Einstein famously said that today’s problems cannot be solved with the same level of thinking that created them, and history suggests he was right. Solving societal challenges through the centuries has typically relied on break-through technologies and break-out thinking. It has relied on imagining, or re-imagining, the world and then making that re-imagined world real. On creativity and innovation.
Design leadership illuminates pathways to a sustainable future. Extraordinary complexity calls for critical, holistic and systemic strategic thinking; the reframing of challenges as opportunities; and a systematic exploration of generating and exploring possible solutions. This is what designers are trained to do.
There’s an urgency for leaders to focus on ESG and, for those leaders who see beyond the need for compliance, who pursue innovation in strategy, in business model design and in ecosystem interaction, there are significant opportunities to reposition their businesses for advantage in this new operating context.
The successful achievement of any ‘transformation’ goal depends more on the engagement and enablement of people than the deployment of technology. And in an ever more deeply interconnected future, it is essential to develop a systems view, and an integrated approach to transforming business models to support 'transformation as usual'.
The rise of platform business models and the shift to operating within new ecosystems of value rather than in linear value chains means that, for many organisations, their capability must evolve beyond designing and delivering a competitive customer experience, to designing and delivering a compelling experience for all ecosystem participants - consumers, producers and partners.
