Category Archives: Think

Thoughtful engagement, deep reflection, intellectual or academic topics

Business Model Innovation for Social Entrepreneurship

Written by . Posted on April 25, 2012. Filed under Act, Think. Tagged , , . No comments.

How can social organizations thrive in a post-funding society?

A special innovation circle session was held with Maya Roy and the Newcomer Women’s Services Toronto.  Through turbulent economic times, Maya and staff leadership grew a team of committed members and made the organization a successful NGO for helping new families settle into Toronto. With impending budget cuts, they are faced with an immediate need to change their business model from a publicly supported service to a social entrepreneurial model.

York University’s Antony Upward presented the “Strongly Sustainable” Business Model Canvas (an innovation of the BMG canvas) the framework for group ideation and collaborative design. In large and small group sessions, the group explored innovation of business and revenue models, service provision, new relationships and communications channels.  As the first public unveiling of the research and design of the  “strongly sustainable” business model, we gained valuable and practical feedback on the applications of the new approach.

Generating one group’s model based on its “What If” starting point (orange label).

Sharing the group’s model with the whole and Antony collecting and aggregating the unique values of each in a common map.

Our apologies to any who found it difficult to locate the session – we held DwD at OCAD University’s graduate studies campus, 205 Richmond St. for one time only.

Long-term Thinking

Written by . Posted on February 7, 2012. Filed under Think. Tagged , . No comments.

LENGTH MATTERS:
How might we bring a long-term perspective to near-term decisions?

Consumers, organizational leaders and politicians make daily decisions that will affect our families, communities, prosperity and habitat for decades into the future. How would our culture and world be different if we made decisions in consideration of the well-being of our children’s children, rather than only looking at the next tweet, fiscal quarter or electoral cycle?

February’s DwD explored approaches to over-coming “short-termism” with a long-term view to make our resources and systems more sustainable.

  • Unpack the assumptions that keep us locked into a short time frame
  • See what our decisions might look like if framed in a long view
  • Explore how a values shift might reframe our perspective
  • Jam ideas on new incentive structures that could influence our behaviour

References:

 Images from the session

How do our values drive our decisions? How might that skew us towards a short-term view?

 

 

What incentive structures might shift values such that our decisions will consider a long-term view?

Designing a Future for our Future: Personal Foresight

Written by . Posted on January 11, 2012. Filed under Dream, Think. Tagged , , . 1 Comment.

Get ready for The Multiplicity.

This workshop engaged participants to co-create multiple personal futures in large and small group collaboration. This social design experiment in personal foresight generated the creation of possible personal scenarios for the challenging next-future term possibilities. We started by creating a personal profile for the Low Tech Social Network. Communities listed on the profiles were shared in the closing circle to co-create a living network among the participants.

An amazing array of participants were involved, suggesting that DwD is reaching beyond its business + creatives + designerly roots. More and more people from dedicated social change communities are engaged and returning. While businesses can benefit from and afford these creative group processes, social change agents need to learn from each other. A community across communities is forming.

The event was framed by the question of considering the multiple futures we have choice to create. When we think of the future, we tend to push a vague collection of dreams, possibilities and wishes out to a speculative point in the years following the nearest term. We can guess about the world in two years, we can plan for 5 years, but 10 and 20 years challenge personal vision. Our concept was to confront the future opportunities for humanity, by learning to position our own inherent multiplicities as creative narratives to counter a technologically-determined future, whether a career ideal or the “singularity.”

The venue supported the creation of a circle and pairs for the exercises:

  • Values conflicts at the Crossroads
  • 3 Whys of 3 Values: Core values, Calling values, Contra values
  • Mapping Values to Actions
  • Mapping Value-Actions to future possibilities in the Pathway template

The workshop was convened by Peter Jones and Patricia Kambitsch (visual reflection) at The Design Exchange  Feb 24th in the DX boardroom as part of the Toronto Design Week Design Offsite Festival.

 

The Meta-Design of Dialogues as Inquiring Systems

Written by . Posted on December 30, 2011. Filed under Think. Tagged , , . 2 Comments.

About 30 participants attended the first DwD of 2012 (Jan 11). This educational session explored the relationship of systems inquiry to dialogue. Small groups facilitated their own learning to identify knowledge profiles and to design dialogic inquiries that would best address a selected area of concern.

There’s a multitude of ways to conduct dialogues.  Which approach will be most appropriate for attaining desired outcomes among different groups?  This DwD engaged systems thinking for some foundations, with an overview of C. West Churchman’s design of inquiring systems.  With these foundations, participants (dialogue designers) sharpened their appreciation of alternative modes and techniques.  More open dialogic approaches might (or might not) be preferred over more bounded and structured approaches, under different conditions.  Theory was translated into reflective practice through group exercises. The session started by generating a range of concerns and ideas for inquiry. These were selected by groups for further

About the Convener

David Ing is president (2011-2012) of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, an organization with members with interests crossing disciplinary boundaries (e.g. social systems, technological systems, biological systems, ecological systems).  In that role, he is designing the program for the ISSS annual meeting (in San Jose, CA in July 2012), and working with the Systems Science Working Group of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE).  Over the past year, he developed new courses in systems thinking for the Master’s in Creative Sustainability at Aalto University in Finland.  He is a visiting fellow with University of Hull (UK), an itinerant scholar with the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and previously a cofounder of the Canadian Centre for Marketing Information Technologies (C2MIT) at the University of Toronto.  David has had a continuous 27-year career with IBM, with home base in Toronto.  He can be found on the Internet at http://coevolving.com

A Question of Questions

Written by . Posted on August 31, 2011. Filed under Dream, Think. Tagged , . No comments.

