Ilan has moved from natural science research to social entrepreneurship to social science research and a synthesis of all three. Over the past decade, his focus has been on understanding processes of societal change toward sustainable futures, including understanding scientific, local, and cultural knowledge co-production for decision-making on common resources; characterizing affective narrative expressions of vision and identity in guiding and motivating collective behavior change; the use of narrative expressions in modeling social dynamics; social mediation of creativity to innovate for social well-being; developing playful, inspiring, and engaging games to help society cope with the challenges of complex global change.