Tim Brown urges designers to think big

695,235 views ・ 2009-09-30

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:12
I'd like to talk a little bit this morning
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about what happens if we move from design
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to design thinking.
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Now this rather old photo up there
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is actually the first project I was ever hired to do,
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something like 25 years ago.
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It's a woodworking machine, or at least a piece of one,
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and my task was to
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make this thing a little bit more modern,
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a little bit easier to use.
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I thought, at the time, I did a pretty good job.
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Unfortunately, not very long afterwards
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the company went out of business.
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This is the second project that I did. It's a fax machine.
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I put an attractive shell around some new technology.
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Again, 18 months later,
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the product was obsolete.
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And now, of course, the whole technology is obsolete.
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Now, I'm a fairly slow learner,
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but eventually it occurred to me that
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maybe what passed for design
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wasn't all that important --
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making things more attractive,
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making them a bit easier to use,
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making them more marketable.
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By focusing on a design,
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maybe just a single product,
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I was being incremental
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and not having much of an impact.
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But I think this small view of design
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is a relatively recent phenomenon,
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and in fact really emerged
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in the latter half of the 20th century
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as design became a tool of consumerism.
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So when we talk about design today,
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and particularly when we read about it in the popular press,
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we're often talking about products like these.
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Amusing? Yes. Desirable? Maybe.
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Important? Not so very.
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But this wasn't always the way.
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And I'd like to suggest that if we take
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a different view of design,
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and focus less on the object
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and more on design thinking as an approach,
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that we actually might see the result in a bigger impact.
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Now this gentleman, Isambard Kingdom Brunel,
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designed many great things in his career in the 19th century,
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including the Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol
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and the Thames tunnel at Rotherhithe.
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Both great designs and actually very innovative too.
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His greatest creation
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runs actually right through here in Oxford.
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It's called the Great Western Railway.
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And as a kid I grew up very close to here,
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and one of my favorite things to do
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was to cycle along by the side of the railway
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waiting for the great big express trains to roar past.
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You can see it represented here in J.M.W. Turner's painting,
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"Rain, Steam and Speed".
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Now, what Brunel said that he wanted to achieve for his passengers
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was the experience of floating across the countryside.
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Now, this was back in the 19th century.
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And to do that meant creating the flattest gradients
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that had ever yet been made,
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which meant building long viaducts across river valleys --
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this is actually the viaduct across the Thames at Maidenhead --
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and long tunnels such as the one at Box, in Wiltshire.
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But he didn't stop there. He didn't stop
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with just trying to design the best railway journey.
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He imagined an integrated transportation system
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in which it would be possible for a passenger to embark
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on a train in London
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and disembark from a ship in New York.
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One journey from London to New York.
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This is the S.S. Great Western that he built
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to take care of the second half of that journey.
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Now, Brunel was working 100 years before
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the emergence of the design profession,
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but I think he was using design thinking
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to solve problems and to create world-changing innovations.
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Now, design thinking begins with what Roger Martin,
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the business school professor at the University of Toronto,
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calls integrative thinking.
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And that's the ability to exploit opposing ideas
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and opposing constraints
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to create new solutions.
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In the case of design, that means
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balancing desirability, what humans need,
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with technical feasibility,
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and economic viability.
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With innovations like the Great Western,
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we can stretch that balance to the absolute limit.
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So somehow, we went from this to this.
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Systems thinkers who were reinventing the world,
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to a priesthood of folks in black turtlenecks and designer glasses
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working on small things.
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As our industrial society matured,
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so design became a profession
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and it focused on an ever smaller canvas
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until it came to stand for aesthetics,
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image and fashion.
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Now I'm not trying to throw stones here.
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I'm a fully paid-up member of that priesthood,
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and somewhere in here I have my designer glasses.
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There we go.
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But I do think that perhaps design
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is getting big again.
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And that's happening through
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the application of design thinking
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to new kinds of problems --
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to global warming, to education,
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healthcare, security, clean water, whatever.
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And as we see this reemergence of design thinking
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and we see it beginning to tackle new kinds of problems,
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there are some basic ideas that I think we can observe that are useful.
