Recipes for Systemic Change - Helsinki Design Lab

Introduction21an iterative working style, the HDL Studio represents a modelof problem solving that diverges from more common linearapproaches that judge progress incrementally.Yesterday's and today’s decision-making works well whenprecedents exist and context is static. Decision-makers cometo a consensus about the nature of a problem, ask an organizationto research and compare proven models, engineerthe solution, and deliver it to end-users, who then havelimited and slow, if any, mechanisms for direct feedback. Yettoday’s challenges are highly interconnected and dynamic,demanding new solutions for which our institutions are oftenill-equipped and too slow. The HDL Studio Model is designedas a lightweight tool to enable organizations to quickly sketchnew solutions matching their new challenges, thereby kickstartingthe transformation process.Increasingly society operates ‘pre-factually.’ 1 In suchcases, analysing existing options may not provide the necessaryinsights needed to respond successfully because thechallenge is one that has not been dealt with before and thefacts do not exist yet. Although there has been intense focuson innovation in products and businesses, our understandingof innovation at the systems scale is still emerging. We findourselves lacking sophisticated ways to articulate new ideasabout systems and the ways they relate and interlock.Academies of learning, governmental structuresand professions are built around ‘silos’ ofprotected professional activity and expertise.These were immensely valuable during theperiod of aggressive development beginningwith the Industrial Revolution. An intense focuson increasing specialization has yielded greatadvances in just about every category of humaneffort, especially science. By focusing knowledge-creationefforts into silos, society was able to excel at engineeringanswers to specific, discrete problems, but this came at theexpense of an ability to consider the big picture. In thesefissures between the silos—areas that we do not have a strongability to describe, or even name, never mind procure—iswhere the grand challenges of today are found.This is particularly acute in government contexts thatare often saddled with the most inertia. Governments spendbillions annually on research and development in specificareas of content, such as technology and defence, but theytend to invest little in themselves—in developing new waysof tackling problems. Though facing the most pressing of 21st1—Paul Nakazawa, Lecturer in Architecture atthe Harvard Graduate School of Design, usesthis term to describe working in and respondingto a context where evidence is still developing,information is incomplete, and debatearound the factual foundation is ongoing.Society is lacking sophisticatedways to articulate new ideas aboutsystems and the ways they relateand interlock.