Pro-AM Design = Innovation (Leadbeater TED Presentation)

Design is a very powerful tool. It elevates the likelihood of certain kinds of choices and shapes certain kinds of behaviours. Most designers balk at the idea that design is a form of social engineering, but Hilary Cottam, director of RED at the UK Design Council, maintains that "if you don't look at what any design is governing, then you are being governed by it." She continues: "The question for us is how do we find out what the effects of design are and make sure we're using those for social justice." So in our diabetes example, we can reasonably ask, How might things be different if the power of design was deployed to keep us healthy and fit?

As Charles Leadbeater puts it: "Design used to be done by specialists for users. From now on, in a growing number of fields, design will be done with users and by them." In this context the designer is becoming the facilitator, the enabler, rather than the dictator of what people themselves want to do.

Click and Listen or View the TED presentation.

Leadbeater explains very clearly the power of the Web 2.0 paradigm.

This is a must hear/view presentation.

The bottomline - most of our innovation will come outside our walls.

Perhaps this is exactly what Einstein had in mind when he said; "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."