Many of today’s important challenges can be described as “Wicked” problems – those problems that speak to different fields of expertise but resist any single, easy solution. Asking how we might communicate, work, and live better together, these problems disclose some of our most pressing shared needs. They are “wicked” because they challenge conventional forms of inquiry, the practices that make such work possible, and the institutions that bring conventional inquiry to life. How can we best address wicked problems together?

In 2019, Tom Rowlands and I founded supersum, an organisation to help us design, support, and deliver new collaborative responses to wicked problems. We bring core production and researcher expertise to such work, approaching others to join us in forming new projects teams and applying for project funding. We stand by an ethics of addressing such needs collaboratively rather than working in isolation: by amplifying our shared collaborative potential, we can address wicked problems more completely. As we focus on a type of problem, our work takes us into many different areas. Projects under development as of Autumn 2019 ask how research on climate change can be brought into action/policy, how adult dementia care might be better embedded into communities, and how empty churches across the UK might better support productive rural life. Our flexible working model means supersum can operate in different roles to develop such work, whether as a more traditional consultancy, a delivery partner, or as a project lead. For more information on our work, and to approach us with new project ideas, please visit supersum.works.