Recipes for Systemic Change - Helsinki Design Lab

94 The HDL Studio ModelCriterion #1: ImportanceIdeally the topic you select will be relevant to your entireorganization, not just your team. Topics which matter toothers in your organization will make it easier for you to leanon the full resources available to you in-house. This generallymakes your life easier!Criterion #2: RelevanceOn a conceptual level, thinking about who the topic mattersto is a way to test the broadness of your topic, and on amore practical level it impacts your ability to recruit Studiomembers. In line with Sitra’s mission we selected Finland asour sphere and looked for topics that were simultaneouslyrelevant to Finland and the world, even if Finland’s interestsin the themes are unique. For instance, although the forestryindustry is fundamentally important to Finland, it is a themewith more narrow appeal outside this country and it wouldbe harder to develop a diverse international team. You willwant Studio members from outside your immediate spherebecause they are best able to see the things that insiders areblind to by habit, but unless the Studio topic is relevant tothese people you will have a hard time recruiting them.Criterion #3: NetworkabilityAssessing your ability to build a network around the topicis a way of thinking about how much of an uphill battle itwill be to prepare for the Studio. If you do not already havea strong network of stakeholders, or access to one, you canexpect to spend significantly longer establishing these connectionsin your brief writing and Studio planning activities.This will naturally extend the timeline of that work and, insome cases, may prove to be insurmountable. In our experiencewith the HDL Ageing Studio, the necessity of buildinga network from scratch increased the ramp-up time for theStudio by a factor of about 1.5 as we acquired a basic understandingof the important issues sufficient enough to identifyrelevant stakeholders and build relationships with them.Criterion #4: ScaleRich topics occupy a sweet spot between being too broador too specific. Whereas criteria 1-3 are primarily useful indetermining how difficult your task will be as the organizerof a Studio, criterion 4 affects the outcomes. Topics whichsatisfy criterion 4 have a richness that results from theirbalanced scale. For example, new concepts for low-energybuilding are certainly relevant to Finland and many other