Movements are humanity’s best-designed perpetual motion machine.

PATTERN5 builds them on purpose, for organizations that want their audiences to carry them.

Reuben Steiger on Movements Podcast

The PATTERN5 icosahedron above the Earth at sunrise, with glowing arcs linking cities across the continents.

The whole and the parts

A movement forms when members add their story to the collective and create shared meaning.

The movement is the whole. The members are the parts. Each story maps to a structure that people can only reach together.

The leader matters less than the first follower. And the unit that matters is small: two to twelve people, meeting often enough to notice how their piece changed the whole.

PATTERN5 does this deliberately for organizations. We find the part of a market that can carry the rest, and we help those people tell their story and see themselves in the goal. Believers become a movement. The movement becomes revenue.

How an engagement runs

  1. Find the part

    We locate the people in your market whose stories can carry everyone else. It is usually a smaller group than you expect.

  2. Gather the stories

    We convene them in groups of two to twelve. Each person writes down what they care about and why they showed up.

  3. Build the whole

    We tie those stories to a goal they can only reach together, then give it rules, rituals and a cadence so it keeps moving after we leave.

Reuben Steiger

Reuben Steiger

Founder and managing partner

Reuben Steiger is a writer and entrepreneur based in Princeton, NJ. Over a 25-year career he has helped found companies like Second Life, forming industries like the Metaverse and Bitcoin. Steiger has also led global innovation for companies such as Interpublic and Omnicom. His current focus is on AI, where he advises a variety of public and private clients on scaling and gaining adoption for world-changing technologies.

Steiger’s writing is devoted to making complex subjects easy to understand and turning serious ideas upside down. He holds a BA from Brown University and collects books about the future.

LinkedIn

Career

  1. 1999OVEN DigitalDesigned the universe in 3D
  2. 2002Wynn ResortsDesign of $2.8B casino
  3. 2004Linden Lab, Second LifeDesign of 1st virtual world
  4. 2006Millions of UsAgency for Nike, Coke and Sony
  5. 2007Virtual GreatsInvented virtual celebrities
  6. 2010IPGDesigned an 8,000 sq ft vision of the future of media
  7. 2011MethodThought leadership for top design firm
  8. 20138 and UpTaught 350 third graders entrepreneurship
  9. 2016PATTERN5Advised on ~$500M worth of exits
  10. 2026The ContrarianWeekly column on AI and democracy