RSD8 Conference: Relating Systems Thinking and Design, Chicago, USA

There is an emerging concern to address the pragmatics of large-scale social system change across all contexts. Organizations can no longer go it alone if they want to achieve scaled and sustainable impact. Building, activating, and amplifying capacity to co-design and co-produce with real stakeholders has always been a challenging commitment. Successful system change models are still emerging across different sectors, and their results are simultaneously challenged by massive global trends. Achieving systems-level transformation requires activating, cultivating and galvanizing networks—technological, infrastructural, and social—that support new collaborative activities, processes, and mindsets.

The role of systemic design in informing equitable and sustainable choices increasingly demands that designers re-orient toward “design and…”. Together, we'll explore real-world contexts where organizational behavior, entrepreneurship, policymaking, and design are already colliding, as well as new tools and methodologies to evolve our individual and collective points of view about leadership and the transformative practices—and challenges—of large-scale collaboration.

Our thematic  questions include the following:

• How can organizations engage and activate networks for reimagining livelihoods and the platforms for supporting them?

• What is the role of leaders—including designers—in designing sustainable solutions that reimagine the interconnectivity of social, technical and ecological infrastructures?

• How can socially-focused entrepreneurs prototype large-scale transformations that weave together new technological developments and more equitable and inclusive solutions?

• Where might we learn from alternative or emerging models of developing and scaling access, inclusion, and equity in large-scale transformation initiatives involving multiple stakeholders?

• What ethical and ecological principles — such as social justice, regenerativity, transparency, and “fit”— should inform how we enable systemic change in action?