Inner Development Goals

Summary: Introduced in 2020, the Inner Development Goals (IDG) Framework is a Swedish-based not-for-profit and open-source initiative. The IDG Framework advocates for inner development to enhance the abilities of individuals and organizations to face and effectively work with complex challenges.1 IDG Framework’s premise is that “without a foundational shift in human values and leadership capacities, external solutions to our global challenges may be limited, too slow or short-lived.” Recent reports indicate that only one-fifth of targets are on track and over one-third are stalled or going in reverse since they were adopted in 2015.2 The IDG Framework exemplifies Systemic Risk Response (SRR) criteria related to Mainstreaming, Universal Responsibility, Building Individual and Collective Agency, and Complexity.

Case Study: Inner Development Goals Framework

Overview: The IDG Framework believes that, in order to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the missing ingredient is “a keen insight into which abilities, qualities or skills we need to develop among individuals, groups and organizations that play crucial roles in working to fulfil the SDGs.”3 These insights are embodied in the IDG Framework, an essential roadmap that has been, and continues to be, co-created to assist in “navigating and developing our inner lives to catalyse outer change.”4 The IDG Framework is informed by interdisciplinary research and comprises five dimensions with 23 skills of inner growth and development: Being, Thinking, Relating, Collaborating, and Acting.”5 With 700 hubs and networks in 90 countries, the IDG Framework brings people together around collective exploration to learn, innovate, prototype, practice, and share the application of these tools.6

Highlights in Systemic Risk Response

A systemic risk response encompasses any action that mitigates, prepares for, adapts to, and transforms away from the harms of systemic risks. This example shows that mental models can be a key tool in addressing systemic risks.

Mainstreaming

The IDG Framework contributes to mainstreaming and capacity development in an open-source and interdisciplinary manner. This is a critical aspect for systemic risk response. As part of implementing the IDG Framework, several programs operate to this end, such as:

• Global Leadership for Sustainable Development (GLSD) Programme: The program is suitable for organizations within central or local government, public institutions, academia, private sector, and civil society who are committed to implementing the SDGs, where the top leadership is willing and able to support the integration of inner development as an accelerator for human flourishing and sustainability.7
• IDG Framework Summit: Each year, corporate, educational, civil society, and governmental leaders convene to delve into the depths of inner potential to help turn our complex challenges into opportunities for impactful leadership and positive change.8
• IDG Framework at Harvard: Events convened at Harvard University contribute to mainstreaming the framework and cover topics such as “Inner Development and Climate Action: Transformative Skills for Addressing the Climate Crisis.”9
• IDG Framework Masterclass: Led by accomplished teachers such as Peter Senge (MIT) and Gustav Böll, participants gain hands-on skills and tools to help with the integration of the IDG Framework in institutional contexts.10
• IDG Framework Partner Program: This program brings together transformational organizations in a global community for integrating the inner development into their work toward a better future.11
• 2024 GLSD Programme: This resulted in the creation of several centres around the world, including Costa Rica, which has made great strides in integrating IDG Framework in their policy development guidelines.
• Integrating IDG Framework into National Policies — A Strategic Approach: Policy development was a key component of the GLSD. This initiative invites governments, policymakers, and diplomats to engage with the strategy by incorporating the IDG Framework into the design and assessment of sustainable development policies in an effort to collectively foster a more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable future.12
• Integrating IDG Framework in Education: Colombia, the Netherlands, and Costa Rica have begun integrating the IDG Framework into primary and secondary education curricula, not only mainstreaming these dimensions among youth but also opening a door for further integration into wider education policy.
• Key IDG Framework Activities in Colombia: In 2024, the IDG Framework Center in Colombia hosted the Public Policy Workshop at the Presidential Agency for International Cooperation (APC Colombia) in Bogotá, which emphasized the importance of integrating the IDG Framework into national and regional policies and laid the groundwork for a national strategy to promote IDG Framework–based leadership development, education reform, and social inclusion initiatives.

Universal Responsibility

The idea of the IDG Framework was motivated by a sense of universal responsibility and began with the understanding that “although we have accumulated much knowledge about the climate crisis, poverty, public health, and other social ills communicated in the SDGs, we seem to lack the inner capacity to deal with our increasingly complex environment and challenges.”13 Starting in 2020, over 1000 scientists, experts, and human resources and sustainability professionals were engaged to brainstorm about the inner capacities necessary in one’s inner mind to enable the collective achievement of the 17 global SDGs.

