GK...
Thank you for your detailed reply. Any additional response(s) to my ongoing curiosity is most appreciated.
The language shift points you made are indeed relevant. (i.e telling vs co-creating). Is this aspect/tool of design thinking used as a gateway to getting work/contracts in these areas? Are there resources in the literature that address these language issues? In my experience with governments it is the written word in the form of proposal/reports that gets the project award. Prototyping in my experience is usually met with bewilderment due to inadequate means to make decisions by audience decision makers.
You also mentioned that these areas of Design 3 and 4 are heavily "occupied and defended". Does this aspect of the business have a body of ethics and professional acumen surrounding it in the US and Europe? (i.e corruption, bribes, graft, slush funds, kick backs)? Here in Asia, the momentum is on the side of those who are "doers" and the ethics of large urban design project transactions are fraught with dynastic politics that are larger than the legal system can handle.
You mentioned "old power privileging" reinforcement by business schools adopting design thinking. Who on the inside of all these large corporate HR departments that sets the hierarchy for power and the compensation that it goes with? In my experience working in Asia (Singapore and South Korea) I see a very different power association attached to design. The CEO of a government statutory board I worked with was trained in the UK as an industrial designer. Kia has recently made one of their car designers President/CEO. Ones Title here in Asia still carries the weight it did during the Victorian era of Europe. Is this changing at all in the west?
Is the hacker approach to design that gives Google its halo, not with any merit at all? I'm sure they are not writing about their methods in order to get published.
Cheers...
Form follows culture...
Stephen B Allard
Bourgogne Allard Design Inc.
Seoul National University of Science and Technology
Myongji College of Design
Seoul mobile 010-9980-8341
> Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 10:27:40 -0400
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Design Thinking Survey 2013 - participants needed
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Hi Stephen: Happy to engage with you here.
> Since we have not previously spoken it might be helpful if I share a little backdrop before I get to your questions:
> You might know that our NextD sensemaking work has always been practice based. What we have always been most interested in and focused on are the implications of change for practice as well as the cascade effects on graduate and post-graduate design education. This later part not as an abstract exercise but rather in the sense that it is likely that future practices will entertain the possibility of finding future talent from the emerging design education candidates pool.
> As per my previous comments regarding design thinking in historical literature, collectively much more is known about the practice of Design 1 and 2 than about Design 3 and 4. This means that for those operating in Design 3 and 4 [whether they go to market that way or not] there are few certainties, a lot of hybrid experimentation and much is in motion. Unlike D1 and D2, D3 and D4 are relatively new paths through the forest. It is in practice every day that those paths are being forged, case studies lived, and new literature being written. From the practice perspective we consider Design 3 and 4 to be zones of high experimentation at this moment and for some that has been true since at least 2002.
> It is true that various lenses have been created over numerous decades to help insiders and outsiders better appreciate design. Some of those lenses have perhaps been more understandable than others. It is true that complexity ladder lenses have been created in several disciplines not just in design. Unlike some earlier lenses that were, with good intentions created to help make sense of design, the NextD Complexity Ladder framework that we use does not presume that a person calling himself or herself a designer inherently possesses magical power to think across and operate across all operational scales. Being practice based we do not subscribe to the previously and in some quarters still popular notion of magical thinking which we view not only as academic oriented, marketing oriented, but just plain impractical. Magic thinking models lack change drivers and so from our perspective they are not a good fit for the realities of design at this time.
> We use the NextD framework to point out that different skills are involved at different scales of design thinking in practice. This has come to be known as skill-to-scale. Unlike previous magic thinking advocacy models, skill-to-scale has enormous change implications for design practice and design education. This has proven to be the good news and the bad news. Our lack of subscribing to magical thinking tends to create some tension dynamics in some design community quarters.
> The inherent pointing out of need for change that is embedded in the NextD Complexity Ladder has resonated in many practice circles and quite frankly probably hindered its adoption in design education circles. Even today we encounter many design educators who see no need for the rate and scale of change implied by skill-to-scale.
> As per my previous comments, one result is a growing chasm between where leading practices are already operating and the operational terrain focus of institutional design education. A cascading result of that result is the increasing frequency of design practices to create their own design thinking academies that are more reflective of the rate of change happening in the global marketplace.
> It is against this messy backdrop that I will gladly attempt to address your questions briefly here.
> Regarding your questions:
> You asked: “At what point do the figures of history that are involved in organizational design (i.e Ackoff, Drucker, Sloan, Taylor et al) and social design (i.e. Gallup, Freud, Bernays, Lippman, Goebbels, Goring, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim et al) enter your Design 3 and Design 4 matrix levels of Design?”
> The short answer to that entertaining question would be from the get-go. Not only are all the historical figures present for better or for worse, but many other folks from other disciplines are as well. They might be using different terminologies but in terms of how change happens and who wants that work…the answer is many. Design 3 and 4 are not wide-open fields. In the marketplace they are heavily occupied and often heavily defended. It is not a fantasyland waiting for magic thinkers. You have to have real stuff. Life centered or human-centered design thinking at the scale of organizations and societies does inevitably raise numerous intriguing methods and values integration questions. These are among numerous issues being wrestled with everyday in the Design 3 and 4 arenas.
> It is no secret that several graduate business schools have identified Design 3 (organizational change via what they are pitching as design thinking) as lucrative territory that they would like their faculties and graduates to dominate. Considering in which activity zones of design thinking the fees are shrinking or rising that is not surprising. As far as we can tell there is still no graduate or post-graduate design school focused in Design 3. There are certainly many graduate design schools doing the cross-over dance, optimistically advocating that their students crossover into the zones of Design 3 and 4 equipped with their Design 1 and 2 skills to tackle often massive challenges (jury is still out on that dance) but the actual, recognition of and teaching of Design 3 skills in design institution settings remains elusive. In the face of rapidly moving globalization that omission remains rather remarkable. With perhaps one or two exceptions right now the only design academies capable of challenging the graduate business academies in the context of Design 3 are operating from practice based platforms.
