What is shapership?
A word, a concept,
and a practice.
Shapership is a word, a concept and a practice. It brings together « to shape » — to give form, as one shapes a diamond — and « ship » in the sense of a particular skill, as in craftsmanship.
With Shapership, Aline Frankfort and Jean-Louis Baudoin offer a simple, joyful and powerful practice of strategic creativity that helps people, teams, organisations and communities change their mental maps — not just their course.
Their work makes those mental maps visible — patterns of thought, dominant narratives, imaginaries and assumptions — that shape our choices and keep our actions locked inside the same landscapes.
By making those maps visible, Shapership reopens the field of possibilities and helps other futures become visible, desirable, shareable and actionable. It works not on reality as it appears, but on the stories, perceptions and paradigms beneath appearances — the invisible structures that organise what people take for granted.
« You never change things by fighting the existing Reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. »
Shapership is both deeply practical and deeply transformative: it does not only help people solve problems. It helps them see differently, recover movement, and shape reality more consciously.
It supports a true paradigm shift: from « as usual » approaches to approaches « as the world needs ». Its strength lies in bringing Strategy, Foresight, Imagination and Radical Creativity into dialogue.
Why
The world out there
seems to be going MAD.
The way we live on this planet is leading us to Massive Assured Destruction.
MAD Land names the worlds, systems, habits of thought and dominant narratives that sustain this trajectory. NO MAD Land points toward Mutually Assisted Development — worlds made possible by wisdom, imagination, freedom, courage, compassion and more life-giving ways of being together.
This is not only a crisis of systems. It is also:
- a crisis of perception — the inability to see an emerging reality because we remain locked inside obsolete assumptions
- a crisis of imagination — the inability to open transformative visions that could guide action in a new paradigm
Very often, even when people know the world they no longer want, they still struggle to imagine a viable and desirable future that is truly different from the present. Without that opening, even intelligent and committed people keep reproducing the same S.O.S. — Same Old Solutions within the same obsolete paradigm.
How can we support the conscious and intentional paradigm shift from MAD Land to NO MAD Land?
Shapership begins with a simple and radical intuition: if we recover the freedom to change our point of view, we recover movement. And if we recover movement, we can help shift from MAD Land to NO MAD Land.
It helps us get out of the unimaginable with imagination. It is an invitation to purpose-driven citizens and decision-makers to become not spectators, victims or murderers of the future, but Architects of the Futures — better still, Activists of the Future(s), fully aware of their power and freedom to act on futures here and now.
how
Shifts in Minds
for Shifts in Action.
This is our core expertise.
We work at the root level of transformation: mental maps. Our approach combines Strategy, Foresight, Imagination and Radical Creativity to help people:
This is not only a crisis of systems. It is also:
- question routine thinking and break free from old boxes
- imagine and articulate transformative possibilities
- make the transition visible and actionable
- regain the power and freedom to act on futures, here and now
This is not creativity to decorate reality.
It is creativity to open possibilities.
Because our mental maps are not the landscape — they define how we shape it. But they are often invisible to us. We are like fish in water: we do not see the sea of taken-for-granted ideas and orthodoxies we are swimming in. Said differently, we are like the prisoners of Plato's cave.
This is why Shapership begins by making those maps visible:
- opening strategic imagination
- widening the geography of possibilities
- and creating the conditions for new meanings, new choices and new forms of action
At the heart of the practice lies the Altitude Attitude: the capacity to see the world as it is and as it could be at the same time — not to escape reality, but to face it more lucidly, more creatively, more courageously and sometimes more radically.
This is Shapership as the Fosbury Flop of the Mind: a conscious and intentional paradigm shift from Business as usual to Business as the world needs.
what
Five practical vehicles
to move from MAD Land
to NO MAD Land.
Shapership takes form through a set of practical vehicles. These are concrete formats, methods and experiences that help people move from MAD Land to NO MAD Land. They include:
MAD Land names the worlds, systems, habits of thought and dominant narratives that sustain this trajectory. NO MAD Land points toward Mutually Assisted Development — worlds made possible by wisdom, imagination, freedom, courage, compassion and more life-giving ways of being together.
This is not only a crisis of systems. It is also:
- aAdWise — strategic Futuring, narrative and creative consultancy
- The Shapership Game — new points of view to shape the Future(s) every day
- Civic Imagination — pop-up thinking spaces for world building
- The Shapership Academi — education as the practice of freedom
- Narrative Therapy — making preferred futures visible
Talks, workshops, facilitated journeys, salons, game sessions, learning spaces, books and therapeutic conversations are not separate products assembled under one label. They are different ways of practicing the same thing:
- making mental maps visible
- widening the geography of possibilities
- helping other futures become visible, desirable, shareable and actionable
In that sense, Shapership supports a true paradigm shift: from « as usual » approaches to approaches « as the world needs ».
THE 3 DNA — 3 LEVERAGES
Three radical leverages
that animate the practice.
Creative Resistance — the Big No
A lucid refusal of the « already there ». A way of questioning routine thinking, escaping zombie orthodoxies, and refusing the false inevitability of the status quo.
Transformative Vision — the Big Yes
The capacity to imagine and articulate « what could be ». A radically different future aligned with hopes, aspirations, values and dreams. Making visible a world worth desiring.
Anticipative Experimentation — the How
Making the transition visible and actionable. Turning visions into connected initiatives, prototypes and transformative practices. Rehearsing the future before it fully arrives.
the manifesto
« Be careful about the Present you create because it must look like the Future you dream of .»
Shapership is not about polishing the existing world while keeping its deepest assumptions intact.It is about regaining the freedom to:
- see differently
- think differently
- and therefore act differently
It is about refusing the inertia of MAD Land and saying yes to the possibility of NO MAD Land.
It is about helping people and organisations make an intentional paradigm shift: from as usual approaches to approaches as the world needs.
It is about shifting from:
- rigid positions to flexible perspectives
- obedience to creative agency
- repetition to regeneration
- stagnation to imagination
Shapership does not begin with certainty. It begins with a question, a shift, and the courage to look again.
book / further
One ecosystem,
different ways of practicing the same art.
The books, the game, the workshops, the pop-up spaces and the strategic journeys all belong to the same ecosystem.
They are not separate products assembled under one label. They are different ways of practicing the same art:
- to make mental maps visible,
- to open strategic imagination,
- and to shape possible futures — here and now.