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And I'd like to talk about some of those
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just for the next few minutes.
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The first of those is that design is
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human-centered.
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It may integrate technology and economics,
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but it starts with what humans need, or might need.
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What makes life easier, more enjoyable?
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What makes technology useful and usable?
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But that is more than simply good ergonomics,
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putting the buttons in the right place.
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It's often about understanding culture and context
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before we even know where to start to have ideas.
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So when a team was working on a new vision screening program in India,
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they wanted to understand what the aspirations
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and motivations were of these school children
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to understand how they might play a role
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in screening their parents.
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Conversion Sound has developed a high quality,
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ultra-low-cost digital hearing aid
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for the developing world.
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Now, in the West we rely on highly trained technicians
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to fit these hearing aids.
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In places like India, those technicians simply don't exist.
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So it took a team working in India
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with patients and community health workers
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to understand how a PDA
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and an application on a PDA
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might replace those technicians
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in a fitting and diagnostic service.
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Instead of starting with technology,
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the team started with people and culture.
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So if human need is the place to start,
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then design thinking rapidly moves on to
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learning by making.
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Instead of thinking about what to build,
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building in order to think.
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Now, prototypes speed up the process of innovation,
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because it is only when we put our ideas out into the world
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that we really start to understand their strengths and weaknesses.
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And the faster we do that,
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the faster our ideas evolve.
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Now, much has been said and written about
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the Aravind Eye Institute in Madurai, India.
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They do an incredible job of serving very poor patients
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by taking the revenues from those who can afford to pay
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to cross-subsidize those who cannot.
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Now, they are very efficient,
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but they are also very innovative.
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When I visited them a few years ago,
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what really impressed me was their willingness
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to prototype their ideas very early.
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This is the manufacturing facility
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for one of their biggest cost breakthroughs.
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They make their own intraocular lenses.
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These are the lenses that replace those
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that are damaged by cataracts.
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And I think it's partly their prototyping mentality
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that really allowed them to achieve the breakthrough.
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Because they brought the cost down
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from $200 a pair,
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down to just $4 a pair.
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Partly they did this by instead of building
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a fancy new factory,
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they used the basement of one of their hospitals.
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And instead of installing the large-scale machines
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used by western producers,
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they used low-cost CAD/CAM prototyping technology.
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They are now the biggest manufacturer of these lenses in the developing world
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and have recently moved into a custom factory.
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So if human need is the place to start,
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and prototyping, a vehicle for progress,
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then there are also some questions to ask about the destination.
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Instead of seeing its primary objective as consumption,
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design thinking is beginning to explore the potential of participation --
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the shift from a passive relationship
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between consumer and producer
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to the active engagement of everyone
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in experiences that are meaningful,
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productive and profitable.
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So I'd like to take the idea that Rory Sutherland talked about,
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this notion that intangible things are worth perhaps more than physical things,
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and take that a little bit further and say that
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I think the design of participatory systems,
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in which many more forms of value
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beyond simply cash
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are both created and measured,
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is going to be the major theme, not only for design,
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but also for our economy as we go forward.
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So William Beveridge, when he wrote the first of his famous reports in 1942,
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created what became Britain's welfare state
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in which he hoped that every citizen
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would be an active participant
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in their own social well-being.
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By the time he wrote his third report,
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he confessed that he had failed
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and instead had created a society of welfare consumers.
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Hilary Cottam, Charlie Leadbeater,
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and Hugo Manassei of Participle
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have taken this idea of participation,
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and in their manifesto entitled Beveridge 4.0,
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they are suggesting a framework
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for reinventing the welfare state.
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So in one of their projects called Southwark Circle,
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they worked with residents in Southwark, South London
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and a small team of designers
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to develop a new membership organization
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to help the elderly with household tasks.
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Designs were refined and developed
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with 150 older people and their families
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before the service was launched earlier this year.
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We can take this idea of participation
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perhaps to its logical conclusion
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and say that design may have its greatest impact
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when it's taken out of the hands of designers
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and put into the hands of everyone.
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Nurses and practitioners at U.S. healthcare system
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Kaiser Permanente
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study the topic of improving the patient experience,
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and particularly focused on the way that they exchange knowledge
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and change shift.
