Ecosystem Mapping - Life Itself Collective

What is ecosystem mapping?

New fields and stakeholder ecosystems constantly emerge — sometimes as extensions of existing domains, sometimes as novel convergences of ideas and actors. Whether you are working in technology, social innovation, policy or philanthropy, you may find yourself wanting to make sense of an evolving space that lacks clear structure: to understand who is involved, what ideas are circulating, and how the field is structured.

Ecosystem mapping is a structured approach to understanding, navigating and engaging with an emerging field or ecosystem. It involves:

Identifying key actors — the organizations, people and initiatives that make up the ecosystem
Defining the center — understanding what is distinctive about the field and who sits at its core, rather than trying to impose hard boundaries
Revealing patterns and relationships — how actors relate to one another, where there are gaps, where energy and resources are flowing
Creating shareable representations — maps, directories and analyses that help others navigate the space

A well-executed map creates a foundation for impact: it helps actors within the field see themselves in relation to the whole, coordinate more effectively, and attract the attention of funders, researchers and policymakers.

Why does mapping matter?

Making the ecosystem visible and identifiable

An emerging ecosystem is often invisible — even to its own members. Actors work in isolation, unaware of related efforts, using different terminology to describe overlapping concerns. Mapping gives the ecosystem a coherent identity: what can otherwise appear as a disparate set of actors becomes a visible collective whole. This makes it easier for outside parties — funders, academics, policymakers — to discover and engage with the ecosystem, and helps members understand their position within it.

Increasing coherence and collaboration

Mapping enables actors to connect and collaborate with others doing related work. It helps them situate their activities in a broader context, reducing duplicated effort and improving strategic alignment. As we put it in our first mapping collaboration with Emerge (2021):

"Maps can catalyze coherence. While many social change pioneers are working to counter social fragmentation, ironically, the social change space itself is highly fragmented. This fragmentation leads to a loss of energy, resources and effectiveness."

Supporting field-building

Ecosystem mapping is one of the core tools of field-building — the process of bringing a nascent field into existence. Before a field can grow, it needs to be able to name itself, find its members, and develop shared language and landmarks. Mapping is often how that process begins.

Centers, not boundaries

One of the most important insights from our mapping work is that emerging fields are better understood through their centers than their boundaries. A strict boundary (who's in, who's out) is often impossible to draw and counterproductive to try. Instead, we ask: what is at the core of this field? What are the shared values, practices, and orientations that define membership in a meaningful way?

As Rufus Pollock put it in a 2023 conversation on field-building:

"In the beginning, it's more like centers rather than boundary. The first we do is demarcate them so that we can refer to things, so we can start having conversations about this. There'll be things that are really clearly in the center, and that's what we often identify in the beginning — it's already the centers of this new field, the field that's coming into existence."

The mapping process

Our approach follows an iterative Define → Search → Reflect cycle:

Define — articulate an initial intuition for the center of the field: what kinds of actors are you looking for, and why?
Search — identify and profile organizations against that definition
Reflect — use what you find to refine the center definition, clarify what is truly distinctive, and identify gaps
Iterate — repeat until the map feels coherent: not too broad, not too narrow

Effective mapping also requires qualitative depth. Desk research alone is not enough — interviews with key actors help reveal how the ecosystem understands itself, what its members see as the most important work, and where the field might be heading.

Ecosystem mapping and field-building

Ecosystem mapping is one part of the broader practice of field-building — actively helping a nascent field come into existence. The three core moves of field-building are:

Manifestos — articulating the center clearly enough for others to adopt: shared language, definitions, a statement of what the field is and why it matters
Mappings — identifying who is doing what and how they relate, making the ecosystem visible to itself and to the outside world
Meetings — bringing actors together so they can recognize each other, build relationships, and begin to act as a field

Mapping is usually the first move: you cannot write a compelling manifesto or convene a meaningful meeting without first understanding who is out there and what they are doing.

Our mapping work

Life Itself has been doing ecosystem mapping and field-building for over a decade. Examples of our work:

Second Renaissance Ecosystem Map (2020–ongoing) — mapping the emerging ecosystem of organizations working on paradigmatic social change, inner and outer transformation. ~300+ organizations profiled. With Emerge and the Institute for Integral Studies. Visit the map →
COHERE+ (2022–2025) — EU Erasmus+-funded project mapping 300 organizations across 12 sectors in Europe. Led by Life Itself with Emerge, Ekskäret Foundation, IFIS, and The Hague Center. Explore the directory →
Mapping Responses to the Polycrisis (2022–2023) — prototype directory of 90+ organizations in the Global South responding to the polycrisis, with reflections on what it means to "respond to a polycrisis". Supported by the Omega Resilience Awards, with Cascade Institute and Post Carbon Institute.
Building the Field for Developmental Spaces (2023–2024) — early field-building mapping of deliberately developmental programs for youth and young adults in the US and Europe. With Fetzer Institute, Commonweal, and Ekskäret Foundation.