Our founder

Ed Morrison is the architect behind Strategic Doing — a discipline shaped by decades spent helping regions, universities, nonprofits, and organisations tackle challenges that traditional planning simply couldn’t handle.

Long before collaboration became a buzzword, Ed was working in the real world of economic development, watching communities struggle with complexity, limited resources, and siloed leadership. He saw firsthand that progress didn’t come from big plans or grand speeches. It came from small steps, shared commitments, and networks of people who trusted each other enough to try something new.

That insight became the seed of Strategic Doing.

To understand why some collaborations thrive while others stall, Ed completed a PhD in economics that brought together research from psychology, leadership, systems thinking, innovation, complexity economics, and network theory. His dissertation explains how and why the ten skills of Strategic Doing actually work — not just in theory, but in practice.

But Ed has never been an ivory-tower thinker. His work has always lived in what Donald Schön called the “swampy lowlands” — the messy, human spaces where people come together to solve real problems. Over the years, he has coached hundreds of leaders, built global networks of practitioners, and helped communities design practical paths forward when certainty is impossible.

Today, Ed continues to mentor and teach Strategic Doing around the world, contributing to a growing global movement of people using simple rules and small steps to create meaningful, lasting change.

His belief is disarmingly simple: when people learn how to collaborate with intention, they can build the future they want — together.