Changing the change

I agree with Victor Margolin that the word innovation has lost its power and its purpose. Innovation has become the latest buzz word and hype and has become increasingly meaningless and empty. It is not innovation in itself, but what we innovate, how we innovate and who innovates that is the issue, after all Hitler innovated! When, however, social is used in connection with innovation then, as Ezio comments, things change. I believe the amount to which things change depends on how narrowly or broadly we define the concept. A strict definition of social innovation refers to new ideas (products, services, models) developed to fulfil unmet social needs. But then in this changing world what is a social need? Is a better relationship between what is produced and what is consumed a social need? Is more community a social need? Is a richer relationship with the biosphere a social need? Like innovation, sustainability has lost much of its more transformative potential given that it is also a buzzed and hyped word. Also, as we know, it is too often commonly understood in its more limited definition of the environment.

But let’s forget semantics for a moment and actually look at what needs doing. Most of us would agree that society needs to re-address and re-invent much of its industrial legacy, including new patterns of production and consumption, new social ‘industries’ such as health, care, education, new individual and collective lifestyles, new relationships with nature and new organizational and cultural models. Furthermore it needs to do this through a greater individual and collective empowerment and responsibility. Is this about social innovation, is it about sustainability, does it matter?

Rather what is important is not what separates or distinguishes them (always inherent in labels and definitions) but what unites them, and what they have in common. I believe that what unites all three concepts is firstly the vision and purpose to improve the quality of life and to be ‘accountable for positive social results’ (Victor Margolin). In this purpose they also share the same territory, namely the need to re-address and re-invent much of our industrial legacy and to shift the emphasis from the economic and the market to the social and people, which leads me to the subject of social design. In all honesty, I did not know, until reading Victor’s pieces, the accepted definition of social design, related to a more social work and social workers reference. Rather for me design was suffering from the same fate as innovation and that just as innovation has lost meaning so has design.

Yet what to use? Design on its own is too broad and can be too easily co-opted to the old, and Industrial Design reflects the past not the future. By putting social before design things change, things open up. Social Design offers vistas of social change and transformation and emphasizes its relevancy and meaningfulness for the 21st century. Put simply a broader meaning to social innovation/sustainability equals and is complimented by the broader meaning of social design. A design for the next era.

I believe that the theme of the conference Round Table on Design, Social Innovation and Sustainability is increasingly associated in the collective imaginary with a more structural and systemic change and transformation. To limit them or to spend too much time on semantics and definitions will only play to the old game and will reduce their transformative qualities. At a time when everything is negotiable and everything can be changed I believe it is counter productive to narrow down definitions too precisely. I am looking forward to understand the synergies, where and how they fit together and most importantly the role of design and the implications for design in terms of design research, new design competencies and capabilites and new design frontiers.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 10:02 pm and is filed under Newsletter 10. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags:innovation, social design, society