Mentor Spotlight: Nicola Watts

As part of our Mentor Spotlight Series, we are thrilled to introduce Dr Nicola Watts. With a rich background spanning over 20 countries and diverse sectors, her journey has been fueled by a passion for instigating change in the face of global challenges. As a mentor with Subak Australia, Nicola leverages her extensive experience to guide individuals towards aligning their personal goals with a deeper sense of purpose, fostering skill development, and purpose-driven action.

Drawing from her belief in the power of collaboration and co-innovation, Nicola emphasises the importance of genuine collaborations in tackling complex challenges like climate change. By breaking down siloes and fostering connections within innovation ecosystems, she believes we can unlock collective intelligence to address climate challenges effectively. Despite the barriers hindering progress in climate action, Nicola remains optimistic about the potential for regenerative economies and collaborative initiatives to drive positive change. Looking ahead, she envisions organisations like Subak Australia playing a crucial role in advancing climate priorities by supporting regenerative practices and fostering collaborative coalitions.

Through her involvement in global networks like the TCI Network, Dr Nicola Watts advocates for approaches that highlight national and global connectivity. By amplifying success stories and promoting collective action, Nicola believes we can create a tipping point for positive change and build a resilient and sustainable future.

1.Can you share more about your background and what inspired you to pursue such a diverse and impactful career path and how does this personal journey inform your approach as a mentor with Subak Australia?

I have been privileged to work across many sectors, more than 20 countries, and with a great diversity of people and organisations.  ‘Change’ initiatives have always been at the heart of that. Despite a lot of good stuff, I’ve always had this increasing discomfort with the rise of global wicked problems and a planetary polycrisis trajectory. I also firmly believe that it is people – individuals – who can be the most powerful agents of positive change by taking collective action in various spheres of life. I’ve benefited greatly in my career through mentors and love being mentors to others. 

Mentoring can take many shapes and forms – but for me, one of the most important elements is the notion of ‘open-heart’, ‘open-mind’ and ‘open-will’ and helping people approach living and ways of working and doing business that align with their deepest sense of purpose. Supporting with skills, strategies, tools, knowledge, and networks to navigate that can follow.

2.As a firm believer in the power of collaboration and co-innovation, how do you see these principles shaping the landscape of addressing today's complex challenges and building resilient futures?

Collaboration is such an easy word to roll off the tongue but more challenging to achieve. If we think about other similar words like co-ordination and co-operation, collaboration is at the highest end of the ‘trust’ spectrum and is built around a deeper and unified sense of purpose. Genuine collaborations take time to build, and are critical for tackling the complex challenges, like climate change, we face today. 

Genuine collaboration brings together the diverse expertise, resources, and perspectives needed to understand the complexity of the problem. It fosters creativity, innovation, and collective intelligence, that can enable the development of holistic and multifaceted approaches to challenges like climate change. Additionally, collaboration promotes buy-in, ownership, and commitment from all stakeholders.

3.Breaking down siloes and fostering connections within innovation ecosystems are crucial aspects of your approach. How do you see this approach specifically contributing to tackling climate change challenges ?

I think there is a strong shared sense of frustration around the current siloes and fragmentation across our innovation ecosystems because it locks up knowledge, creates unnecessary duplication, and does not support collective action and the results we all want to see!

Breaking down siloes and facilitating collaboration around purposeful innovation through public-private partnerships is key. Whilst there is much that can be done at many levels to facilitate collaboration across a range of ecosystem actors, I also believe that we’ve got some real structural barriers that need to be addressed here – particularly in relation to policy and funding programmes. 

I’ll refer to the influential London-based economist - Mariana Mazzucato who was recently in Australia - who argues that public investments should catalyze ‘additionality’ by selecting projects that drive transformational change, alongside ‘conditionality’ which sets requirements for private sector participation to ensure accountability and the fulfillment of societal objectives. 

4.Being part of global networks like the TCI Network, what insights or best practices have you gathered that could be applied to Subak Australia's efforts in climate action and innovation?

It reinforces for me the importance of place-based approaches that are nationally and globally connected. There is no need to reinvent the wheel – there are many solutions and groups out there to learn from, be inspired by, gain support from, and become part of a bigger movement.

It also reinforces the importance of ‘clusters’ that provide the necessary social capital to build trusting relationships which can bring together community, industry, government, and knowledge institutions around a strong sense of shared purpose for supporting collective impact.

5.In your opinion, what are some of the key barriers or challenges hindering progress in addressing climate change, and how can we overcome them? 

That’s a big question! 

Despite the strong movements that are supporting positive shifts there are the really big counterforces at work – such as ‘dark money’ and AI-driven social media. Dark money – that is the undisclosed funds used for political purposes by big vested and powerful interests - distorts public discourse and hinders policy implementation. AI-driven social media amplifies misinformation, fosters echo chambers, and promotes divisive discourse, which really hinders efforts to address climate change.

Also, across the board, we don’t do ‘complexity’ well at all. Structurally we are organised in silos and the lack of holistic systemic approaches to climate change neglects interconnected issues like socio-economic disparities and environmental justice. We seem stuck on never-ending layers of transactional changes rather than the big transformational shifts required for addressing root causes and supporting holistic approaches.

At another level it’s also about attitudes and mindsets. Whilst there are many people and groups doing great things – there are also many who just see the challenge as too big and too complex and that it’s outside their sphere of influence or capacity to have meaningful impact.

Collective action of course is key. In terms of my work these days, this is primarily embedded in purposeful place-based initiatives which seek to integrate climate mitigation principles into all elements of design. In doing so – I draw heavily on the works of Peter Senge (MIT/Centre for Systems Awareness) and Otto Scharmer (MIT/Presencing Institute and ‘Theory U’)  which have significantly influenced my practice. This includes a big focus on systems thinking, empathy, fostering a shared sense of purpose, co-innovation – including protoyping and piloting, etc.

6.Looking ahead, what do you envision as the most critical priorities for climate action in the coming years, and how do you believe organisations like Subak Australia can contribute to advancing these priorities?
For me what is critical is being aware of and supporting shifts from the dominant extractive economy principles and mindsets which have created the problems we face today, towards a regenerative economy and associated mindsets. Regeneration goes ways beyond the principles of sustainability and the focus on the replenishment of natural ecosystems, biodiversity, and community well-being. That is coming in many forms – regenerative food systems, regenerative finance, regenerative tourism, regenerative business models, regenerative technologies, and so on. We need to be alert to these system shifts and strengthen the collaborative coalitions around them. We also need to be equally alert to the ‘business-as-usual’ approaches that are dressed-up/green-washed to look like regenerative and sustainability initiatives. 

Through applying regenerative design principles, I believe we can work towards co-creating symbiotic relationships between human activities and the natural world, where both can thrive and regenerate together.

I greatly admire the work of Subak – and working to ‘find, fund, and scale organisations who are saving the planet’, because the biggest collective challenge is how a range of initiatives can all culminate in a tipping point for positive change. In the end, it’s all about the connections, collaboration, co-innovation, and capability-building which will support collective impact. Communicating the stories – broadcasting them far and wide -is also key!