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Through a program of observational research,
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brainstorming new solutions and rapid prototyping,
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they've developed a completely new way to change shift.
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They went from retreating to the nurse's station
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to discuss the various states and needs of patients,
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to developing a system that happened on the ward
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in front of patients, using a simple software tool.
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By doing this they brought the time that they were away from patients
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down from 40 minutes to 12 minutes, on average.
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They increased patient confidence and nurse happiness.
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When you multiply that by all the nurses
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in all the wards in 40 hospitals in the system,
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it resulted, actually, in a pretty big impact.
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And this is just one of thousands
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of opportunities in healthcare alone.
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So these are just some of the kind of basic ideas
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around design thinking
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and some of the new kinds of projects
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that they're being applied to.
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But I'd like to go back to Brunel here,
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and suggest a connection that might explain why this is happening now,
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and maybe why design thinking is a useful tool.
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And that connection is change.
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In times of change we need
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new alternatives, new ideas.
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Now, Brunel worked at the height of the Industrial Revolution,
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when all of life and our economy
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was being reinvented.
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Now the industrial systems of Brunel's time have run their course,
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and indeed they are part of the problem today.
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But, again, we are in the midst of massive change.
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And that change is forcing us to question
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quite fundamental aspects of our society --
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how we keep ourselves healthy, how we govern ourselves,
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how we educate ourselves, how we keep ourselves secure.
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And in these times of change, we need these new choices
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because our existing solutions are simply becoming obsolete.
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So why design thinking?
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Because it gives us a new way of tackling problems.
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Instead of defaulting to our normal convergent approach
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where we make the best choice out of available alternatives,
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it encourages us to take a divergent approach,
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to explore new alternatives, new solutions,
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new ideas that have not existed before.
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But before we go through that process of divergence,
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there is actually quite an important first step.
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And that is, what is the question that we're trying to answer?
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What's the design brief?
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Now Brunel may have asked a question like this,
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"How do I take a train from London to New York?"
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But what are the kinds of questions that we might ask today?
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So these are some that we've been asked to think about recently.
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And one in particular, is one that we're working on with the Acumen Fund,
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in a project that's been funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
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How might we improve access to safe drinking water
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for the world's poorest people,
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and at the same time stimulate innovation
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amongst local water providers?
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So instead of having a bunch of American designers
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come up with new ideas that may or may not have been appropriate,
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we took a sort of more open, collaborative and participative approach.
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We teamed designers and investment experts up with
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11 water organizations across India.
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And through workshops they developed
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innovative new products, services, and business models.
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We hosted a competition
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and then funded five of those organizations
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to develop their ideas.
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So they developed and iterated these ideas.
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And then IDEO and Acumen spent several weeks working with them
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to help design new social marketing campaigns,
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community outreach strategies, business models,
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new water vessels for storing water
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and carts for delivering water.
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Some of those ideas are just getting launched into the market.
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And the same process is just getting underway
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with NGOs in East Africa.
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So for me, this project shows
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kind of how far we can go from
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some of those sort of small things
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that I was working on
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at the beginning of my career.
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That by focusing on the needs of humans
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and by using prototypes
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to move ideas along quickly,
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by getting the process out of the hands of designers,
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and by getting the active participation of the community,
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we can tackle bigger and more interesting questions.
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And just like Brunel, by focusing on systems,
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we can have a bigger impact.
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So that's one thing that we've been working on.
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I'm actually really quite interested, and perhaps more interested
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to know what this community thinks we could work on.
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What kinds of questions do we think
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design thinking could be used to tackle?
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And if you've got any ideas
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then feel free, you can post them to Twitter.
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There is a hash tag there that you can use, #CBDQ.
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And the list looked something like this a little while ago.
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And of course you can search to find the questions that you're interested in
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by using the same hash code.
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So I'd like to believe that design thinking
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actually can make a difference,
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that it can help create new ideas
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and new innovations,
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beyond the latest High Street products.
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To do that I think we have to take a more expansive view of design,
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more like Brunel, less a domain of a professional priesthood.
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And the first step is to start asking the right questions.
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Thank you very much.
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(Applause)
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