Can a powerful question change the world? Why do some questions motivate people to deeply reflect and act?

The creation and sharing of a catalyzing question is a generative act, it creates a point of view. Such a true question provokes a deep response and outlook. Great questions are the inspiration of research, journalism, strategy, and our imagining of alternative futures.

September’s DwD session inquired into the “question of questions.”  We practice different methods and arts of the question, and explore the impact of powerful questions in dialogue.

We can see this principle in action around us. Companies, innovations, and social movements can start with a leader’s question that inspires others to get involved. People living in a question invite us to answer that question with action.

Such is the pull of the powerful question.

The session presented three challenges to participants:

1. The Question Game – Conduct three conversations entirely in questions.

2. Inquiry into: What is the process and practice of asking questions?

Based on asking the following three questions:

  • What is the function of a question?
  • What is the effect of a question on the person being asked?
  • What kinds of questions have “potential” or the potency to open experience?

The comprehensive dialogue sketch was composed throughout the evening by Patricia Kambitsch, Playthink.

3. How might your questions shape an intentional future?

Writing and sharing powerful questions, which appeared on the board as:

Participation was engaged by a group of 30, at least half of whom were new to DwD. We appreciate the energized attendance!


ABOUT THE HOST. Peter Jones is a senior fellow of the Strategic Innovation Lab and teaches in the Strategic Foresight and Innovation graduate program at OCADU. He is managing partner of Dialogic Design International, a network firm that guides strategic dialogue to help clients navigate complex decisions and plans, and re-envision effective futures for planning and organizational design. Peter founded Redesign, Inc. an innovation research company based in Toronto. Redesign conducts ethnographic and design research to guide innovations consistent with advancing systemic change in organizations, social systems and markets.

 

The Toronto Star: Dialogue on Thriving in a Changing News World

Written by . Posted on April 12, 2011. Filed under Dream, Think. Tagged , , . 1 Comment.

DwD hosted John Cruickshank (Publisher) and Kate Collins (Product Director, Star Media Group – Digital) from The Toronto Star for a special community design workshop. This was a DwD “innovation fishbowl” that explored the future of news media in a changing media landscape. The framing of the evening was:

What might the Toronto Star look like in the future as a dynamic and thriving content platform that effectively serves a range of audiences from loyal traditionalists who are used to paying for a singular authoritative newspaper product to younger ‘digital natives’ who participate in real-time news and meaningful content from a distributed network of sources utilizing a variety of devices?

The session unpacked the context, trends, audiences, and possible approaches for The Star to take with its platform to continue with its civic imperative and remain a thriving commercial business.

Results of the session are not provided publicly, as this was an invitational event and was held for the benefit of aiding the Star in its strategic innovation by drawing on the experience and intellectual and creative diversity of the DwD community.

 

Transilience: Adapting urban living for a changing future

Written by . Posted on March 6, 2011. Filed under Act, Think. Tagged , , . No comments.

A special Design with Dialogue event was held in conjunction with the 2011 McLuhan Centenary and U of Toronto’s KMDI, as a panel and participatory workshop in which the public is invited to engage the questions:

  • How are ecological changes moving us toward planning for urban resilience?
  • How might we make the transition to resilience as a community and not as competing resource users?
  • How is the city a medium, a media system? Can McLuhan’s notion of media ecology help guide historic changes in resource ecologies?
  • What are the risks if we don’t act, or we fail to cooperate in “transilience?”

Video by Gregory Greene, ResilientPLANET

Although starting from different perspectives and communities, both movements are coordinated, advance responses to near-future impacts to urban planning, transport, food and water supply, energy, ecology, and habitation. The big question remains for citizens and communities, that, if foresight is true, what ought we to do – today?

Two global movements have emerged in the last few years as a civil societal response to foreseeable constraints and societal shocks resulting from changes in climate and energy resources – Resiliency and the Transition Town.

Peter Jones (DwD, OCADU) hosted the session and workshop. Peter Rose moderated a one-hour panel discussion with three leading thinkers and planners.  (Presentations are now available)

  • Resilient City planner Craig Applegath (Dialog Design)                                  PDF
  • Jeff Ranson (Innovolve and OCADU Strategic Foresight & Innovation)     PDF
  • Transition Town planner Blake Poland (UofT Public Health).                       PDF

Many thanks to Patricia Kambitsch, whose live sketches provided visual reflection. And to documentary videographers Greg Greene (ResilientCITY, End of Suburbia) and Dexter Ico for their coverage and photos (all photo credits, Greg and Dexter).


Over 70 people from around the GTA joined us for an engaging, creative, hands-on thinking and doing workshop. Participants left the session wanting to know and do more. We planned this session with the hope that we might help our communities change values, habits, and communication to create and adapt to a more resilient future.