Whether simulating irregular warfare or modelling a pandemic, conceptual instruments can have considerable practical utility. By harnessing the work of wargamers and social network theorists, academics, and technologists, the Transnational Crisis Project maintains the intellectual capacity and practical approach necessary to construct next generation strategic security models, games, and concepts designed to assist decisionmakers and other stakeholders in understanding threats and the environment within which counter-strategies may operate. Next generation thinking with a pragmatic, real-world human network designed to translate on-the-ground realities to strategic conceptual modelling.