Inner Development Guide
An open-source collection of human qualities, abilities and skills
that help us live meaningful lives in harmony with one another and our planet.
Your guiding map of Inner for Outer Transformation
Our goal with this research is to help individuals, organisations, and communities cultivate the transformational skills needed for sustainable and thriving futures – and to offer a common language that connects personal transformation with systemic transformation.
The Inner Development Guide serves as both a mirror that reflects our inner capacities and a map that guides action for global transformation. Fostering a co-creating culture of inner growth for outer change, we see the guide as a starting point to explore the most helpful approach for the challenges and the context in which you are trying to drive change.
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Deutsch – German | English | Français – French | Italiano – Italian | 日本語  – Japanese | Português Brasileiro – Brazilian Portuguese | Español -Spanish | Svenska – Swedish | Türkçe – TurkishÂ
Can’t find your language or have ideas for improvement? Help us make inner development global by collaborating with your local community to translate and refine the guide.
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The Inner Development Guide is grounded in:
Principle 1: Inner growth is essential for outer change
Inner growth is essential for outer change
What is happening in our world is connected to what is happening inside us and vice versa. We’re part of one system. Thus, without the development of inner capacities, external solutions to our global challenges may be limited, too slow or short-lived.
Principle 2: The power of simple and shared language
The power of simple and shared language
We see language as a bridge to make the wisdom of inner development accessible to all. Through simple, human language, we invite reflection and dialogue – not just among researchers and professionals but across many communities, cultures, and disciplines.
Principle 3: Inner does not equal individual
Inner does not equal individual
None of us exist by ourselves. We see inner development as a relational and systemic process, unfolding in the spaces between ourselves and the world. It’s a dynamic, often messy process of learning and becoming.
Principle 4: Inner development is not a fixed framework to follow but a living guide
Inner development is not a fixed framework to follow but a living guide
Inner development guide does not claim to be a definitive truth. Instead, it is an open, curious, and light map, a guide for an exciting journey. It is a collective work in progress, intended to learn and grow alongside the individuals, organizations, and communities who engage with it.
How The Guide was Co-Created
The Inner Development Guide is the result of a two year long global research co-creation, guided by a central question: What qualities, abilities, and skills do we need to develop to build a sustainable future for people and planet?
Through surveys, focus groups, and dialogue, we gathered responses from 20.000 voices around the world – across cultures, disciplines, and contexts. With the involvement of many researchers, the responses were analysed and the new guide was co-created, representing the world’s collective understanding of some of the inner skills needed to create sustainable societies.Â
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The Guide represents the world’s collective understanding of the inner skills needed to create sustainable societies. It demonstrates that inclusive, participatory processes are essential for building shared resources that resonate across cultures and generations.
Our Journey from Framework to Guide
Integrating the Inner Development Guide
The IDG Foundation has co-creation at its center, with ongoing development and input from academic partners, researchers, and teachers worldwide. The IDG Guide has been used in different research projects and contexts, integrated into higher education curricula and classroom activities, and invites contributions from diverse stakeholders.
Multinational corporations like IKEA, SAP, and Volvo are among the collaborating partners to incorporate the IDG Guide into their organisations and more intentionally work on the inner skills needed for sustainable change within the company. IDG has more than 50 global corporate and institutional partners.
A vibrant global community of hubs, networks, ambassadors and practitioners is advocating for and bringing the IDG Guide to life, united by the intention to grow inner capacities for outer change. These grassroots efforts flourish with light support from the IDG Foundation, now spanning 850+ hubs in 95+ countries.
Collaborative efforts with IDG Country Centres and a Global Leadership for Sustainable Development (GLSD) programme have been initiated to develop and strengthen leadership capacities across all sectors, ensuring a more integrated approach to sustainable development that includes both external and inner dimensions.
Launched in autumn 2024, the IDG Ambassador Programme has already trained over 325 ambassadors through immersive in-person and online experiences. The programme cultivates skilled facilitators, coaches, change makers and leaders who advocate for and bring the IDGs into life worldwide.
Launch of IDG Guide
The IDG Guide was officially launched at the IDG Summit 2025, bringing together our global community to celebrate this important milestone.Â
Clarifying Misconceptions
People engage with the Inner Development Guide in different ways, and it naturally sparks questions and critiques. Here are a few points that frequently come up, with brief explanations to support deeper understanding.
The Inner Development Guide maps the inner skills, qualities, and capacities that matter the most for building a sustainable future – identified through a co-creative process of researchers across regions, cultures, and languages.
Research and lived experience show that human inner capabilities, wellbeing, and determination are what give us agency and intention to make change real.
Today’s polycrisis traces back to disconnection itself: from ourselves, each other and nature. These patterns shape our mindsets, behaviours, cultures, and institutions.
The guide serves as a gateway into this expansive field, not a stand-alone tool. It is grounded in a wider conceptual and theoretical understanding that connects inner (individual and collective) with outer (behavioral and systemic) dimensions of change. Without this integrative approach, the guide cannot fulfill its intended purpose of addressing the root causes of today’s interconnected challenges.
The Guide’s simplicity is a design principle, both keeping it easy to communicate and relatively ‘naked’ or decontextualised, ready to be re-contextualised within specific training or personal development approaches…
The strength of the IDG Guide lies in its flexibility. While it offers a map for inner growth, it does not prescribe a one-size-fits-all approach, nor does it represent a training curriculum in itself.
This adaptability allows it to be tailored to diverse cultural and societal contexts, ensuring its relevance across different settings.
We recognise the relationship between individual and collective skills and qualities.
The 25 capacities are often properties of systems rather than individuals, and we believe the guide can be used as a starting point for exploring both individual and collective skills and qualities and how culture, organisations and institutions can support the development needed.
By recognising its limitations and continuously refining the guide in response to feedback, the IDG Guide can become an increasingly robust and globally transferable tool in the quest for a sustainable and equitable future.
While guide like the SDGs provide quantifiable targets, the IDG Guide’s emphasis on inner qualities and personal growth can be seen as less tangible.
How does one measure self- awareness or empathy without depending on self-reports? Can such intangible goals be universally applied, given the diverse cultural and societal contexts across the globe?
Such questions continue to be addressed through discourse and research, and it is essential to recognise that personal growth may manifest differently across cultures.
