Recipes for Systemic Change - Helsinki Design Lab

Afterword byMikko KosonenPresident, Sitra,The Finnish Innovation Fund137This book is really more of an ‘opening chapter’ in abroader story about the potential value of strategic designto government, the public sector and to public life. As youhave seen, its particular focus is in distilling the essenceof the Helsinki Design Lab Studio Model, an approachthat is beginning to quietly enrich Sitra’s activities.I was fortunate enough to be involved in several of 2010’sStudios, as a guest and stakeholder at the ‘Final Review’ stagedescribed here.There, I began to see how strategic design might helptransform the at times elusive world of policy-making andgovernance. The tone of the studio conversations were differentsomehow, with previously impossible challenges suddenlybeing transformed in a more positive light, with a sense ofagility and constructive suggestion. Though proposals wereoften sketchy and incomplete, I felt that the terrain hadshifted; moving from convoluted issues with many reasonsfor a quick ‘no’, to a balanced portfolio of practical yet imaginativeproposals as to what could be done instead.In our book Fast Strategy 1 , Yves Doz and I described thevalue of strategic agility in possessing “an ongoing capabilityfor real-time strategic sensitivity, quick collective commitments,and fast and strong resource redeployment”. Thecombination of these approaches—in conjunction with, itmust be said, design-led innovation—has radically transformedentire business sectors in recent years.Yet recent business history is also littered with examplesof firms answering the wrong questions or of proving incapableof responding to rapidly changing ecosystems and thestructural challenges of digitalisation, globalisation, andderegulation. In many cases these firms were weighed downby inertia and uncertainty.Increasingly, governments in developed nations are alsofacing structural challenges. As globalisation makes statesmore interdependent, the internal ties that have boundthem together in the past have been loosened by shifts indemographics, resources, culture and values, changingthe landscape considerably. The ability to make long-terminvestments to address these changes—and perhaps thebiggest change of all, to our climate—is actually threatened1—Doz, Yves L., and MikkoKosonen. Fast Strategy: HowStrategic Agility Will Help YouStay Ahead of the Game.