Susan and I are having a very fruitful conversation today. She just told me to post something I said to her:

Most of the brokenness in the world today is caused by bad interactions between people.

People leave these bad interactions feeling drained and dispirited, sensing that they lost more than they gained.

Polycentric design is the practice of redesigning these interactions (or the contexts and conditions of the interactions), so that interactions work out for everyone involved. Somehow each person gains more than they put in.

Good polycentric design  produces stone soup effects.

When I finish the book I’m working on now, which zero people will read, I’m writing Polycentric Design, which I hope several dozen people might read.