What are Transformative Intervention Mixes (TIMs)?
Transformative Intervention Mixes (TIMs) are a way of understanding how meaningful and lasting change emerges not from single policies or initiatives, but from combinations of different types of interventions that interact with one another.
Rather than analysing tools in isolation, TIMs focus on how intervention components work together across social, material and institutional dimensions, and how these interactions shape transformation over time.
In the Care‑Full cases, TIMs components may include:
- Regulatory – laws, rules or formal requirements that define what is allowed or prohibited.
- Market‑based economic – incentives or disincentives (such as subsidies, prices or payments) that shape behaviour through economic signals.
- Voluntary, advisory or educational – initiatives that support learning, capacity‑building or self‑organisation without coercion.
- Social norms – interventions that influence shared expectations of what is normal or appropriate behaviour.
- Emotional appeal – approaches that motivate action by activating emotions such as care, pride, fear or hope.
- Choice architecture – ways of structuring decisions (defaults, framing, visibility) without restricting choice.
- Technology – tools, platforms or infrastructures that enable or constrain what people can do.
- Knowledge – the production, framing or circulation of information, evidence and understanding.
- Biophysical resources – interventions that alter access to, availability or condition of natural or material resources.
- Other – context‑specific mechanisms that do not fit neatly into the categories above.
These components are analysed in relation to the three spheres of transformation:
- Personal (values, beliefs, meanings and motivations),
- Practical (practices, behaviours, technologies and systems), and
- Political (rules, governance arrangements and power relations).
The TIMs approach helps reveal synergies, gaps and tensions within intervention mixes, supporting reflection on how interventions might be aligned to enable transformation that is more durable, systemic and context‑sensitive.
For a fuller explanation of the TIMs framework and its methodological foundations, see the DAISY project’s Deliverable Report (D3.1): TIMs – Transformative Intervention Mixes Framework.