What is NextD? We wondered if it might be possible for a small team of practicing designers to help speed the rate of adaptation, by graduate design education, to the radical events unfolding at the leading edge of the marketplace, that are impacting creative leadership, design leadership, innovation leadership today. We optimistically guessed that it might be possible and if it wasn’t, finding out seemed like interesting research! To undertake that experiment, we created the NextD initiative and the NextDesign Leadership Institute. To help raise awareness regarding how the challenges of cross-disciplinary innovation leadership have radically changed at the leading edge of the marketplace and how those changes are impacting designers. At the core of NextD is the belief that the traditional model of design leadership needs to be radically reinvented to better adapt to a radically changed marketplace. The ultimate goal of NextD is to help expand designs’ reach. In all great transformations we find need for sense making and the design of understanding. Given our backgrounds this is not surprising! For this purpose we often create Mindscapes in the form of stories, maps, diagrams and various visual mental constructs. From time to time we will post some NextD examples here in the Mindscapes section of this site. Recently, we were reflecting on NextD and the broader movement underway in the design community to create paths into the future for design. It occurred to us that underneath all of the turmoil in the industry is really a struggle to redesign the meaning that connects to the word design. To get there some have begun making transparent the need for redesign and that is often a rocky road. At NextD we consider this to be part of new pattern creation work, spanning multiple dimensions and constituencies. By that I mean we understand our community is now engaged in not only the redesign of meaning patterns but also of opportunity patterns, practice patterns, education patterns and ultimately leadership patterns as they each connect to the word design. Next design seems to be in that awkward phase where none of the new pieces yet align. If there is new meaning, there is not yet new education. If there is new opportunity, there is not yet new practice. If there is new practice there is not yet trained talent. Needless to say it will take some time to get all of the parts aligned and like all large transformation efforts, we might not all be on this train when that occurs. Of course when that moment arrives it will likely be time to begin starting over. As each month goes by it becomes clear to us that multitudes of futures are now possible for design. I guess we are still hoping that which futures arrive for design might depend on which ones each of us chooses to constructively work on. In Mindscapes we float some examples of and from the future we are working on. Watch for future updates as we are working on the next revolution of NextD. The NextD initiative is an extension of our previous work in the area of cross-disciplinary innovation acceleration. NextD is built on the understanding that once you go cross-disciplinary you leave behind much of the logic and many of the tools that were created in the old vertically constructed design disciplines. At the tabletop level of human-to-human interaction, the impact of going cross-disciplinary on learned behaviors, communication and process cannot likely be overstated. NextD is discipline agnostic and focused primarily on HOW (Process) rather than WHAT (Content). We work at the level of foundational pattern language for what we call Proactive Problem Solving. That language and the interconnected toolkit can be adapted to any challenge condition. Knowledge of that pattern language can inform all specialized problem solving process types, including Architecture, Industrial Design, Communication Design, Environmental Design, Experience Design, eBusiness Design, Organizational Systems Design, Strategy Design, etc. The logic of NextD Leadership is built on an inclusive innovation model where both Pattern Creating and Pattern Optimizing are equally valued parts of the innovation equation. This model directly connects the innovation building blocks of Teams, Process, Information and Environments. We call the alignment of those building blocks, NextD Harmonics. Don’t get hung up on whether opportunity framing is different than
problem solving or whether so called “wicked problems” are
different than “tame problems”. We consider all to be part
of NextD awareness and skill. While we continue to add to our toolset,
we already have tools in place to equip NextD Leaders to tackle virtually
any kind of complex cross-disciplinary challenge. Our focus is the mastery
of HOW rather than WHAT. A future that has already arrived! One of the least studied and understood complexities of the design business is what happens when members of one tribe (discipline) have to leave their own protected environment to tackle complex problems with others from equally significant tribes. The mix of these dynamics, taking place everyday in the real world of design and business became, years ago, one of our passions, our underlying interests, and an integral part of our own ongoing work. From our perspective there is no question that a future where increasingly complex unframed problems are addressed by multidisciplinary teams has already arrived. Operating in that future we have seen enormous challenges and opportunities for design. Although that future is well underway at the leading edge of the marketplace we still see much of design education lagging far behind in terms of realization, acknowledgement and preparation of graduates for this complex, multidisciplinary reality. We do see realization, acknowledgement and preparation outside of design education. More than five years ago we started to see leading Graduate Business Schools, such as Harvard and McMaster update their MBA programs to equip graduates with skills to lead increasingly complex problem solving projects. Some like Harvard have also introduced product design and development awareness into their MBA programs. For some time we have been interested in this question: When multiple disciplines, from inside and outside of design, get together to address complex problems… Who leads? Who follows? Who does the brain work? Who does the hand work? Who participates from the beginning? Who is asked to jump in later, and why? What impact does that “why” have on the unfolding future of design? Certainly from inside the business of multidisciplinary work we could see the question of who leads already under attack. In much of our previous work with large organizations we have been in a position to intervene, to make sure design was represented at the table from the outset. We recognized however that in the broader community and for many designers, no such intervention mechanism existed. Recognizing the broad ramifications of such shifts for design in the marketplace we decided not to wait for others to recognize the problem. Drawing from our work in the area of multidisciplinary innovation acceleration we decided to create a small, practice-driven initiative and called it NextD. Copyright © 2002-2008 NextDesign Leadership Institute. All Rights Reserved. |