The opening chapter presents the current background for resilience advancement, both in the short-term regarding immediate economic and security threats, and in the long term with threats stemming from climate change, for instance. Thus, we discuss both sudden disruptions as well as long-term megatrends that currently require action from policymakers and businesses. Such developments generate grand challenges that require collective action from multiple stakeholders instead of scattered reactions. Here, we also introduce the concept of collective agency, the preconditions, elements and dynamics of which will be explored in the following chapters.