Justin Hammons is the Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer of The Principle 6 Cooperative, a member-owned digital platform designed to make cooperation among cooperatives easier, smarter, and scalable. A creative strategist with over 25 years of experience helping mission-driven organizations grow through storytelling and innovation, Justin brings both vision and practicality to the cooperative movement.
At GICS 2025, he and his team are showcasing Principle 6 as a live experiment in digital cooperation — demonstrating how technology can turn the 6th Principle into a daily practice that connects cooperatives worldwide.
GICS: What excites you about joining us at GICS 2025, and how can Principle 6 make the most of this opportunity?
Justin Hammons: Honestly, what excites me most is the spirit of this gathering. GICS brings together the kind of people who believe that cooperation isn’t just a business model — it’s a better way to organize the world.
For Principle 6, it’s an incredible chance to show, not just tell, what digital cooperation can look like in action. We’re using this summit as a live laboratory — a place to experiment, learn, and connect with people who are ready to build the future of collaboration together.
GICS: What sparked the creation of Principle 6, and which challenge in the cooperative world are you tackling?
JH: The idea actually started in a conversation with Howard Brodsky, who said something that stuck with me: “Cooperatives are great at collaborating inside their own organizations, but not nearly as good at collaborating with each other.”
That was the spark.
Principle 6 was built to change that — to make cooperation among cooperatives easier, more practical, and more visible. The challenge we’re tackling is simple but massive: how do we take the spirit of cooperation that drives us and scale it globally, using shared tools, data, and technology that the movement actually owns?
GICS: How does Principle 6 put cooperative values into action?
JH: We like to say that Principle 6 is the cooperative principles turned digital.
It’s built as a cooperative itself — owned and governed by its members. Everything we’re building, from our collaboration tools to our AI systems, is designed to reflect cooperative values: transparency, democratic control, concern for community, and education.
But more than that, it’s about living the 6th Principle — cooperation among cooperatives — in a very real way. We’re not talking about it. We’re building the infrastructure that makes it happen.
GICS: How could the International Cooperative Innovation Network and Principle 6 team up to spread and amplify the cooperative model worldwide?
JH: I think we’re two sides of the same coin. The Innovation Network is about ideas, collaboration, and forward-thinking leadership — and Principle can be the platform to share and explore those ideas.
Together, we can connect the “what if” to the “how.” The Network can surface bold, global ideas; Principle 6 can be the digital commons where our collective collaboration can turn them into living projects, shared data, and ongoing communities that keep building momentum long after the summit ends.
Our collaboration could make innovation in the cooperative world not just inspiring, but practical, repeatable and scalable.
GICS: What can participants expect to experience during the live Principle 6 experiment at GICS?
JH: This is not your typical session. There won’t be a long PowerPoint and polite applause.
We’re turning the room into a live laboratory of cooperation. Participants will join one of three digital collaboration groups — focused on Advocacy, Business-to-Business Cooperation, or Enabling Solutions — and they’ll actually use the Principle 6 platform to co-create ideas together.
We’ll test, in real time, the idea of digital collaboration.
It’s fast-paced, participatory, and a little bit experimental — in the best way.
GICS: Looking beyond the Summit, how do you see Principle 6 shaping the future of global cooperation?
JH: If we do this right, Principle 6 can become the connective tissue for the global cooperative movement — a place where knowledge, ideas, and data flow freely among cooperatives everywhere.
I see a future where cooperatives don’t just share values, they share intelligence — where local innovation becomes global learning in real time.
Our goal isn’t to replace the relationships that make this movement special — it’s to strengthen them. To give cooperatives everywhere the tools, visibility, and voice they need to work together and make a bigger impact on the world.
