Hasta La Ideas

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pIt’s a sign of the times when emThe Economist/em, the house journal of the global business elite, holds a conference in London on ‘design thinking’ (official Big Rethink site a href=”http://www.economistconferences.co.uk/redesigningbusiness/home”here/a). Having attended the conference, produced in association with The Design Council and held over 11-12 March, I was left wondering one thing: why is design thinking such a hot topic with business leaders, given that it leaves so many designers cold? /p

pThe conference’s brilliant chair, Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran, a global correspondent for The Economist and author of a href=”http://www.zoomtothepeople.com”Zoom/a, began by throwing down a hefty gauntlet to design. He explained that the world faces crises on many different levels, not only economic and environmental: politicians and corporate leaders are also experiencing a profound crisis of trust and legitimacy. This, in turn, has triggered a loss of confidence in the old ways of doing things and has led business and governments to cast around for new ideas. As design thinking is offering itself up as a process to solve many of these problems, what has it got to offer? Gulp! /p

pSo, how well did the conference fare, given such a preamble? The short answer is that the speakers largely sidestepped the crisesmdash;and sidestepped, too, the subject of design thinking. /p

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pemVijay V. Vaitheeswaran./em/p

pbr /
bThe big sidestep/bbr /
The format didn’t help. There were too many rapid-fire sessions. Some were only 10 minutes long, leaving little time to develop much more than a sound bite or two. The Work Foundation’s a href=”http://www.theworkfoundation.com/aboutus/directorsteam.aspx”Will Hutton/a took a few bad-tempered minutes to tackle the economic crisis and make the case for more investment in RD. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Robin Bew concisely delineated all the crises, but, sadly, had been briefed not to show any graphs. Would that really scare the designers? /p

div class=”article_quote”There’s something odd going on when business and political leaders flatter design with potentially holding the key to such big and pressing problems, and the design community looks the other way. /div

pA number of speakers, mostly from outside the world of design, addressed sustainability. They rehearsed familiar themes (cutting waste, apparently, can also save you money!). Tellingly, they made few connections with design thinking, apart from Jeff Denby. He made a memorable presentation on his sustainable underwear a href=”http://www.wearpact.com/”brand/a, and its on-trend ethical marketing practices. /pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/design_thinkingeverywhere_and_nowhere_reflections_on_the_big_re-think__16277.asp”(more…)/a
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