The newly developed 'pattern language of commoning' is founded by the works of the architect Alexander as 'inventor' of pattern languages (Alexander 1999; Alexan-der 2004), the Nobel laureate and economist Elinor Ostrom (1990) and by Helfrich & Bollier (2020). In search of the basic building blocks for development and design, Alexander (1999, p. 73) conceived of pattern language as a 'creative program' in architecture and here sought patterns for conceptualizing, planning, and designing in process (Alexander 2004 p. 177). Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom (1990) empirically analyzed the problems of overexploitation of the commons, i.e., common resources such as air, earth, water through, for example, overfishing of the oceans. In her award-winning work 'Governing the Commons' (Ostrom 1990), she proposes eight design principles of shaping ('governance') the global commons (Ostrom (1990). These refer to process patterns such as dealing with boundaries, rules and communal decisions, as well as control of rule violations and graduated sanctions, conflict resolution mechanisms, recognition of rights and the establish-ment of polycentric governance. Helfrich & Bollier (2020) and Helfrich & Petzold (2021) transferred and expanded these patterns into a 33-part MdC picture card set. As a 'pattern language of commoning' this aims at a) social communication, b) self-organization and c) sustainable management. The aesthetic artifact aims to promote a new frame of reference between people and people and the world (Helfrich & Bol-lier, 2020: 78), it aims to promote 'meta-communication' for sustainability innovation, collective understanding and the development of a common good attitude and eth-ics (Helfrich & Petzold 2021). What are the ethics, practices and relations supported by the problem-solving pat-terns (Leitner 2015: 33)? In exploring these objectives for sustainability-oriented in-novation process research, we see, that the hypothesis character of the patterns (Alexander & Ishikawa 1995) supports their empirical and research methodical ap-plication. With Polanyi (1967: 14) we assume implicit knowledge of the actors and explore the relationship between implicit and explicit knowledge in the use of the pattern language cards. The paper discusses the potentials of the novel approach of meta-communication for structurally conflicting settings of sustainability strategies and its potential con-tribution for organizational-educational-transdisciplinary research towards sustain-ability.

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