Creating the future we actually want.
at the start of this year
i was running a workshop on sustainable
innovation inspired by nature
this workshop was for master students in
product design
and it was part of a bigger assignment
from the school which had a special
requirement
the students had to project themselves
50 years from now
and create two radically different
designs they were solving the same
problem
naturally the students had to create a
scenario to imagine the society from
2070
and in order to create two very
different solutions
they thought they would create two
extreme scenarios
one would be a utopia and the other one
a dystopia
the day they presented their designs and
the process they concluded that they had
actually ended up creating two dystopias
now this is a problem because if
designers
cannot imagine a better future for us
then we’re in pretty bad shape
i don’t blame them though this is
something that we’re all struggling with
for one failure is easier to imagine
failure we know we can achieve success
however
requires a lot of effort a lot of
imagination and creativity
and it evolves a lot of uncertainties as
well
creating a positive vision and
sustaining it in the face of adversity
requires courage and grit
if you look around you the news the
movies and series
a lot of the media we’re exposed to is
playing on our fears
stimulating our primitive survival
instincts
our lizard brain instead of inspiring us
and creating
a positive mindset we need to change our
mindsets to create better designs
and for that we need to tell better
stories
we need narratives that focus on what
can be done
on positive visions and possibilities
rather than painting how bad things are
or could become
along the same lines trans have received
an incredible amount of focus
and have a tendency to decide what we
invest in and what we’re designed for
somehow along the way it seems we have
forgotten how to think
critically and question those trends
and more importantly ask what future do
we wish for
what is the future you want to see
you have to design for this because if
you don’t
trends become self-fulfilling prophecies
rather than framing
how things could evolve and many trends
depict a future that we don’t even want
so question trends tell better stories
design the future you dream of
we are all designers there is a famous
designer victor papanek
who said that we’re all designers
because the mere act of planning for a
desired goal
is at the heart of the design process
we all have the responsibility and
ability
to design the future we would like to
live in
and to do so to be effective designers
of the future
we need to hone our empathy skills
empathy is a muscle that we need to
train more and better
it allows us to better understand the
effects of what we do
on the rest of the system we belong to
empathy allows us to understand our
place in our ecosystem
it allows us to relate to others and to
our environment
it is an essential skill for handling
complexity and we all know our world has
become a lot more complex
so i think we need some sort of a new
renaissance
we need to revisit what we know from a
different angle
and change the paradigm we need to break
down silos
and build empathy for fields other than
the ones we specialize in
if we are to build a better future with
a circular economy
or even better a regenerative one then
it is absolutely essential
that we understand how others function
how other parts of the system operate
how we interact with each other how we
influence
each other so we can create better
solutions
back in the days people like leonardo da
vinci were polymath
you find their works in arts physics
biology
or technology they had a deeper
understanding of many fields
rather than specializing in just one
and to some extent this is something we
need to get back to
we need to break down silos and learn to
better think in systems
now unlike what happened in the previous
renaissance
the new paradigm we will build should
reconnect us
with nature rather than placing us above
it
or outside of it after all
we humans are nature too we belong to it
and we need to better understand our
place in it in order to improve the
current situation
there is a lot of wisdom in nature and
we ought to look at it
more often and get inspired by it to
solve our problems
sustainable innovation inspired by
nature is also called biomimicry
simply put biomimicry means mimicking
life
it’s about looking at nature and
extracting its wisdom
to try and solve challenges in a
sustainable way
and in many ways nature should be our
reference
what would it look like if we could
harness the sun’s energy
the way nature does with photosynthesis
transforming co2 and water into usable
energy
by only using biodegradable and
renewable components
artificial photosynthesis is on its way
not yet with biodegradable components
though
here’s another interesting example did
you know
that nature still holds the record for
the toughest ceramics out there
there is a sea snail called abalone that
creates its shell
from elements surrounding it in the
water
it builds it at ambient temperature and
that shell
is a ceramic that is twice as tough as
our most technical ones
and ours require mining and far more
energy to produce
so how about we make nature our
benchmark for our designs
biomimicry is not always complicated and
i’ll give you a simple example
millions of birds die every year from
crashing into windows
because they see a prolongation of the
sky in their reflection
orni lux is a product that is solving
this problem
through a simple biomimetic application
did you know that spiders weave into
their webs a chemical that is highly uv
reflective
well it turns out that birds see uv
light
and that makes the spider webs highly
visible to them
and therefore they don’t crash in them
and don’t destroy them
ornillux windows are inspired from this
they consist of an added layer with a uv
reflective pattern on it
so that birds don’t crash into the
windows while we
not seeing uv light still see through
the window
as if it was a regular one
another smart implementation from
nature’s wisdom is
chocolate a synthetic surface which
tackles the problem
of bacterial growth the product is
inspired from shark skin
scientists were wondering why some very
slow-moving sharks
did not get any organisms growing on
their skin
they found out it was due to a
structural pattern on the skin
that makes it uncomfortable for bacteria
and other organisms
to grow on it and chocolate is using a
similar pattern
that can be applied on surfaces in
hospitals for instance
to avoid germs growth
aside from products there is a lot we
can learn from nature
about organizations and leadership
we can for instance look at how
effective superorganisms like bees and
ant colonies function
or they can take inspiration from the
ballot of starlings
those birds that gracefully dance in the
skies with thousands of individuals
flying close to each other without ever
crashing
and no leader structuring the group
some of the principles behind those
super organisms
are at the core of the extreme
efficiency of companies like bertsoch
a neighborhood nurses organization in
the netherlands
that counts over 15 000 nurses and not a
single manager
as you see there is much to learn from
nature
and biomimicry is an essential tool to
not only create
better solutions but also better
narratives
we all naturally attracted by nature
fascinated by it
when we’re in nature we get a sense of
well-being
we just need to learn to reconnect with
it
in a workshop with some other design
students
i started the session by asking them to
close their eyes and imagine their life
30 years from now i wanted them to
picture how they dreamed it would look
like
how they would want to live when they
share their vision
guess how many mention anything related
to technology
zero many refer to slow living and being
close to nature
so how about we use technology as an
enabler
of the future we want as something that
actually supports
our well-being rather than something we
use to pursue some vain goals
forgetting about the bigger picture
are three things i would like you to
take away from this talk
one tell better stories challenge trends
change the narrative to make it positive
two build more empathy
not only because it’s good for society
but also because this skill
allows us to better handle complexity
and thinking systems
three reconnect with nature and learn
from it
solve your challenges now
go out and create the future you
actually want to live in
thank you
you