Formalized in 2023, the result of the massive interdisciplinary co-creation effort was the IDG Framework, a set of five dimensions spanning: 1) Being, 2) Thinking, 3) Relating, 4) Collaborating, and 5) Acting, and underpinned with 23 skills of human inner growth and development necessary (see below). The IDG Framework works with a range of stakeholders from governments to policymakers and the private sector. During national workshops that were an important component of the IDG Framework Capacity Development Programme “Global Leadership for Sustainable Development” (GLSD), leaders from the public sector, business, academia, and civil society in Albania, Colombia, and Costa Rica were united to discuss strategies to achieve the SDGs through inner growth and collective action.14

Individual and Collective Agency

Among the guiding principles of the Inner Development Goals is facilitating the “emergence of a full ecosystem with many interdependent subsystems,” whereby the IDG Framework works with organizations given their inherent potential to “accelerate human growth and collective learning.”15 While the entirety of the IDG Framework is about building individual and collective agency, two dimensions in particular are focused on the idea of agency. The “Collaborating” dimension is about skills for making progress on shared concerns and enhancing our abilities to “hold space and communicate with stakeholders with different values, skills, and competencies.”16 As well, the “Acting” dimension addresses the qualities that help us acquire true agency, such as courage and optimism, that help us “break old patterns, generate original ideas and act with persistence in uncertain times.”17 The specific skills for Collaborating and Acting are listed below.

• Communication skills: Ability to really listen to others, to foster genuine dialogue, to advocate own views skillfully, to manage conflicts constructively, and to adapt communication to diverse groups.
• Co-creation skills: Skills and motivation to build, develop, and facilitatecollaborative relationships with diverse stakeholders, characterized bypsychological safety and genuine co-creation.
• Inclusive mindset and intercultural competence: Willingness and competence to embrace diversity and include people and collectiveswith different views and backgrounds.
• Trust: Ability to show trust and to create and maintain trusting relationships.
• Mobilization skills: Skills in inspiring and mobilizing others to engage in shared purposes.
• Courage: Ability to stand up for values, make decisions, take decisive action, and, if need be, challenge and disrupt existing structures and views.
• Creativity: Ability to generate and develop original ideas, innovate, and be willing to disrupt conventional patterns.
• Optimism: Ability to sustain and communicate a sense of hope, positive attitude, and confidence in the possibility of meaningful change.
• Perseverance: Ability to sustain engagement and remain determined and patient even when efforts take a long time to bear fruit.

In 2024, Aliarse, based in Costa Rica, became the first IDG Framework Center in the world, working toward the integration of the IDG Framework throughout Latin America. They hosted a number of events, including a collaborative gathering focused on fostering connections among key stakeholders from government, business, civil society, and academia. Participants engaged in activities rooted in history, art, dialogue, and co-creation. One highlight was a “collaborative orchestra,” an interactive experience designed to encourage joint creativity and build mutual trust.

As a result, an ecosystem of networking and collaboration between stakeholders was created and the delineation of what each sector has to offer was discovered.18

Complexity

From a complexity perspective, the IDG Framework spans a broad spectrum of soft skills for effectively engaging in complex adaptive systems, including a dimension on “Thinking,” which is focused on “developing our cognitive skills by taking different perspectives, evaluating information, and making sense of the world as an interconnected whole.”19 This dimension helps build practical skills in the following:

• Critical thinking: Skills in critically reviewing the validity of views, evidence, and plans;
• Complexity awareness: Understanding of and skills in working with complex and systemic conditions and causalities;
• Perspective skills: Skills in seeking, understanding, and actively making use of insights from contrasting perspectives;
• Sense-making: Skills in seeing patterns, structuring the unknown, and being able to consciously create stories; and
• Long-term orientation and visioning: Ability to formulate and sustain commitment to visions relating to the larger context.

