Reflecting on Paradox in Regional Development Ecosystems

It's Impossible Astronaut Day. This is a “holiday” celebrating a particularly mind-bending episode of Doctor Who. The story begins with an astronaut who emerges from a lake and kills the Doctor—the show’s time-traveling protagonist—only for him to reappear minutes later, very much alive. What follows is a web of secrets, memory gaps, and looping timelines, all orbiting a single question: How do you solve a problem when it’s woven into the fabric of reality itself?

Because of the way my brain works, this got me thinking about the work of regional development. The work we do to build stronger innovation ecosystems, healthier communities, and more resilient economies often resists tidy timelines and linear logic. Just when we think we’ve “solved” something, the challenge reemerges—maybe wearing a different helmet, maybe with a different astronaut inside.

Let’s talk about paradox—and why learning to live with it is one of the most important skills in regional ecosystem building.

Paradox ≠ Problem

A paradox is different from a contradiction or a problem. It’s a both/and tension—two truths that seem to pull in opposite directions but are both necessary.

In regional development, we live in paradoxes all the time:

• We must act quickly, but meaningful change is slow and generational.

• We need to focus our strategies, but also be inclusive and participatory.

• We must lead boldly, while also sharing ownership and power.

• We are asked to align efforts, while also adapting to constant change.

These aren’t things to fix. They’re realities to navigate. And pretending they’re just technical problems leads us into loops we can’t escape.

Examples You Might Recognize

Think about how these paradoxes show up in your work:

• A university often plays a dominant role in its region—but must do so without overshadowing community voices.

• Philanthropic and public funders want outcomes—but also ask for innovation, which inherently resists predictability.

• A region needs to tell a unified and compelling story—but economic development work is often a messy “work in progress.”

• Ecosystem builders are tasked with coordinating across sectors—but the systems and culture of these sectors weren’t built to speak the same language.

This is why strategy documents so often gather dust: they are premised on a world of shared assumptions and clear, agreed upon inputs and outputs. In reality, we’re dancing in a space where what’s true likely depends on where you stand—and when.Title

So What Do We Do With Paradox?

If you’re stuck in a loop, it doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It might mean you’ve discovered a paradox. Here are a few ways to approach it:

• Name it. Just identifying a paradox can reduce frustration and surface new ways forward.

• Visualize the tension. Use polarity maps or diagrams to show how both sides of the paradox support the system.

• Co-create strategy across difference. Bring in multiple perspectives—not to collapse the paradox, but to hold it more fully.

• Experiment, reflect, adapt. The way through is often not a single solution, but a rhythm of trying, learning, and adjusting.

Paradox becomes livable when we shift from fixing to facilitating.

A Final Thought From Behind the Astronaut’s Visor

In The Impossible Astronaut, the characters are up against enemies (ominously named the Silence) they literally can’t remember seeing. To fight back, they start marking their own skin every time they encounter one. It’s a strange but powerful gesture: We may forget the moment—but we won’t forget that it happened.

In ecosystem building, paradox can be like that. It’s easy to lose track of the tensions when every fire you put out seems to reveal another you have to attend to. But what if we marked the paradoxes we live in—named them, reflected on them, and shared them with our ecosystem partners?

If we did, maybe we’d stop trying to escape the loops and start moving through them—with more grace, more clarity, and more trust.