Part of growing up, if we are lucky, is the ability to see issues from other perspectives, to develop our natural empathy and embrace the value of taking the long view. Part of growing up, if we are not lucky, is becoming more entrenched in our beliefs and approaches to problems, leaving us stuck in a rut of rote learning, craving easy answers. One way to prevent mental constipation is to keep learning, to keep challenging one’s prejudices and beliefs and continually search for new ways of being effective in the world.

Cool guy in multi-colored glasses

Time to change the frame?

In 2010 Helene and Nancy met at a workshop for Open Space Technology, a kind of facilitation that essentially turns the typical conference on its head, by putting a meeting’s participants in charge of the agenda. This technique, which is now popular under the terms BarCamp or UnConference, is a form of fundamental redesign that turns an entrenched, one-to-many experience into an opportunity for co-creation. It occurred to both of us that this is just one example of how a “typical” event can be fundamentally redesigned. What other processes could profit from redesign?

This wonderful TED talk by IDEO’s Tim Brown summarizes how a different view of design, a transition from design to design thinking, can heighten impact and offer new ways of approaching global issues:

During the Open Space training, we realized that we shared a lot of interests. For example, both of us recently went back to school, and  we saw in each other’s experience and knowledge an opportunity that we wanted to explore further. The idea for a workshop was born that would combine the application of Helene’s specialty, Design Thinking, with Nancy’s focus on social and environmental Sustainability.

One goal of the workshop is to challenge participants to break out of their thinking “comfort zone,” just as we, as co-teachers, challenge each other.

Helene notes,  “ I was very surprised to be challenged by a VP of a nameless corporation recently who did not understand why sustainability should be relevant to his business! I am very excited that working with Nancy on the workshop will allow us to go in depth into diverse aspects of sustainability and hopefully help others understand why is it so critical.”

Nancy admits, “ Yes, I am guilty of some of the prejudices that Tim Brown calls out in his talk: that design was about uber hip dudes in angular glasses making cool objects look nifty and more expensive.  Tim’s talk and meeting Helene helped me realize that design thinking is part of the mind shift that is so essential to tackling the issues inherent in sustainability. The tools of design thinking, including ideation, prototyping and ethnographic inquiry, have opened my eyes to possible new approaches to sustainability.”

Our workshop, Design Thinking for a Sustainable World, offered over three days this March at UC Berkeley Extension, will introduce design thinking and sustainability with an eye to helping people from all disciplines become more effective change agents at a time when true, radical change is needed. But we won’t be lecturing about sustainability and design thinking…our goal is to make this a true, hands-on workshop.

As Tim Brown puts it so well, we believe that “Design will have its greatest impact when it’s taken out of the hands of designers and put into the hands of everyone.” Please join us.

Find more information and register at http://extension.berkeley.edu/catalog/course628.html.

If you have any questions regarding the workshop email nancy [at] theideahive.com or guide [at] strategicinsights.biz.

Photo: 08-12-06 © eva serrabassa via iStockphoto

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Chandran NairGiven the limits of our planet and a population that just topped 7 billion, it may be past time to think about alternatives to an economic system that depends so utterly on continuous consumption to remain viable. On November 14, The Idea Hive is hosting a speaker, Chandran Nair, who will offer an alternative vision for the success of the powerhouse economies of Asia, Earth’s most populous continent.

Mr. Nair offers an alternative paradigm for governments, business leaders, and academics to consider. He argues that economic policy needs to be realigned to avoid the catastrophic outcomes that could result from the relentless promotion of a consumption-led growth model in Asia, at a time when resource constraints are only too apparent. His book, Consumptionomics: Asia’s Role in Reshaping Capitalism and Saving the Planet, calls for bans on some forms of consumption, re-pricing of resources, and for the state to play a bigger role.

 

Chandran Nair is the Founder and CEO of the Global Institute For Tomorrow (GIFT), an independent social venture think tank based in Asia. Its key goal is to guide corporations and their leaders on how to meet the challenges of doing business in Asia, with particular emphasis on the role of social investment, geopolitics, leadership development, business ethics, government and civil society. He is a staunch advocate of a more sustainable approach to development in Asia, and has helped governments and corporations instill these principles into their key decision-making processes through his work at GIFT, individual advisory services and speaking engagements throughout the world. Mr Nair is also Chairman and Co-Founder of Avantage Ventures, a boutique social investment advisory firm based in Hong Kong.

Please join us for a wide ranging and provocative discussion with Chandran Nair.  Constraining Consumption: Asia’s Role in Reshaping Capitalism takes place Monday, November 14 —  reception and networking at 7pm; lecture begins at 7:30 — at the Hub SoMa in downtown San Francisco. Click here to register.

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Where Moguls in the Making Meet Up and Gear Up: Triangle Entrepreneurship Week

November 11, 2011

The cliche of the entrepreneur is the solitary visionary, up on a mountaintop or buried in a garage, creating the next Apple, Seventh Generation…or Edsel. But even the most focused entrepreneur needs to kick back and talk with others sometimes, and that’s where Triangle Entrepreneurship Week comes in. This November 14-18, entrepreneurs from all walks [...]

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The Economics of Water: Post Abundance

July 19, 2011

Can the problem of water scarcity be solved by the creation of appropriate incentives? Can the current supply side model be altered to focus on balancing supply and demand, creating a “proper” price for that most essential of fluids?  In a recent thought-provoking discussion, economist David Zetland laid out some proposals that may help to [...]

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Evolving Business: Time to Reboot?

June 6, 2011

“We must now move faster with the implementation of today’s organisational change agenda and, at the same time, work out how to disrupt our economic and business models to reboot capitalism for the 21st century.” John Elkington, founder & executive chairman, Volans; co-founder, SustainAbility In the good/bad old days, when your computer froze, you hit [...]

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Thinking in Context, Collectively

February 3, 2011

This week we gave a brief presentation on Systemic Thinking Tools for Social Impact to a group at the coworking space Hub SOMA in downtown San Francisco. We introduced systemic thinking and the definition of complexity via the wonderful cynefin framework originated by Dave Snowden of Cognitive Edge (whose blog posts are wide-ranging and always engaging.) We [...]

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Future swarming with The Idea Hive

January 19, 2011

Welcome to 20 years from now. Believe it or not, newspapers are still being created and you are holding the January 12, 2031 edition of The New California Times in your hands… On January 12th, we hosted an evening of light-hearted activities around a vision of the SF Bay Area’s future.  Some 40 creative visionaries [...]

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The Wisdom Gap and Our Future

January 5, 2011

I’ve been enjoying playing with the Google Books NGram Viewer, where one can graph the occurrence of words or phrases in millions of volumes of printed materials over decades and even centuries. I wondered what it might show about the growth of human knowledge, as opposed to the growth of human chatter (aka data points.) [...]

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New Year’s Greeting from The Idea Hive of the Future

December 20, 2010

As we approach the New Year, we’ve been thinking about the future.  Waaay into the future. What will The Idea Hive’s clients and services look like in the next 1,000 years? We brainstormed our company tag line for each century. What’s on The Idea Hive t-shirt of 2111, 2211, and beyond? Take a look… Creativity [...]

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The Boundaries of ‘I’

December 6, 2010

I re-learned a fascinating fact the other day, thanks to an article on fermented foods in the New Yorker: 90% of the DNA in our bodies belongs to microorganisms. This led me to ponder one of the tenets of systemic thinking: the importance of boundary judgments when we are defining a system.  Do “I” end [...]

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