Work with us, or build the skills in your own team.
The 80:20 Pathway is an evidence-informed innovation consultancy. Our expertise is community engagement: involving people early enough to change decisions, so that innovations are trusted, adopted and sustained. We work directly with organisations, and we offer an online course and simulations your team can use.
Innovations succeed when people adopt them. We help you reduce the risk that they won't.
When teams come to us
- Shaping a funding bid
- Planning engagement before key decisions are fixed
- A project that's struggling with adoption
- Needing evidence for funders
How we deliver it
- Advice alongside your team
- Bespoke workshops and training
- Frameworks and practical tools
- Gathering evidence of adoption
Build the skills in your own team
An online course and two simulations.
The online course
A self-paced course for people introducing innovations into places they do not live in. It covers what decides whether an innovation lasts: the context it enters, the trust it earns, who gets to decide, and what happens when the funding ends. It's open now, for individuals and teams.
Six modules, worked through at your own pace. 
Each episode starts with a video. 
A reading takes the ideas further. 
Work through scenarios, then apply them to your own project. 
A printable field guide for each module. 
A Certificate of Completion once you finish all six modules.
What's covered
- Understanding Context
- Power and Position in Innovation
- Building Trust
- Sharing Decisions
- Ethics, Assumptions, and Representation
- Planning for Long-Term Success
How it works
Each module combines video, reading, quizzes and practical activities. You apply them to a real project and get feedback as you go.
- Self-paced
- A printable field guide for each module
- A Certificate of Completion once you finish all six modules
Plan at the table. Check it in the field. Bring it back.
Two simulations for mapping a community and working out where your innovation fits. Each works on its own. They work best together: start the map online in the office, then take the board and tiles into the field, where there may be no connectivity, no devices and low literacy. You and the community build the map together by moving the tiles and agree what needs to change. Then you bring back what you've all decided and make the changes.
In the office, start a map of the community online. 
Mark where your project could work, and what you're assuming. 
In the field there may be no connectivity, no devices and low literacy. So bring the board. 
With the community, build the map by moving the tiles together. 
Add what you didn't know, and agree together whether your project needs to move. 
Back in the office, make the changes you agreed together. Go round as often as you need.
The tabletop simulation
A board and a set of illustrated tiles for mapping a community together, in person. It needs no connectivity or devices, and everyone can take part by moving the tiles, so local knowledge shapes where and how your innovation fits.
How a session runs
- Unfold the board on a table or the floor
- Build a map of the community with the tiles
- Mark where your project could work
- Talk through the three questions on the board
What's in the box
- A magnetic, dry-wipe board
- Illustrated tiles for places, roads and rivers
- A practical guide
The digital simulation
The community map online, for your team to work on in the office. Each place tells you who to ask about, who might be missed and what you still need to check.
What your team does
- Lay out the land: rivers, roads, fields and forest
- Add the places people use, and mark where your project works
- Work through what each place asks you to consider
- Note what you know, what you're assuming and what to check
What's on screen
- Illustrated places, roads and rivers to arrange
- Prompts on what to consider at each place
- Space for your project notes
Not ready to talk yet? Start with our free checklists and field guides.
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