Strategic designers Steven Sullivan and Christian Verlaan launch House of Complexity to help organisations rethink change
Strategic designers Steven Sullivan and Christian Verlaan have teamed to launch House of Complexity, a new Australian initiative focused on helping organisations navigate complexity and drive new forms of innovation, has launched today.
House of Complexity was created in response to a growing recognition that many organisational and societal challenges behave less like machines and more like living systems. In a world still dominated by linear planning and management models, the initiative builds the capabilities to work effectively in uncertain, interconnected environments, from organisational transformation to social systems, AI and climate transitions.
Founded by strategic designers Steven Sullivan and Christian Verlaan, House of Complexity operates through three connected arms: a design studio focused on strategy, developing new business and service models, designing digital products, and building innovation capability; an institute featuring public lectures, courses and research on complexity and organisational practice; and ventures, which experiments with new tools and models emerging from complexity thinking. Together they build capacity for navigating complex challenges across business, government and the social sector.
“In a complex world, we cannot keep using ways of thinking designed for simpler conditions,” said Sullivan. “The challenges organisations face today do not sit neatly inside a single perspective. By bringing together insights from science, philosophy, design and lived experience, we develop new ways to think, design and act within complex systems.”
Sullivan was previously director and innovation consultant at the Deepend Group’s strategic design and innovation studio, How To Impact. He has led strategy, innovation projects, accelerators and labs for clients such as Google, Optus, ING, KFC, DNSW, Uniting, ReachOut, BaptistCare and the Australian Medical Association. He also teaches future thinking and develops enterprise learning programs at UTS Transdisciplinary School.
Adds Sullivan: “Complex systems thinking helps organisations see how relationships, feedback, history and power shape what becomes possible. By connecting knowledge across different fields, we can open up new ways of understanding and responding to challenges that would not emerge from any single field alone.”
Verlaan is a product designer and systems thinker with over a decade of experience leading design, strategy and cross-functional delivery. Before co-founding House of Complexity, he was head of design at two high-growth SaaS companies, Ortto and Publishing.com, where he shaped product vision, design systems and user experience at scale. His work bridges design, technology and organisational thinking, creating elegant systems that make the complex feel navigable and the essential, visible.
House of Complexity will formally launch with a free conference in Sydney on 16 April, bringing together scientists, philosophers, designers, health practitioners, artists and organisational leaders for a series of conversations exploring how complexity thinking can reshape organisational practice.
Speakers include leaders and thinkers from The Smith Family, QLD Health, CSIRO, Prevention United, UTS, UNSW, USYD, and Macquarie University. Sessions will explore why complex systems thinking matters now; how to design conditions for change rather than control outcomes; new models of cognition and organisational sensemaking; how ideas from fields such as science, philosophy and the arts can be recombined; and why resisting the obvious can unlock new forms of creativity and change.
The event is designed to foster dialogue across disciplines and sectors, bringing together practitioners, researchers, policymakers and creative thinkers interested in new ways of working with complexity. It will feature a series of live video podcast style panel conversations, streamed online with an in person audience in Sydney.
House of Complexity is a design studio and institute for applied complexity based in Sydney. It brings together insights from natural and social science, philosophy, design, creative practice and lived experience to help organisations understand and respond to complex challenges. The initiative aims to advance knowledge and practice for a complex world through research, public dialogue, education and applied work with organisations. Visit the website.
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