Knowing what you have influence over, what you don’t, and what’s in between can be the difference in creating possibility and hope or despair and confusion. The term sphere of influence was coined to refer to nation’s geopolitical power and used as a guide to frame a given country’s social, economic, political and military strategy. …
A good framework can provide enormous guidance when faced with a situation where there is no clear path forward. By allowing you to ‘hang’ and organize ideas a good framework can help you focus your design, too. A good closet not only stores your clothes, it organizes your wardrobe. The same can be said for …
Why does most of what we read about innovation resemble very little of what our work life actually looks like? It is rare to find a profile of an innovation initiative that speaks to the everyday experiences of business, government, healthcare, or non-profit life. Instead, we read cases where there was leadership, time, focus, drive …
The means to developing the ability to create useful, valued products and service comes from learning through doing. What is the best way to learn design? Design something. It’s a bit trite to say this, but it’s true. Someone can be a designer having never taken a design course or completed a degree or they …
When systems are changing everywhere the opportunities to direct some of that change to design the world we want has never been greater. Systemic design has been developing over the past decade from a set of loosely connected ideas drawn from different streams of systems thinking and the multidisciplinary field of design. Brought together, this …
‘Unprecedented’ is a term that is changing how we understand complexity and foresight. One thing that often makes complex situations live up to their name is that there is so much going on at once in different directions, velocities, and timing; it’s hard to connect causes with consequences. We hear the term ‘unprecedented‘ being used …
In changing times its important to recognize both the words change and time if we want to understand systems. On a social and economic level we’ve never seen more transformation of everyday life come or affect systems as we have with the global COVID-19 pandemic. What it provides us is an opportunity to learn, contemplate, …
The global pandemic situation has provided us with a lesson in complexity by giving us much to see, learn, and do if we pay attention. It’s been said that the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago and the second best time is today. Our personal, social, and organizational preparedness plans are …
The global retail phenomenon called ‘Black Friday’ demonstrates true complexity. How what and where we buy shapes how we live. The Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States is the day in which retailers were said to have cleared the red ink (debt) and moved into the black (profit) for the year’s sales, hence the …
The concept of healing plays an integral part of healthy human development in many cultures, yet is largely unknown or misunderstood in its practice. If we seek to develop, evolve, innovate and grown as individuals, organizations and societies wisely we would do well to better grasp what healing is and how its done, by design. To develop, …
