Design Advantage : The Secret to Creating Long-Term Value 14

Design Advantage : The Secret to Creating Long-Term Value 14
Derived from: Roger Martin’s The Design of Business

Book Rapper Context : For Future Sake!
Our fearless leaders have proven not to be so fearless.
Their recent efforts in Copenhagen to create a compelling future for the planet came up stunningly short.
Hope was offered and then disappointingly frittered away.

As a designer, there was one thing visibly missing from the summit.
There was no Design Thinking.
Our leaders were bogged down by their reliability bias.
They were overburdened with the need to prove their decisions would work.
They were unable to collaborate because they were stuck in their own self-interest.
And, there was very little future vision on offer.

Are today’s politicans anti-designers?
Are they capable of leading the way?

We don’t need more science, more analysis or more rhetoric.
We need Design Thinking.
We need visions, plans, options, choices and strategies.

We need to stop talking about Climate Change.
That’s a given, the climate is always changing.
It’s time to start talking about Climate Design.
What do we want our climate to be like?
Let’s start that conversation.
Let’s set some desirable goals to achieve for everyone on the planet.

I’m not suggesting that we get an expert team of designers together to make choices for everyone else.
This is what is wrong with our political systems.
And, we don’t want to replace BIG Government with BIG Design.
The utopian visions of the Modern Movement proved this didn’t work.
Grand plans have a habit of becoming grand disasters.

What is needed is both local and global design.
Like a good corporation we need some big picture strategy.
And, we need to give the team on the ground the room to implement and innovate in their own way.
Owning their way is crucial.

This level of diversity is what makes the world so interesting.
Think Italy or France with it’s national flavours and distinct regional spiciness.

We need to infect our leaders with Design Thinking.
We need to infect everyone else with Design Thinking too.

The goal is to have conversations for the future.
The goal is to build a future that we all have a say in creating.
The goal is to have a future that is compelling, desirable and exciting for everyone on the planet.

The single best thing you can do to help is to develop your awareness and abilities as a designer.
The more of us thinking this way, the more choices we will all have.
Remember, it’s for your sake.
It’s for my sake.
And, it’s For Future Sake!

Get the full Book Rapper issue: Design Advantage