Compassion

The IDG Framework also embraces skills for compassion, a principle that is very important for an effective systemic risk response. The “Relating” dimension focuses on “appreciating, caring for and feeling connected to others, such as neighbours, future generations or the biosphere,” all in an effort to help us “create more just and sustainable systems and societies for everyone.”20 More specifically, this dimension includes a skill on “Empathy and Compassion,” which is about the “ability to relate to others, oneself and nature with kindness and address related suffering.”21

Key Insights and Lessons Learned

The IDG Framework exemplifies Systemic Risk Response (SRR) criteria related to Mainstreaming, Universal Responsibility, Individual and Collective Agency, and Complexity. The IDG Framework has introduced leaders in different domains to a new mental model that develops individual capacities needed to achieve the SDGs.22

Several lessons have emerged from country-level applications that offer guidance for other systemic risk response efforts:

1. Work with a range of stakeholders to enable timely implementation: Implementation may be subject to political will and tied to election cycles to obtain political support, making policy outcomes slow to be realized. Working with the private sector and other stakeholders in parallel often enables implementation to occur more quickly.
2. Be open to reviewing and evolving approaches based on experiences in implementation: The IDG Framework acknowledges the need for continual learning and change at all levels, and adapting methods and approaches accordingly. The IDG Framework is being revised to take account of the knowledge, evidence, and experience gained through its implementation, with the launch of new capacities in October 2025.
3. Combine building capacities at the individual level with working at a systems level to catalyze deep transformation: While the IDG Framework focuses on inner change and building skills and capacities at the inner level, this is implemented through hubs and networks to deliver broader and deeper impact at the organizational and sector level.

1 “2024 IDG Partnership Deck (Lite) - 14.08.2024.Pdf,” Google Docs, accessed September 18, 2025,

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12OOgzCicBiTq_-tDCoc4CRqk1WlXOaKh/view?usp=embed_facebook.

2 “2024 SDG report: Global progress alarmingly insufficient,” UNSDG, accessed September 18, 2025,

https://unsdg.un.org/latest/stories/2024-sdg-report-global-progress-alarmingly-insufficient.

3 About — Inner Development Goals, n.d., accessed September 18, 2025,

https://innerdevelopmentgoals.org/about/.

4 Framework — Inner Development Goals, n.d., accessed September 18, 2025,

https://innerdevelopmentgoals.org/framework/.

5 Framework — Inner Development Goals.

6 “IDG hubs,” Inner Development Goals, accessed September 18, 2025,

https://innerdevelopmentgoals.org/get-involved/hubs-networks/.

7 IDG Centers — Inner Development Goals, n.d., accessed September 18, 2025,

https://innerdevelopmentgoals.org/get-involved/centers/.

8 IDG Summit 2024 — Inner Development Goals, n.d., accessed September 18, 2025,

https://innerdevelopmentgoals.org/archived/summit2024/.

9 Events — IDGs at Harvard University – Inner Development Goals, n.d., accessed September 18, 2025,

https://innerdevelopmentgoals.org/archived/harvard/.

10 Google Docs, “2024 IDG Partnership Deck (Lite) - 14.08.2024.Pdf.”

11 Google Docs, “2024 IDG Partnership Deck (Lite) - 14.08.2024.Pdf.”

12 “IDG_GLSD Summary 2023 Evaluation_Final.Pdf,” Google Docs, accessed September 18, 2025,

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mb8u6izZ6AiUjbiwp_9s9msois9Pjo3E/edit?usp=embed_facebook.

13 About — Inner Development Goals.

14 Google Docs, “IDG_GLSD Summary 2023 Evaluation_Final.Pdf.”

15 About — Inner Development Goals.

16 Framework — Inner Development Goals.

17 Framework — Inner Development Goals.

18 Åsa Jarskog, “IDG Immersion LATAM,” Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc., 2025,

www.templetonworldcharity.org/projects-resources/project-database/34955.

19 Framework — Inner Development Goals.

20 Framework — Inner Development Goals.

21 Framework — Inner Development Goals.

22 Framework — Inner Development Goals.

23 Suzette Brémault-Phillips et al., “Forgiveness: A key component of healing from moral injury?,”

Frontiers in Psychiatry 13 (July 2022): 906945, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.906945; Oliver

Balch, “Can the Inner Development Goals help us create a more sustainable future?,” Positive News, February 6, 2024, www.positive.news/society/can-the-inner-development-goals-help-us-create-a-more-sustainable-future/.