The Institute of Strategic Risk Management (ISRM) is pleased to announce the establishment of the Centre for Strategic Policy (CSP), a new policy centre within the ISRM Centre for the Study of Wicked Problems (CSWP).
The new Centre is being established to address a persistent problem in public policy and corporate strategy: the gap between how national strategies and policies are formulated and how they are implemented in the communities and organisations where they are meant to take effect. The CSP’s guiding principle is National Strategy, Local Impact.
The Centre’s purpose is to integrate academic, institutional and practitioner approaches to strategic policy, bringing rigorous research, institutional experience and practical experience into a single conversation, and to close the distance between strategy formulation and effective local implementation. It is conceived as a means of converting research on complex and wicked problems into practical frameworks, tools and governance approaches that officials, corporate leaders and communities can use.
To that end, the Centre will work to:
- facilitate interdisciplinary research, dialogue and collaboration among academics, policymakers, corporate leaders and community stakeholders;
- challenge and evolve existing paradigms in national policy making and corporate risk management by embedding complexity, adaptability and local context into strategic frameworks;
- generate actionable, evidence-based recommendations that inform sustainable governance and organisational resilience.
Central to the Centre’s work will be the development of a new, adaptive policy framework that treats policy not as a fixed document but as a living system to be monitored, tested and adjusted. The framework is something the Centre will build towards rather than something it begins with, and it starts from three propositions: complexity is normal, feedback matters, and adaptation is essential.
The Centre’s first undertaking will be a twelve month programme to develop the framework, working in three phases: scoping and insight, framework design, and validation and evaluation. The programme is intended to culminate in a Dynamic Policy Summit in 2027.
The Centre introduced itself and its intended programme of work at an initial webinar event on Thursday 2 July 2026, which brought together an international panel to discuss what it takes to make strategy work when it reaches the ground.
We invite you to join us and to take part in shaping the Centre for Strategic Policy. To learn more, to register your interest in its Steering Group, or to discuss participation in its programmes, contact us at info@cswp.theisrm.org
