WILD Paper2026
What The System Cannot See: How Human Capability is Formed And Why The Next Phase of the Young People and Work Review Must Learn to See it
Crick, Ferrier, Crichton-Allan & Huang · WILD Learning Sciences CIC
Every complex system depends on human infrastructure– the one part of the system no one measures.
26 years
peer-reviewed research
100,000+
individuals measured
RMSEA 0.035
model fit
190+
organisations
A research and advisory body for human infrastructure.
WILD produces the authority – rigorous and evidenced – to change how governments, regulators and major programmes build the human infrastructure that determines whether complex systems can deliver.
managed with discipline
heavily invested in
Human infrastructure
no owner, no instrument
Three things make WILD different
01
A research body, first
We lead with a published record, not a service offer.
02
Measured to engineering standard
The human infrastructure that determines whether a programme delivers deserves the same rigour as physical and cyber systems. WILD measures it with a validated instrument.
03
One capacity, three levels
The same human capacity runs from the individual through the team to the whole system – it isn't a layer inside the system, it's what makes the system deliver. WILD measures, designs for and develops it at all three levels and reads them together.
Featured research
View all →WILD Paper2026
The Reckoning That Never Comes: Why Formation, Not Another Framework, Is What Breaks the Pattern of British Institutional Failure
Victoria Ferrier · WILD Learning Sciences CIC
Peer-reviewed2021
Framing Professional Learning Analytics as Reframing Oneself
Buckingham-Shum, Littlejohn, Kitto & Crick · IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies
Peer-reviewed2020
Becoming a Resilient Organisation: Integrating People and Practice in Infrastructure Services
Crick & Bentley · International Journal of Sustainable Engineering
Peer-reviewed2016
Learning Journeys And Infrastructure Services: A Game Changer For Effectiveness
Crick, Huang, Godfrey, Taylor & Carhart · University of Bristol / University of Technology, Sydney
Peer-reviewed2015
Developing Resilient Agency in Learning: The Internal Structure of Learning Power
Deakin Crick, Huang, Ahmed Shafi & Goldspink · British Journal of Educational Studies, 63(2), 121–160
The Science
Where capacity becomes change.
Between the person and the whole system sits the work of transformation. Iris makes the gap visible; closing it is a discipline of its own. WILD does that through improvement science: the evidence-led method for system change proven over decades in healthcare and education, in the Carnegie networked-improvement tradition of Anthony Bryk. We apply it; we don't claim it. What is ours is the integration: CLARA's measured capacity becomes the live input both Iris and the method work on, so change in individuals builds into change across the whole system.
Iris reads whether a system can keep delivering.
Iris models any large, purposive endeavour - an infrastructure programme, a utility, a government initiative - as a hierarchy built down from its purpose, then propagates the evidence back up. Read downward, it asks whether the system is achieving what it exists to do, and what drives that. Read upward, it asks whether the people inside it hold the experience, competence and adaptive capacity to keep delivering.
The Italian flag: green for supporting evidence, red for challenging, white for genuine uncertainty: the not-knowing leadership most needs to see, and most often ignores.
CLARA measures eight dimensions of human adaptive capacity.
CLARA - Crick Learning for Resilient Agency - is a psychometrically validated diagnostic built on Professor Ruth Deakin Crick's twenty-six years of research. It does not measure what a person did; it measures the capacity they hold to respond wisely to conditions that have not yet arrived - a reading of the future, not a report on the past.
RMSEA 0.035
model fit
Peer-reviewed
published record
8 dimensions
of adaptive capacity
6 languages
cross-validated
CuriosityCollaborationCreativityBelongingSense-makingOpenness to changeHope & optimismMindful agency
Where we work
Infrastructure & utilities
Measuring human resilience across major programmes, supply chains and the communities they serve.
Government & policy
Evidence that shifts how governments think about adaptive capacity and resilient systems.
Organisations
Leadership, culture and teams that can learn and adapt under sustained pressure.
Education & communities
Learning and professional development that builds the adaptive capacity to navigate complexity.
Cited in policy and infrastructure. Proven in delivery.
Cabinet Office, advisoryInstitution of Civil EngineersUKCRICProject 13 enterprise deliveryCentre for Whole of Society ResilienceThe Built Environment Connective
Hunter Water, New South Wales
34%
Leakage down
15%
Reduction in consumption, over 3 years
The largest year-on-year drop of any urban utility in the country, against a comparable utility elsewhere in Australia that saw consumption rise over the same period. (National Performance Report 2019–20: Urban Water Utilities)
Governance
WILD Learning Sciences CIC holds the intellectual property and research base under statutory asset lock.
People
Founder & Research Director
Prof. Ruth Deakin Crick
Built the twenty-six-year body of research behind CLARA. Co-founder Centre for Whole of Society Resilience.
Chief Executive
Victoria Ferrier
Leads WILD's strategy and its commercial and institutional partnerships. Experience across global corporates, investment-backed firms and mission-led organisations.
Chair
Dr Jim Bentley
Thirty years of global leadership in water and infrastructure. Led Hunter Water's transformation into a learning-driven organisation.
Data Scientist
Dr Shaofu Huang
Leads WILD's analytics work and runs the Learning Journey App in production. Comes from a background in social science research and behavioural modelling.
Director
Neil Cullen
Experienced software developer and leader of education technology firms.
Director
Dr Steven Barr
Chartered engineer with over 35 years of experience in systems architecting and designing, making and the agile implementation of high-tech products and services in manufacturing and the built environment.