Denmark is really unfair sometimes … Sigh.

I’ll let Marco speak for himself, but you may want to check out some of the other posts on this blog which clarify a bit of our thinking on the term “strategic design.” We absolutely see strategic design located at the nexus of an interdisciplinary exchange. We’re ultimately invested in design as an aid to decision making, a way to frame problems and evaluate a course of action. At HDL we do not believe in the old model of a genius designer locked away in their atelier. For us, design is always a social act that is necessarily in collaboration with a wide variety of stakeholders specific to the issue at hand.

In contrast to Tim Brown’s design thinking, we’re interested in building longer-term partnerships between designers and ‘problem havers.’ In addition to helping non-designers develop a “designerly way of knowing,” we see a need for the “embedded designer,” one that maintains a persistent involvement in helping unpack problems as well as develop approaches for solving them.

There’s a bit more here and here.

And we’re very curious to hear about your work as a consultative economist. Please share! We’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about public procurement issues in Europe, in particular.

First of all, I wish all the bet to HDL2010 initiative. I’ve just discovered this blog and I will follow it. Just in order to clarify concepts (at least for me), when you talk about strategic design, are you talking about what Tim Brown calls design thinking? Are these similar concepts? I remember I recently read an article of Tim Brown where he said design is too important to leave it to designers As an economist and innovation consultant, I think strategic design in the terms you explain could be an opportunity to introduce interdisciplinary collaboration in many fields, where designers, anthropologues, engineers, even economists, could bring their knowledge to tackle challenges you mention by using strategic design method. What do you think about it?

Looking forward to hearing from you. Kind regards

Jordi

Nice to hear that you keep searching and this time getting on with the social realities of the Global South. HDL2010 is looking more and more promising… Well done!

At first I couldn’t think of anything interesting to offer you (I am at the UN-Habitat Headquarters and as far as I know they generate lots of good things -also lots of “completely useless internal dynamics” like a friend puts it- but it’s all very old school). In general to talk about design thinking in Nairobi sounds simply like… wishful thinking?

But yesterday (as we are preparing the UN Pavilion for the Shanghai Expo 2010) I came across this:

United Nations “Creative Economy for Development” Programme
Programme Coordinator: Francisco Simplicio francisco.simplicio(at)undp.org
United Nations Development Programme

I don’t know anything about this programme, but it sounds like you may want to check it out.

Regards,
Carlos

Thanks for the kind words. We’re very curious if you know any projects going on in Nairobi or elsewhere in Africa that are along this line of thinking. Please send some suggestions if you have any!