Welcome to the Center for Systems Innovation (CSI), where we are dedicated to make the world a better place through systems thinking and sustainable solutions. I’m Attila Katona, the founder and director, and I’m excited to share our journey with you.
CSI emerged from my academic, consulting, and teaching activities across Europe, Asia, and North America spanning over a decade, where I learned the limitations of ‘business as usual’ approaches to addressing systemic challenges. This solidified my commitment to work with change agents and empower future generations. I firmly believe that encouraging people to think critically, co-create, and look for creative solutions are among the most powerful tools to tackle fundamental sustainability challenges.
Driven by a background in engineering and economics, I focused my PhD on unlocking the transformative potential of nature in cities through clever governance, business, finance and partnership models, which is what led me to collaborate with my colleagues at the Central European University to establish PHYSI, an urban consulting, modeling and software company. Additionally, I had the privilege of working for intergovernmental organizations like the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe, EIT Climate-KIC, and various UN and EU bodies, lead youth organisations, teach at universities from Mongolia to Estonia, dive coral reefs, build canadian first nations inukshuks, cross deserts, and get to know wonderful people along the way.
My goal with CSI is to share my professional learnings from this journey. I aim to scale systems approaches by forging partnerships and providing people with the necessary knowledge to make a positive impact. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, intrapreneur, policymaker, expert, student, teacher, or simply an enthusiast – we are here to support you.
"We just cannot solve problems with the same thinking that we used when we created them."
About the organization
"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn."
– XUN KUANG
The Center for Systems Innovation (CSI) is an educational and consulting company specializing in systems methods and tools for sustainable development governance, urban transformation, and circular economy. We support private sector transformation, community engagement, policy experiments, school work, and the implementation of innovative ideas, relying on solid evidence, monitoring, and broad stakeholder participation to navigate complexity. In addition, we undertake quality assurance of international educational projects, engage in EU-funded research, and develop systems-based role-playing games, simulation tools, workshops, and guides to make systems education in schools, universities, and professional settings engaging and understandable.
While CSI is based in Hungary and primarily active in the EU, our work extends far to countries such as Mongolia, the Philippines, India, Singapore, China, Ukraine, untangling and making sense of some of the most complex problems in the world, where much is at stake. Despite our global reach, we maintain strong connections in the Hungarian civil sector, as well as academic, talent development, and business arenas, cultivated over a decade of local engagement.
We believe that global challenges such as climate change, ecosystem degradation, resource shortages and structural waste are symptoms of a lack of systems perspective in governance. While some are making slow, sporadic, incremental changes, there is a substantial gap between the promise of sustainable solutions, and actual uptake – our challenges are complex, embedded, ambiguous, difficult, and do not give in easily to shiny, just-so hotfixes. There is a burning need for ways to tackle complexity with systems mindsets, processes, and tools.
Our small, interdisciplinary team includes dedicated part-time interns, mentees, and a vast network of project-based affiliate experts and partners. Guided by systems innovation, we help individuals and organizations make sense of, navigate, and untangle complex challenges within intricate systems, and co-develop better solutions. If you wish to collaborate with us, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
CSI is legally registered as Systems Innovation Center Kft. in Hungary, 1106 Budapest, Gyakorló utca 18, fsz. 3., under ID 01-09-405895 and VAT HU32085879 since 2022. Its predecessor has been a legal entity since 2013 (license 8445040049, HU67819001).