How we work

AI has improved the speed and accuracy with which we work, but it is the unique human skill sets available at Genesis that differentiates our offerings.

Genesis Analytics is a truly 21st-century consultancy that blends human engagement and technology. Critical to unlocking value at Genesis is the ability to convince people to act, as well as facilitating enabling environments for them to enact change. This requires a complex set of human skills to build coalitions, ecosystems, networks and a relationship-based approach to getting people to act intentionally on joint solutions.

We successfully adopt three models of human engagement: Joint Solutioning, Peer Learning and Ecosystem Facilitation.

Genesis uses a human-centred problem-solving approach called Joint Solutions.

It has been developed for tackling complex, wicked problems where parts of the solution to the problem lie with different groups. The Joint Solutions philosophy has four core values:

Joint Solutions brings together a diverse range of experiences, fostering a collaborative environment where multiple perspectives are considered. We had the task of bringing a wide range of conflicting stakeholders together to look for green options for South Africa’s ageing coal power stations.

We have emphasized the importance of complementing group-based problem-solving efforts with conducting thorough analyses when we developed a winning strategy for deepening financial markets in Uganda or building the investment case for early childhood development in Burundi.

Joint Solutions has proved instrumental to generating innovative solutions to complex problems when we brought together a multi-disciplinary, public-private team to advise the South Africa Government on how to exit the first lockdown during the Covid pandemic of 2020.

Genesis champions Peer Learning as an alternative to traditional capacity-building and knowledge-sharing solutions

We facilitate interpersonal exchanges between peers, offering context-specific solutions that are experientially informed. Purposeful harnessing and sharing of social capital is the crux of our approach, and one which requires complex human understanding, networking and engagement.

Working in and from the Young World, Genesis believes that Peer Learning empowers solutioning from within and inherently makes learning more relatable. It also moves beyond knowledge to know-how. The sharers of information are part of the same ecosystem as those who consume it, and the role of sharer and consumer remains interchangeable. This fluidity, coupled with a neutral and experienced facilitator such as Genesis, downplays any power differentials between parties and encourages equality in solutioning.

The South-South Learning Network is pioneering new ways to shift traditional power imbalances by facilitating linkages and learning between 15 African countries heavily burdened by HIV to co-develop and share best practices to prevent HIV infections according to UNAIDS's 5 HIV prevention pillars.

Ecosystem Facilitation stands at the core of Genesis’ distinctive approach.

We are specialists in identifying areas of latent economic or social opportunity that feature a set of stakeholders with common interests in getting the problems solved. We excel at bringing these stakeholders together and “get things done”. 

We work in domains with complex and intersecting challenges — such as generating youth employment at scale or significantly improving early childhood development outcomes — where we play an ecosystem facilitator role.

For example, we facilitated, with UNFPA Asia Pacific Regional Office, a meeting of policymakers and experts from the Asia-Pacific region to increase understanding on how investing in family planning, maternal health, and ending gender-based violence contributes towards sustainable development and long-term social and economic gains.

We convened the South Africa in the Digital Age (SADA) process,  an urgent multi-stakeholder initiative that developed a forward-looking digital economy strategy to create 500,000 jobs in the next 10 years in globally traded services.