Desis Newsletter 3: Design as agent of sustainable changes

Design as agent of sustainable changes
By Prof. Ezio Manzini

Social innovation. Over the last decade a multiplicity of social actors throughout the world (institutions, enterprises, non-profit organisations and, most of all, networks of collaborative people) have moved outside mainstream models of thinking and doing, generating a variety of promising initiatives (community-supported agriculture, co-housing, car pooling, community gardens, neighborhood care, time banks,…). They are working prototypes of sustainable ways of living and, at the same time, they are viable solutions to complex problems of the present (such as social cohesion, urban regeneration, healthy food accessibility, water and sustainable energy management). Together they form a promising wave of social innovation recognizable in all the regions of the world, from mature industrial countries, to emerging and developing ones.

Today, these social innovations constitute a constellation of small initiatives mainly promoted by active local communities. Nevertheless, an attentive observation indicates that, if favorable conditions are created, these small, local social inventions and their working prototypes can be scaled-up and consolidate, replicate, integrate with larger programs and,  generate large sustainable changes. One of these favorable conditions is the existence of diffuse design capabilities. All the partners involved, in fact, must be able to consider problems and opportunities, imagine something that does not as yet exist and collaborate in finding the way to bring it into being.
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Design.  Scaling-up social innovation is, therefore, a design-led process, where “the designer” is not a single specialized figure, but a variety of actors who collaborate in co-designing more mature, lasting, replicable solutions. Among them a particular role must be played by design experts: the social actors who have received formal training in design. Indeed it is these design experts who are able to use their specific knowledge to stimulate the design capabilities of the other partners by triggering the innovation processes with scenarios and proposals, supporting them with specific design tools, and recognize in the emerging social inventions the potentialities for new product-service systems.

Some design-led initiatives already exist (for instance, in the areas of local food networks, collaborative housing, social services, mobility systems), but far more of them can and must be promoted. For the design community (professional designers, design researchers, design media and design schools) these interventions must be recognized as a new and challenging field of activity. In order to facilitate this recognition, and to promote new initiatives, a dedicated worldwide network on design for social innovation and sustainability has been established: the DESIS Network.

DESIS Network. DESIS is a network of design schools and other partners (institutions, companies and non-profit organizations) interested in promoting and supporting design for social innovation and sustainability. Currently, it is operating in Europe, Brazil, China, South Africa, Colombia and the USA, and it is in its construction phase in several other countries and regions. It is endorsed by UNEP-United Nations Environment Program and collaborates with other international partners (SIX-Social Innovation Exchange, Cumulus and Lens). 

The general aim of DESIS is to promote design-led sustainable social changes. This overall goal is pursued in several streams of activities: giving social innovations greater visibility, making them more effective and replicable, integrating them in larger programs, clarifying their potentialities in terms of emerging demands (for services and products), original business ideas (in the framework of the emerging social economy) and sustainable planning (in the perspective of a sustainable urban and regional development).

Design schools. DESIS has its main pillar in the design schools. There are two underlying motivations for this: design schools are where the next generations of design experts are educated, and this, of course is very important for the future. However, design schools can also be, today, active agents of sustainable change. They can be “laboratories of the new”, where new visions are generated, new tools are defined and tested and where new projects are started and supported. Considered as a whole, they can operate as a large “distributed design agency” where a multiplicity of design teams promote social innovation being, at the same time, both mutually connected and sensitive to cultural and social diversity.

If a worldwide movement towards sustainability calls for the best possible use of all existing resources, design schools, with all their potential in terms of students’ enthusiasm and teachers’ experience, should be considered a very promising social resource. Recognizing this potentiality, DESIS intends to do everything possible to make it real by helping design schools to become catalysts of the whole design community and, in turn, supporting the whole design community in becoming a major agent of sustainable change.