Integration and Implementation Insights (also known as i2Insights) is a community weblog (blog), which invites contributions to a global, comprehensive, living toolkit for sharing methods, frameworks, processes, concepts, theories and competencies to better understand and act on complex societal and environmental problems (problems like refugee crises, global climate change, and inequality).
The primary target audience for i2Insights is researchers and educators addressing complex real-world problems, including those using approaches based in:
- Multi-, inter- and/or trans- disciplinarity
- Systems thinking
- Action research
- Implementation science
- Science of team science
- Sustainability science and sustainability transitions
- Integrated assessment
- Post-normal science
- Design thinking
- Complex project management
- Complex systems science
- Change management
- Impact assessment and evaluation
- K* (KStar) including Knowledge brokering, Knowledge exchange, Knowledge management, Knowledge mobilisation, Knowledge transfer, Knowledge translation
- Operational research
- Policy science
- Risk analysis
- Decision making, including decision making under deep uncertainty.
i2Insights contributions cover 11 major topics that underpin these approaches:
- change
- communication
- context
- decision making
- diversity
- integration
- research implementation
- stakeholder engagement
- systems
- teamwork
- unknowns.
i2Insights contributions also discuss how to advance understanding and high quality application of expertise in these topics and approaches through:
- education
- evaluation
- institutionalisation.
i2Insights aims to be a global vehicle for exchange, discussion and network building, as well as a repository of tools. It seeks to:
- share useful tools among researchers from a range of academic backgrounds, who tackle a variety of complex problems
- promote discussion to improve tools
- build a global community of experts
- strengthen recognition of this expertise in mainstream academic research and education
- build a knowledge bank (toolkit) that provides easy access to a range of tools.
On November 25, 2025, i2Insights celebrated its 10th birthday with a restatement of aims.
We welcome contributions about, and seek to provide an active forum for discussing, tools that help research and education tackle complex societal and environmental problems, including for:
- synthesising knowledge from different disciplines and stakeholders
- dealing with the messiness of how components of a complex problem interact, the influence of context and how power can stymie or facilitate action
- developing “best possible” or “least worst” solutions, recognising that complex problems do not have perfect solutions
- understanding and managing unknowns in order to more adequately respond to unintended adverse consequences and unpleasant surprises
- supporting policy and practice change through research
- educating the next generation to better deal with complex problems
- making effective ways of dealing with complex problems a more central part of the academic mainstream in both research and education.
i2Insights takes a broad approach to tools, including descriptions of simple useful methods and frameworks, to guidelines for more intricate processes, to insights into complex concepts and theories. Although the toolkit is the core of i2Insights, contributions also cover various aspects of institutionalising, educating for and evaluating the expertise required to use the tools effectively. The progress of i2Insights is also reported on regularly.
You can find out more about what i2Insights covers in the “Index“, which lists and defines the terms used to categorise and tag i2Insights contributions.
There are currently five types of i2Insights contributions:
- General blog posts, which comprise the majority of i2Insights contributions. These present conceptual or methodological tools for tackling complex problems or may address educational, evaluation or institutional aspects of addressing such problems.
- Synthesis blog posts, which are contributions that draw together insights and lessons from several previously published i2Insights contributions.
- State-of-the-blog reviews, which are blog posts about the i2Insights blog and repository itself, generally, but not always, an annual review.
- Primers, which are series of blog posts providing an introduction to one of the main topics covered by i2Insights. Currently there are primers on stakeholder engagement and understanding diversity.
- Editor’s additions, which are produced by an i2Insights editor when no author can be found to turn a particular publication relevant to tackling complex problems into an i2Insights contribution.
- Page updated: November 24, 2025