Keynote Conference: "The Big Picture - Integrating Systems Thinking with Design" Dr. Pourdehnad, University of Pennsylvania.

The Big Picture – Integrating Systems Thinking With Design

John Pourdehnad, Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania

The Third International Congress of System Sciences July 7, 2011

Mexican Academy of The Systems Sciences Universidad Iberoamericana,

Mexico, D.F.

Design Thinking Is A Failed

Experiment. So What's Next?

Bruce Nussbaum, one of Design Thinking's biggest advocates, is moving on to something

new. Here, he begins defining "Creative Quotient.”

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663558/design-thinking-is-a-failed-experiment-so-whats-next

Design

• Design, as an activity, has been around forever.

• Almost everything around us, except for nature, has been designed

• An approach to make purposeful change in social systems

Design & Its Consequences

• Design in all its manifestation has greatly helped our human societies to make extraordinary progress in every aspect of human life

• At the same time, many of our societal woes are also the unintended and unacceptable consequences of our design activities.

Design & Its Consequences

(Cont’d)

• Today, we are confronted with many wicked problems in the world that refuse to go away.

• These include environmental, economic and political crises that threaten to lower the quality of life for many.

Systems Thinking

• Systems Thinking is rather new

• It was developed in the early 1950s

• A new mindset and a perspective to better understand the world and tackle it’s ever more complex problems

So what is being done today?

• First, there is gradual acknowledgment of the existence of diverse organizational contexts (simple, complicated and complex) that require different approaches to planning, management, leadership and problem solving.

Snowden’s Decision Making

Context

• Simple : The Domain of Best Practice

• Complicated : The Domain of Experts

• Complex : The Domain of Emergence

• Chaotic : The Domain of Rapid Response

» Source: David J. Snowden, Mary E. Boone, “A

Leader's Framework for Decision Making,” Harvard Business Review Article, Nov 1, 2007

9

The Cynefin Framework

IBM 2010 CEO Study

The Case for Complexity

Mark Schenk from Anecdote uses Pecha Kucha format to describe complexity using the Cynefin framework

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUJviaTi7VA&feature=related

From To

Management Leadership

Predict and Forecast Anticipate

Analyze Data Recognize Patterns

Simplify – “KISS” See and Deal With The Whole

Pay Attention To Details Pay Attention To Relationships

Rational Thinking Intuitive Thinking

Learn a Skill Training Nurture Cognitive abilities

Think Algorithmically Think Heuristically

Analytical Thinking (scientific, based

on induction and deduction thinking)

Design Thinking (based on abduction

thinking)

Different Approaches to Planning,

Management and Leadership

Design Thinking

• This process of thinking, purportedly leading

to systematic creative breakthroughs, is

known as design thinking – a topic sweeping

through management science like a tsunami.

• One of the central tenets of design thinking is

the importance of combining existing ideas in

unique ways.

All People Are Designers

• Design is basic to all human activity.

• Design is the conscious effort to impose meaningful order

• The planning and patterning of any act towards a desired, foreseeable end constitutes the design process

• All that we do, almost all the time, is design

• Any attempt to separate design, to make it a “thing-by-itself”, works counter to the inherent value of design as the primary underlying matrix of life

Design Thinking

• While design thinking may be the topic de

jour within the domain of business, the

process of creation through combination has

a long history.

• In his 1964 book, The Act of Creation,

Koestler writes, “Invention or discovery, be it

in mathematics or anywhere else, takes place

by combining ideas”

Where Good Ideas Come From?

by Steven Johnson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPFU

Where Good Ideas Come From?

• If one particular style of thought stands out for creative

geniuses, it is the ability to make juxtapositions that elude mere mortals. Call it a facility to connect the unconnected by forcing relationships that enable them to see things to which others are blind” (Michalko, “Thinking like a genius” )

• “…combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.” Certainly, Einstein was not the first to investigate energy, mass or light. However, he was the first to combine them in such a unique way when he derived his famous equation E = mc2.

Design thinking

• New research suggests that creative genius is, at least in part,

based on knowing “how” to think instead of “what” to think

• Design thinking gives organizations a competitive advantage because it encourages innovation by teaching “how” to think instead of “what” to think. Today’s companies are too large and complex to be managed in the “top down” style popular in the 20th Century.

• Our education system focuses almost entirely on analytical thinking which uses inductive and deductive logic. While these are undoubtedly important, for the United States to remain competitive, schools need to teach student to think synthetically and creatively.

Design Thinking

The designers who can solve the most wicked problems do it

through collaborative integrative thinking, using abductive logic,

which means the logic of what might be. Conversely, deductive

and inductive logic are the logic of what should be or what is.

In traditional organizations do you get rewarded for thinking

about what might be? Encouraged? No . . . these firms can only

do what they know how to do and constraints are the enemy—

as opposed to the design firm, where constraints bring

challenge and excitement.

Source: Design Thinking and How It Will Change Management Education: An

Interview and Discussion DAVID DUNNE ROGER MARTIN, Joseph L. Rotman

School of Management.

