Systems thinking, design thinking and strategic foresight

When one looks at the most pressing challenges that humanity faces, challenges typically related to energy supply and use, environmental stewardship, health-care and education reform and restructuring, economic development, rebuilding of basic infrastructure, etc., none are simple and most daunting in their scale and complexity. Yet there are strategies available to address these challenges, strategies that can provide the means for the development of new solutions and ways forward. The need for new approaches, or for the combination of different approaches, has become all the more apparent as the financial crisis and recession have shown the fickle nature of the supposedly resilient global economy. Global recession has also pointed up structural weaknesses at national levels, bringing to light failures in financial systems, health-care systems, infrastructure, etc.

Typical linear or reductionist approaches to these challenges no longer work. We have created problems whose complexity now requires different models and new thinking: Einstein said it best when he suggested that "we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them". Indeed, many of our problems have been insidiously metastasizing over time, increasing in their complexity, their interrelatedness and their global nature and reach. Old ways no longer suffice.

While "blank slate" approaches are not realistically feasible, there are ways of enabling new thinking and new solutions. Seeing beyond the complexity of these challenges can be best achieved through the systems thinking lens, in which the totality of the challenge and its interconnectedness is revealed. It is only by understanding the relationships (particularly the interdependencies) between the various elements of the challenge that one can begin to assess where the points of focus for "solutioneering" should be. This is when the two other approaches step in: design thinking hand-in-hand with strategic foresight. Design thinking is an innovation-oriented design discipline that applies design methodologies to problem solving, increasingly outside the design field (in business and public services, for example). Strategic foresight comprises methodologies to better anticipate and understand possible future outcomes through scenario planning, forecasting and other tools. A combination of design thinking and strategic foresight allows for a future-oriented solutions-based approach to addressing the critical focus areas of these seemingly insurmountable challenges.

Imagine, if you will, the question of education reform. One cannot look at the education system in any nation without considering, for example, its social, economic and political importance, its relevance to future national development and individual well-being, the focus of the curricula given the evolving nature of society and economy, the physical diffusion of schools and the impact on community, etc. Education reform is not just about fiddling with testing schedules and questions sets... Systems thinking allows for the complexity and interconnectedness of the education system to be fully appreciated and understood, and for its weaknesses to be identified. Design thinking and strategic foresight allow for solutions-based forward-looking strategies that provide for a variety of approaches to implementing actual (and hopefully substantive and future-proof) reform.

Using systems and design thinking and strategic foresight, is, of course, no overnight panacea for the pressing issues related to climate change and our (ir)responsible stewardship of the planet for example. Much more is needed - including, above all, the will to change. But the combination of these three approaches may provide for a new and more capable, comprehensive and solutions-oriented means to understand and address the challenges that nations and humanity face.

For further thinking on the relationship between design and strategic foresight, see here.

Design thinking and infrastructure

The cry for a longer term focus on, and funding for, infrastructure is recurrent and warrants attention, all the more so because it is a mundane yet critical contributor to a nation's competitive advantage. An earlier posting suggested that the nation's moribund physical infrastructure is ripe for design thinking - yet how does one apply design thinking to something as essential, complex and yet ordinary and under-valued as infrastructure?

Part of the challenge is of course understanding what exactly design thinking is. Much discussed, there are few good definitions, although the following are quite useful: Luke Wroblewski's article does a nice job of comparing business and design approaches to problem solving; Tim Brown's blog overs the subject well (albeit in a somewhat diffuse manner); and, David Burnley, Red Hat's VP of Brand Communications and Design, provides a very good overview. In a generic sense, design thinking is 1) about addressing challenges in ways unconstrained by accepted wisdom, existing "solutions" and narrow parameters; 2) looking at challenges as opportunities rather than problems; 3) looking at challenges holistically, taking into account the user and other stakeholders, as well as dimensions and considerations, etc., that would typically be considered beyond those associated with the challenge at hand; and 4) looking at longer term (innovative and value building) solutions rather than short term fixes. When applied in the context of transformation design - which "seeks to create desirable and sustainable changes in behavior and form ... of individuals, systems and organizations" - there appears to be an opportunity for design thinking to suggest innovation in infrastructure development and deployment.

So where does one start? In addition to the resources listed in an earlier blog, this piece by Gregory Fenves, Dean of the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, entitled Innovating the 21st Century Physical Infrastructure is incredibly useful. In it Fenves outlines some overarching themes including sustainability, safety and security, economics and scalability, and then goes on to identify key areas for what he calls "frontier research" including materials, flexibility and adaptability, distributed sensing and control, modeling and simulation and economic operation and risk management. He notes that infrastructure systems are siloed and work to date has been largely on patching what exists, while what is really needed is an interdisciplinary approach that encompasses, inter alia, nano-engineering, the study of socio-economic systems and cyber infrastructure, and one that puts an emphasis on innovation and breakthrough opportunities.

It is hard to get excited about infrastructure, but it is crying out for a more holistic, multi-disciplinary, innovative and longer-term perspective, one that can evolve and meet our needs rather than the current band-aid approach that has resulted in a crippled infrastructure not much evolved from the last great build period between the 1940s and 1960s. What is missing is strategic innovation: consider, for example, the impact of intermodal freight transport and how that revolutionized the movement of goods; or the development of the electric power grid, and how it revolutionized energy provision and use. What new systems are required today? What new systems will be required for tomorrow? Infrastructure also needs to be looked at in the context of some important related issues such as sustainability, climate change (concrete production produces significant green house gases), migration (new centers of population, urban blight, etc.) and local natural resource availability.

Taking a design thinking approach would encourage a truly collaborative multidisciplinary initiative - bringing together engineers, urban planners, architects, social anthropologists, economists, policymakers, transformation designers, etc. - that would likely result in a comprehensive exploration of the opportunities for building an infrastructure that evolves with need and use, embraces innovation in systems, processes, structures and materials, and, most importantly, safeguards global a nation's competitive advantage.