Designing for living systems is an approach to creating things for a world in flux and generating benefit for it. In my last post, I used the term design for living systems to reflect a changing position in my design practice and one that I see reflected in the design challenges I see around me. …
Our massive push toward more immersive online experiences, space travel, and connected social worlds seem even more divorced from reality when we consider what’s happening in the physical world. Maybe that is the point. When things come in threes I take notice. This is not for any superstitious reasons and more because it points to …
Lee Vinsel and Andrew Russell are leading voices in arguing for a bigger place for maintaining things in this world in our culture, not just for creating or innovating. In The Innovation Delusion what could have been a powerful charge to embrace maintainer culture and thinking is drown out by a poorly organized and researched …
One bright idea is pretty but a collection of ideas put into practice over time, sustainably, is beautiful (and real innovation). Sustainable innovation — a process, practice, and culture of design-driven creativity — might be the most valuable outcome for any organization. Real, sustained innovation is not about creating a single item — product, service, policy …
We prepare for what we know and see. To address the challenges of the future, we need to imagine things differently in order to see them before they exist. Sometimes we need to believe to see things. Sometimes we need to know what we don’t know and can’t know (now) to understand what we’ll need …
Innovation definitions can sometimes create more confusion than clarity. Looking at what it is and does can change that. Innovation might be one of the most confusing, mis-characterized words in business, government, and social enterprises. It doesn’t have to be. If we leave aside all the buzzwords, models, and hype, innovation can be described in …
Design and innovation are often regarded as good things (when done well) even if a pause might find little to explain what those things might be. Without a sense of what design produces, what innovation looks like in practice, and an understanding of the journey to the destination are we delivering false praise, hope and failing …
The environmental problems of today require new ways of thinking says a recent Worldchanging post on environmental sustainability and increasingly this looks more like four pillars coming together: design, systems, integration and resilience.