> You asked: “In your view, where does the line between professional design influence/ability on progress and grand social strategy/design lie?“
> I am not sure exactly what you mean here. From a practice perspective we do not see any grand. What we see is need for professionals who can help orchestrate, facilitate and participate in a lot of cocreation in organizations and in societies. You might call that human-centered cocreation. You might not. We see need for human-centered cocreation ecologies and cultures recognizing that they will not occur naturally and or by default. As one moves up the complexity scale towards the zones of Design 3 and 4 it is inherently less about telling and more about cocreating. For many trained in Design 1 and 2 this involves a fundamental language mode shift. Most forms of Design 1 and 2 operate in what we call Mixed Language Mode. As you scale much more Split Language Mode mastery is needed. Design 3 & 4 are less about designers as heroes. One moves from the sage on the stage to the guide on the side. For some this is unimaginable to process. What we are often designing is a human centered place where all can participate. In the pursuit of inclusion by all we are reconfiguring all the old privileging modes that were inherent in many old power models. This was one reason why we have for years been advocating that senior design education leaders step up and stand up to the Roger Martin/Rotman models, in that they contain rewrapped old power privileging. Unfortunately most Design 1 and 2 oriented design educators have already laid under that bus, probably without really understanding what just drove over them. The old notion that convergence (decision-making) should be privileged over divergence on route to innovation has never worked and does not work today regardless of how it might be creatively repackaged. Being willing and capable of creatively, constructively taking on old school power privileging is a significant aspect of Design 3 and 4 leadership. For the most part such leadership from professional design association leaders and design education leaders is missing in action. There is little doubt that there is a huge need for a new generation of courageous design thinking leadership.
> You asked: “Where do firms like Booz Allen, Mckinsey, Hill and Knowlton, Edelman et al fit into the Design 3 and Design 4 levels of your matrix?”
> We know some of these players well. We have had numerous conversations with Booz Allen Hamilton. They have been in our New York City office several times for discussions and we have open channel of communication with them. Without giving away any confidences I can say that most of the large management consultancies have for some time been actively building design thinking practices and thus they are in pursuit of design thinking knowledge applicable to the scales that they are already operating in ie: Design 3 and 4. They are not just building they are already out their practicing and selling design thinking at significant scale. I do see that the folks leading those initiatives inside the big consultancies often have not been educated in design schools. This approach being taken by the giant consulting firms has weaknesses as well as strengths. It is not something that we would do. There is no question that the big boys want the lucrative part of the design thinking business, ie they want Design 3 and 4…as well as any lucrative aspects of Design 2. They are quite happy to leave the non-lucrative parts, the parts with declining fees to the traditional design community.
> You asked: “What of Google, Microsoft, Apple, Sprint, AT&T?”
> We included a review of the Google Ventures Sprint process - 4 steps for combining the hacker way with design thinking - in our recently completed Innovation Methods Mapping book. That process reflects rather primitive knowledge being completely over hyped in the media due to the halo effect of the google brand. Methodology wise there is not much going on there and connecting method to culture seems to be beyond their present Google awareness. As far as we can tell much of what goes on inside the firms that you have referenced here is focused at the scale of Design 2, product, service and in particular for the technology/media oriented companies experience design. What we do see rising is a wave of interest from internal experience design groups in learning skills that will allow them to be more strategically useful to their various organizations. Some are seeking to get more involved in envisioning, real-time upstream framing and cocreation. In this regard Humantific works with several internal experience groups as clients. This wave maps to the movement from Design 2 to Design 3 being driven in part by globalization.
>
> Have a good week.
>
> Related:
>
> Innovation Methods Mapping Preview
> http://www.humantific.com/innovation-methods-mapping-preview/
>
> When [Old Design Thinking] Love is Not Enough
> http://www.humantific.com/innovation-methods-mapping-preview/
>
> NextD Geographies
> Understanding Design Thinking 1,2,3,4
> http://issuu.com/nextd/docs/nextdfutures2011_v02
>
>
> ...
>
> GK VanPatter
> Co-Founder
>
> Humantific
> SenseMaking for ChangeMaking
>
> NEW YORK / MADRID
>
> 6 West 18th Street, 9th Floor
> New York City, NY 10011
>
> http://www.humantific.com
>
> NEWSLETTER:
> Subscribe to Humantific Quarterly
>
> Follow Humantific on twitter: http://twitter.com/humantific
>
> ...
>
>
>
>
> On Jul 20, 2013, at 10:09 AM, Steve Allard wrote:
>
> > GK...
> >
> > I enjoy reading your social media contributions and connected publications.
> >
> > At what point do the figures of history that are involved in organizational design (i.e Ackoff, Drucker, Sloan, Taylor et al) and social design (i.e. Gallup, Freud, Bernays, Lippman, Goebbels, Goring, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim et al) enter your Design 3 and Design 4 matrix levels of Design?
> >
> > In your view, where does the line between professional design influence/ability on progress and grand social strategy/design lie? Where do firms like Booz Allen, Mckinsey, Hill and Knowlton, Edelman et al fit into the Design 3 and Design 4 levels of your matrix? What of Google, Microsoft, Apple, Sprint, AT&T?
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> >
> >
> > Form follows culture...
> >
> > Stephen B Allard
> >
> > Bourgogne Allard Design Inc.
> > Seoul National University of Science and Technology
> > Myongji College of Design
> >
> >
>
>
>
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