Web 2.0 (Enterprise 2.0)

• As the economy becomes increasingly

knowledge-based and global, where the core

values are mass collaboration and innovation,

new technologies and broader and richer

channels of communication allow for

organizational stakeholders to combine their

knowledge to inspire fresh ideas and realize

new opportunities.

Web 2.0 (Enterprise 2.0)

• Enterprise 2.0, a system-wide

enabling technology that facilitates the participation of an organization’s stakeholders and employees in the process of creating a successful business model.

Central Question Facing

Management

• In today’s knowledge-based economy, an

organization’s value is increasingly derived from its intellectual assets. The challenge of creating value through the engagement of the stakeholders in design activities in “business model” innovation is paramount. Therefore, the central question facing management is: How can business opportunities and value be created from the knowledge that resides within individuals and organizations?

Open Innovation

• Innovation is a process that takes place somewhere

in your organization, or perhaps in someone’s mind.

The result, in any case, can be an insight, a new

idea, a product, a strategy, or perhaps a new

business model.

• The word “innovation” refers to an attribute, a

process, and a result. This innovativeness refers to

its distinctiveness, its originality, perhaps its

usefulness, and most importantly its value

Open Innovation

• To be considered an innovation in business, the

result must be increased value in the form of new or

improved functionality, reduced cost, a price increase

(good for the seller), a price decrease (good for the

buyer), better margin for the seller, or some

combination of these.

Open Innovation

• Until now, closed innovation was the paradigm in

which most firms operated. • Most innovating companies kept their discoveries highly secret and

made no attempt to assimilate information from outside their

own R&D labs.

• However, in recent years the world has seen major

advances in technology and society, which have

facilitated the diffusion of information. • Not the least of these advances are electronic communication systems,

including the Internet.

Open Innovation

• Open Innovation is a term promoted by Henry

Chesbrough:

• “Open innovation is the use of purposive inflows and

outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal

innovation, and expand the markets for external use

of innovation, respectively. [This paradigm] assumes

that firms can and should use external ideas as well

as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to

market, as they look to advance their technology.”

Crowdsourcing

• Companies across varied industries have

extended their search for innovation beyond

their own walls by engaging in dialogs with

disparate sources of ideas including

consumers, partners and even competitors.

One popular method of gathering ideas from

external sources is through the use of

“crowdsourcing” which collect

Crowdsourcing Examples

http://www.innocentive.com/

http://www.ninesigma.com/

An Example of Crowdsourcing

Systems Thinking as an

Alternative Mindset

• Quote by Einstein that says: "We can't solve

problems by using the same kind of thinking we used

when we created them."

• The value of systems thinking is being recognized as

a powerful alternative point of view that incorporates

synthetic thinking in addition to the traditional

analytical thinking, and affords us with a long view to

anticipate how a particular solution will play out over

time.

Systems Thinking: What is a

System?

• Def. – System

– Whole which consists

of a set of two or

more parts

– Three requirements:

• Each part must affect

behavior

• All parts must be

interconnected

• All subsets must effect

behavior, none can

act independently

Definition of Systems Thinking

• Systems thinking is a “holistic approach to

understanding that focuses on the way

that a system's constituent parts interrelate

and how systems work over time and

within the context of larger systems:” • (searchcio.techtarget.com)

• In order to understand systems thinking,

we must first understand systems…

Steps to a Systems Approach

• Synthesis & Analysis

– Synthesis = putting things together

– Analysis = taking things apart

• 3 Steps

(1)Identify a containing whole (system) of which

the thing to be explained is a part

(2)Explain the behavior or properties of the

containing whole

(3)Then explain the behavior or properties of

the thing to be explained in terms of its role(s)

or function(s) within its containing whole

Analytical and Synthetic

Thinking

• Analytical Thinking

– The object/idea to be explained is

considered a whole to be taken apart

– Example: Integrating by parts in calculus

• Synthetic Thinking

– The object/idea to be explained is

considered a part of a larger whole

– Comparable to systems thinking

– Example: Observing a Rolex for both its

intrinsic and extrinsic values

From Mechanistic

Thinking

To Social Systems

Thinking

Analysis (An explanation of the whole derived from explanation

of its parts.)

Synthesis (An explanation of the whole derived from explanation

explaining the role of the system in the larger system of

which it is a part.)

Reductionism (The belief that everything can be reduced.)

Expansionism (The system is always a sub-system of some lager system.)

Cause and Effect (Environmental free theory of explanation, a cause

needs to both necessary and sufficient in order to have

the corresponding effect.)

Producer–Product (Environmental full theory of explanation as opposed to

cause and effect where the importance of the environment is

stressed.)

Determinism (Fatalism, prior condition )

Indeterminism (Probabilistic, observe and discover.)

Research (The embodiment of the above to arrive at instructions

based on theory.)

Design (The embodiment of the above to facilitate learning.

Designing the whole systems means creating a system

configuration that is optimum.)

Change in Method of Inquiry

In Conclusion!

• Evidence shows that systems thinking

integrated with design thinking is the

appropriate mindset and methodology

for coping with highly complex

situations.