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James Stauch has authored or coauthored many guides, scans, and trend analyses on a range of contemporary social issues. A social innovation and systems change educator and consultant based in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Canada, he serves as Co-chair of the Banff Systems Summit and as Complex Systems Strategist with ATCO's SpaceLab. James is a Visiting Fellow at the Skoll Centre at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and was the founding Executive Director of the Institute for Community Prosperity at Mount Royal University, where he developed social innovation, leadership, and systems-focused learning programs for undergraduate students and the broader community. James has also been a foundation executive and philanthropy consultant, which included designing and managing Arctic and Northern programming with the Gordon Foundation. Having chaired several national and international grantmaking networks and consortia, James is currently a board member of Alberta Ecotrust Foundation and a member of the editorial advisory board of The Philanthropist journal. Anna Johnson is a consultant and systems practitioner dedicated to helping organizations navigate complexity, build internal capacity, and design strategies rooted in systems thinking and mapping. Her work spans philanthropy, academia, social enterprise, and community initiatives, encompassing grassroots efforts and global education programs. With over a decade of experience at the intersection of community and academia, Anna has developed systems-focused learning programs at local, national, and global levels. She has held roles with Mount Royal University's Institute for Community Prosperity, Ashoka Canada, and the University of Oxford's Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. At the Skoll Centre, she managed the global Map the System challenge, collaborating with institutions and students worldwide to apply systems thinking to complex social and environmental challenges. Previously, Anna served as capacity building associate at the Calgary Foundation, where she leveraged her expertise in systems thinking and social innovation to strengthen both organizational and sector-wide capacity. Daniela Papi-Thornton is an educator, facilitator, coach, and author based in Boulder, Colorado. Her work focuses on systems-led leadership, an approach to social innovation that centers on systems understanding. Daniela is currently a lecturer at University of Colorado Boulder and a consultant with a range of education organizations, foundations, and for-profit companies looking to contribute to systems change. She previously served as a lecturer at Yale School of Management, Watson Institute, and Oxford's Saïd Business School, where she was also the deputy director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. She taught certificate courses for professionals through Chicago Booth's Hong Kong Campus and Mount Royal University as well as a social entrepreneurship certificate course at Dartmouth College. She designed an educational tool called the Impact Gaps Canvas, which is used at accelerator programs and in social impact education initiatives around the world, and she launched Map the System, a contest that runs at more than fifty global institutions each year. Daniela's work builds upon six years of emerging market entrepreneurial experience in Cambodia, where she ran a hybrid social enterprise educational organization. She also coauthored Learning Service: The Essential Guide to Volunteering Abroad (Red Press Ltd., 2018), a book about rethinking volunteer travel. She also authored an influential report titled Tackling Heropreneurship, and her TEDx Talks on these topics highlight some of her thinking.
""James Stauch's The 55 Minutes is the book on complexity and systems theory I have been wishing for as a resource to train students and emerging researchers across disciplines around collaboration, design and innovation. Stauch fully integrates research and theory, while keeping his focus on the skills and mindsets one needs to develop and hone to be the vehicle of transformative action. It is both a brilliant resource for those interested in social and public change and mandatory reading for those who need to apply social science and humanities training in the real world."" Sandra Lapointe, Professor of Philosophy and Director of The/La Collaborative at McMaster University. ""In a world that screams for speed and easy answers, The 55 Minutes is a radical act of necessary defiance. Stauch, Johnson, and Papi-Thornton haven't just written a book; they've crafted an indispensable atlas for navigating the messy, complex reality we're all facing. It forces the crucial pause - the deep dive into understanding the actual problem - before we waste precious energy on superficial fixes. If you're serious about driving real change, not just innovation theatre, this is your essential starting point. Slow down with this book, then go be radical."" Pascal Finette, Founder & CEO, radical ""Everything is connected to everything else in our world and when we try to address the great challenges of our times as if they were isolated technical problems rather than complex living systems, it only makes them worse. 55 Minutes brings together the language and tools needed to see systems more clearly and to influence them more skillfully; nothing could be more important. This remarkable book bridges from theory to practice and from local to global, offering readers practical wisdom for understanding complex problems more deeply and crafting viable pathways towards a flourishing future. It's a magnificent and timely contribution!"" Julian Norris, Co-Founder, The Wolf Willow Institute ""James Stauch's book is a wonderfully comprehensive guide of the critical tools to think and practice in systems. It organizes the 'mess' of tools into an easy-to-follow framework, making them accessible to any new or seasoned systems practitioner."" Tima Bansal, Ivey Business School and 2025 Clarendon Lecturer in Management Studies, University of Oxford ""This is an extraordinary piece of work - beautifully written, profoundly insightful, and deeply resonant. This book is exactly what we need to help make sense of the polycrisis and, more importantly, to guide us toward meaningful action."" Ushma Issar, Founder and CEO, Rypple ""Do you want to do better work? Read this book. Its models and tools are a compass for every practice, revealing a profound truth often hiding in plain sight: to arrive at the most marvellous answer, you must first ask the best question."" Matthew Shaw, Head, Accessibility Practice, Rick Hansen Foundation ""A beautiful and brilliant book!"" Adam Kahane, Co-Founder of Reos Partners and author of Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems
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