and art, not just a community.
The concept was so strong, it eventually became a project that was funded by the EU – to enable other schools and communities to achieve a lasting and vivid visual expression of climate justice.
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Indeed, this publication project is now an “off-the-shelf” project that any learner can implement to gain a Gold Badge.