 IFF is organised around three primary functions: research, design and development, and delivery.
IFF is constantly scanning the environment for trends, new ideas, concepts, patterns, significant developments. It meets as a learning community as often as possible, including in plenary sessions. Most recently these gatherings have taken place in St Andrews, San Francisco and New Delhi.
IFF’s ‘interactive world modelling’ framework helps to place developments in a consistent global frame embracing today’s significant global challenges and their interconnections. This allows IFF to draw productively in any circumstance, global or local, on the specialist expertise of its international members and their wide range of contacts.
The test of IFF’s work has from the beginning been effectiveness in action. Hence the design and development function takes emerging ideas from the research space and brings them to the world of practice. That involves designing new products and processes. It involves learning by doing – for IFF and for all participants. And it involves testing ideas on a small scale that may well have much wider application. IFF works both at the local and the ‘humble global’ levels – seeking to make a real difference to the global agenda.
Proof of concept paves the way for broader delivery. This is about sharing IFF knowledge more widely through publications and products, replicating proven processes in new circumstances and at a larger scale, and developing the capacity to use this knowledge in others through workshops, courses and training programmes. In order to reach the widest possible audience, IFF also partners with other organisations to deliver programmes and services with ‘IFF inside’.
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