Visualize, Connect, and Exchange

Sprout Demo

Sprout (with watermarks)

What is Sprout?

Sprout, is an interactive ecosystem viewer designed to streamline the redistribution of resources among stakeholders through a model inspired by barter and exchange.

It offers dynamic, zoomable views tailored to different types of actors, providing full visibility into the ecosystem’s activity, history, and interconnections.

Sprout facilitates the seamless reallocation of financial, human, and infrastructural resources in response to real-time signals of need or opportunity. By aligning available assets with emerging demands, it helps ensure that resources are used where they can deliver the greatest collective impact — maximising the efficiency of funding, knowledge, and talent across the system.

In our particular context that we explored to prototype Sprout, was the point of view of a company called BlueWave Initiative. One of their projects was underperforming but they did not know how to locate the issue or what exactly the problem was. An additional context which we explored was the perspective of a curious investor who was viewing BlueWave’s Initiatives company dashboard, seeing whether the investment and impact opportunity was beneficial to them.

Moment - Seeding

What if endings weren't dead ends, but the most fertile starting points in the system.

In nature, nothing really ends - it transforms. Projects, like organisms, must be allowed to die, decay, and seed again. That is how ecosystems stay alive.

In natural ecosystems, seeds carry the potential for regeneration. They emerge when a plant completes its life cycle — not as an end, but as the beginning of something new.

In this spirit, seeding refers to the strategic redirection of value when a project reduces activity, shifts focus, or fades out. Rather than allowing this value to disappear, Sprout captures its remaining knowledge, resources, and intent, and plants them where new growth can happen.

User Interface

First, it introduces a new model of shared economy. Here, value extends beyond capital: experience, skills, capabilities, and infrastructure are all treated as assets. These can be exchanged on an equal, decentralized basis, where one actor’s excess or bottleneck becomes another’s breakthrough — enabling mutual benefit through resource fluidity.

Second, Sprout priorities radical transparency. Every partnership, interaction, and stakeholder touchpoint is made visible at every level of the ecosystem. This openness fosters trust, accountability, and informed decision-making, helping the ecosystem stay adaptive and resilient over time.

Screens Summary

Design Principles Followed

Our Process

With our insights in mind, we crafted our How Might We statement and started brainstorming, guided by TAC's four principles from nature - mutualism, abundance, regeneration, and proximity.

How might we redirect knowledge and capabilities to other zones so that resources can be cross-pollinated in an open and public way through digital tools?

We focused on mutualism and abundance as our design “north stars.” Our aim was to build digital infrastructure that fosters mutual benefit, resource exchange, and intelligent use of existing assets.

Two key features emerged:

Mesh Chain Communication (Mutualism)

Communication flows through all connected nodes, ensuring transparency and shared value for every stakeholder along the chain.

Signal Intelligence (Abundance)

Signals — representing needs, gaps, or opportunities — are identified and managed by the system’s intelligence. These signals guide resource allocation, ensure trust and governance, and attract the right stakeholders to create rich collaboration zones.

In essence, we wanted our solution to act as a continuous intelligence layer, dynamically redistributing resources while keeping the ecosystem responsive and thriving.

Co-created with

Semi Hakim

Co-Founder at Kök Projekt

Yann LeMoël

Founder of the Living Labs Federation

Javier Castro

Ecosystem Manager at TAC

J. J. Gonzalez

Co-Chief of Staff at Alejandrìa

Insight 1

Cause based hubs will only work amongst entrepreneurial partnerships if there is trust built into the system. This can be achieved through shared based protocols/frameworks which establish governance within the ecosystem.

“So there's a trust If you build that into a digital infrastructure You need to still be able to validate and potentially put some governance”

— Yann Lemoël

Insight 2

Signalling can be flawed depending on what it is being based off / tuned to. So the type + intensity of signal needs to be passed through a set of ecosystem principles that allow the right redistribution of resources across all players.

" It's called Parkinson's Law. It's this perverse system where the more money they've raised, the more they are worth"

— Semi Hakim

Insight 3

Visibility of history, activity, and stakeholder relations is crucial to foster trust between players. A high level of transparency supports players learning from each other and becoming better for the future.

“ What I would love to know is where this investment will go actually. So the transparency is really crucial”

— Javier Castro