Everyone can win vs. winners take all
As a designer, I learnt how much is fundamental constantly zooming in and out of the scene. Without a broader perspective, without realizing we are all in this crowded world together, we won’t properly prioritize projects that are long-term and involving a large part of the population. In an even wider context, the concept of sustainability presumes a central role in the current inevitable societal and environmental transition.
Sustainability is the new trend topic, its appeal is really well known. From the ESG strategies to reusable cups, everyone is following (directly or not) the current wave. Ranking and organisational strategies still present sustainability as a ‘competitive’, a ‘zero-sum game’ when in reality the very nature of sustainability requires us to consider the connected reality of how we live and work. There are real opportunities in rethinking strategies for sustainability in the context of a more collaborative approach, but it requires a creative response and leadership to realise the potential. How do we connect the right people to make things happen?
Since the last year, sustainability assumed a new prospectus and several representations. From a business point of view, it is a fundamental asset, mostly translated as a greenwashing practice. During the last decade, the number of businesses interested in developing plans focused on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability raised. Those policies centre around the idea that businesses are responsible to change the world around us more than we are expecting. At least, they are an attempt to reduce a company’s negative footprint on the world. There’s evidence that companies with healthy CSR programs also advantage from better public relations, happier customers and stakeholders, and improved financial performance. Nevertheless, there are no specific indications of how to make a business socially responsible, but the core of CSR is to encourage enterprises helping and improving the lives and situation of as many people as possible. Although being more sustainable, it doesn’t only mean to be greener but to think and to evaluate the long-term consequences of our decisions. The current pandemic requires us to reexamine how we connect and how we play our role, we need to aggregate rather than separate. Now, we are spending more time with people in a new-old space and facing a different environment: small spaces, struggling with the internet connection, less privacy, and deeper considerations. In a similar condition, the crisis resulted in a breakdown of trust in companies, markets, and institutions but CSR investments hold social capital, which serves as a trust-building mechanism among all stakeholders in the firm.
When I started to write this article, part of the world was obstinately looking for a way to come back to old normality and the other side of the planet was immobilized by an invisible enemy. In the meantime, supply chains are testing their resilience and the retailers are mostly shut down. Consumers across the globe are looking at products and brands through new perspectives and some are suffering the profound inequalities that characterize our planet. In this context, we have to add social fragilities and weaknesses of human behaviour that are the result of an inadequate redistribution of wellness. We have learned the population’s wealth is extremely connected to the cohesion level and the grade of personal development. In this perspective, a “winners take all” vision can not be considered sustainable and acceptable anymore; there’s no place for a global elite claiming to “change the world” preserving the status quo and obscuring their role in causing the problems they later seek to solve. Even innovators and figures that dominated the stage have believed in an intensively competitive market. Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and Palantir, in his book “Zero to One”, declared how the monopoly is the only path to follow for achieving a market leadership: “Competition is for losers. If you want to create and capture lasting value, look to build a monopoly”. Could we still accept it as a sustainable vision?
Recently we assisted a clear example of collaboration, totally in contrast with the idea of competition: the vaccine research and innovation. Forced by the circumstances, different parts and entire regions around the globe collaborated (and still are) to achieve in the fastest way ever a secure weapon against Covid-19. That result has been possible only thanks to a new logic, separated by a competitive strategy. Scientists and experts from every part of the world decided to share data and information, accelerating a process that normally takes over 10 years and has a high risk of failure. According to the Europen Commission, they proposed a Vaccine Strategy to accelerate the development, manufacturing, and deployment of vaccines against COVID-19. The EU plan for COVID-19 vaccines lays down how the EU and Member States together will accelerate the development and manufacturing of vaccines. The strategy rests on two pillars: providing financial support to de-risk developers’ investments and adapting the regulatory framework to the current urgency. Until one year ago, a similar approach to a problem of this dimension was unpredictable and even difficult to imagine.
Leaving our (personal) considerations out, as a designer, it’s time to zoom out and to translate the positive elements of this collective vision:
- A clear and shared objective: research against an unknown enemy.
- A long term vision/strategy: This will allow us not only to address the current crisis thanks to a broad portfolio of vaccines but also to better prepare for future pandemics.
- A collaborative approach: an equal distribution of resources and outputs. All Member States will have access to COVID-19 vaccines at the same time and the distribution will be done on a per capita basis to ensure fair access.
- A holistic vision: a multi-stakeholders scenario and a consideration of the side effects of their decisions, financial uncertainty for people and the industries involved.
- Evolving and adapting: the current situation raises the necessity to speed up some process and adapt the bureaucracy to a changing environment. It’s time to show how to deal with a wicked problem more than ever.
Besides, to create the change we need a guiding vision (a clear leadership) which creates a sense of purpose, glows our energy and sets a shared direction for future journeys. During my master degree, I started to develop a sort of mental framework. I understood that if you want the entire system to grow, it’s necessary to give hope but to accept the struggles enabling shifting.
Collaborating with my colleagues/coursemates, most of our work rooted in two shared principles: the sense of community that means to be part of and contributing at the local level, so working alongside others to bring about change; and secondly, the idea of relationships that is a supportive and close network with the stakeholders. In this framework, we also seek to understand the dynamics within a soft system methodology because as service designers, we are trying to help people to work together collaborating step by step. In soft systems thinking we organize our thinking about the world systematically while recognizing that the perceived world is problematic. This process is needed when the problems are not well defined and in particular when people are having different perceptions based on the personal mental model in response to a problem. By looking at the system as a whole it recognises that a change from one part of the systems may influence another part of it. Also, the approach is called “soft” because it’s about people and the way they relate to the environment. Soft systems methodology (SSM) was developed as a response to hard systems thinking and its failure to address messy situations in which no clear problem definition exists.
Scaling the framework, systems become even more complex and in general, we can say that the larger the system becomes, the more the parts interact, and more difficult it is to understand in the environmental constraints, as consequence is more obscure the values of the system. So, following the same perspective described by John Gall in the book “Systemantics”, the idea is to proceed trough smaller and better-designed systems with incremental functionality based on close and frequent touches with the users involved.
The problem is to coordinate multiple stakeholders and to work with the complexity at the same time. As a service designer, it means to try envisioning sustainable futures and to communicate your vision by asking the right questions and showing your ability of criticism, including more experiences as possible.
A designer is looking for new alternatives ways of being to inspire and encourage people’s imagination to flow freely, and to help us to regenerate our relationship with reality. It’s a matter of process and to change the mindset along the way, then how to engage people to join the dialogue. I agree with Ezio Manzini, when he declares in his book “Politics of the everyday”, the large-scale social transformations will only occur if there are opportunities for accessible, variegated, and light collaboration, in which everyone can find their own niche. A sort of public invitation to contribute to the future transition toward sustainability. Create an environment where everyone can win.
