Perspectives for innovation and knowledge hub projects (complex, wicked) Our global, local and even corporate challenges get more dynamic and complex. Happily so do our tools and media to design, facilitate and govern the structures and processes. Many models, theories and practices from different disciplines are involved. Truism: You cannot unravel a knot in dimension n in a space of lower dimension n-1. Consequence: A successful path might involve at least a handful of approaches. (1) Cultural Evolution, Organisational Development and Evolution … to have a perspective of progress and the momentum of „learning from failures“ (2) Social Cognition, Semantics & Knowledge Management … understanding is at the core, finding a common language is a must. (3) Social Capital Theory (Putnam) … to raise the social and communicative energies of teams and communities (4) Collective Intelligence & Social Innovation … wisdom of crowds, creativity methods, open space approaches, the Appreciative Inquiry stance etc A lot of the steering is about finding common language and connected perspectives, common goals; accept cultural differences without the trap of indifference. Putnam’s approach teaches how to grow dynamics in communities, use active bridging and linking to create access to new resources. Culture, values and virtues are key of course. If a certain culture level is not part of the setting in the beginning they have to be created, curated and stabilized first. Evolution allows for disruptions, leaps and surprises, but also comprises a certain path dependency. BACKGROUND: Starting point: Innovation and knowledge management in complex social settings is tricky and often fails when there is not a good level of systems thinking involved. That happens for projects in civil society as well as in corporate settings which strive to facilitate innovation culture and meaningful conversations. Kudos to many unnamed, but, esp. to Otto Scharmer (Presencing Institute, Theory U).