One week on and we've just about recovered from HDL Global. The scattered papers and other piles of random bits are cleaned out of our office, the team looks fresh again, and we're steadily chipping away at backlogged emails.
As a testament to our quick recovery, I offer this "Strategic Design 101" video which introduces our work and the opportunity space we operate within. After debuting it at the event we wanted to share this as soon as possible.
To date we've begun a journey with studios on Ageing, Education, and Sustainability; began a library of case studies (which we hope to grow before the year ends); and hosted 120 people for an event that brings together government and design.
The big question at HDL—one that many of our guests asked at the end of last week—is beautifully simple: what's next?
A beauty it may be, but this question has no easy answer. Our thoughts on this have not changed substantially since the last time we pondered the future. We're dreadfully allergic to hype so we will continue to under-promise and over-deliver.
Taking a cue from the Education Studio, at the moment we are practicing being comfortable with ambiguity. Now two years in gestation, HDL's role at Sitra is in a moment of transition during which time we're taking the opportunity to hunker down and think carefully about the many opportunities before us and which we want to pursue first.
To frame this with a small touch of specificity, our thoughts are swirling around three big questions:
- How can we help more teams benefit from strategic design in their own work?
- How can we accelerate the rate of strategic design success stories?
- How can we better serve our awesome network of collaborators, partners, and friends?
Once we have some answers, this will be the first place we'll share.
During the rest of September we're going to take a bit of a break from posting these weeknotes. Over the next three weeks a selection of videos and photos from HDL Global 2010 will trickle onto the blog. Hope you enjoy and see you in October!
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