Recipes for Systemic Change - Helsinki Design Lab

Foreword17Helsinki Design Lab's activities are also interdisciplinaryin just the right way. Working in a crosscutting mannerrequires time so that people are able to understand eachother's language. Here the investment in just enough timespent together yields returns too.And finally, I like the way that the Helsinki Design Labrecognises that effective innovation needs a client, and needsto understand the client's needs. In some cases the clients willbe paying customers. In others they will be a part of government.Bringing them in upstream makes it more likely thatthe end result will be used and useful.This particular model won’t be the last word. We're nowliving through a period of intensive innovation in innovationpractices, with everything from meetings to collaborativeplatforms, prototypes to funds, being adapted and playedwith to see what works best for turning ideas into reality.Finland has shown itself to be particular good at exploringthe future, both culturally and in terms of tools. Thisbook is a great confirmation of just how well placed it is tothink its way out of the profound challenges our world nowfaces.John Maynard Keynes once wrote that governments hateto be well-informed because it makes the process of decisionmakingso much more complex. The same could be said ofthe best design methods. But our aspiration in all of thisshould be to avoid both simplicity and complexity. Instead weshould follow the injunction of Oliver Wendell Holmes whoonce wrote:“I wouldn't give a fig for the simplicityon this side of complexity; I would givemy life for the simplicity on the far sideof complexity.”Geoff MulganCEO, NESTALondon, July 2011