Changing the change

Society has been served well by the pursuit of deep knowledge (the cornerstone of any self respecting academic institution) but more and more the nature of today’s “big picture” problems resides at the intersection of what we know. What is – for example – healthcare? It’s not medicine, law, buildings, therapies, doctors, processes, ethics, or business but rather the convergence of all of them in a complex system. We need to first see the nature of these system problems to define the path towards more complete solutions. Not reductively, not as fragments, but in the complex, integrated and synthetic ways that drive them. These are the cornerstones of design, yet its not design as defined by our professions, rather design as defines by our needs.

But what does this call for “system design” have to do with Changing the Change? A lot when examined from two simple perspectives.

First, it captures many of the threads that seek to rethink design found within the conference Newsletter. Here alone there is much evidence for a call for design to sustain better solutions: Mugendi M’Rithaa places the question of Design in context of Africa’s future. The call, by Lou Yongqi, to “pause” and think strategically and systemically is apt not only in China, but throughout our geographies; Stefano Marzano places design in the context of economic systems. All seek more effective design, but discuss them within a broader context of systems.

Secondly, one could argue that the hallmark of a discipline is in the research that it pursues: as such the question of what kind of research is central to academia. At Harvard, President Drew Faust has spoken at great lengths about the challenge to work more effectively across disciplines. In this context design has a unique leadership opportunity across the university, but it’s the kind of opportunity that will only come if we are able see beyond the professions we serve to the value of our discipline.

To meet this opportunity, academia is going to have to challenge itself to define the right frameworks, incentivizing students and faculty to work in ways that may inherently contradict the established structures of success. The institutional dilemma is that with success comes rigidity towards change. The future will be in the hands of those whose past success won’t create an insurmountable barrier towards rethinking how they operate in this design driven age.