This year’s DMI Europe Conference "Transforming Design" held in London on 6-7 September, provided a multitude of perspectives on the changes that design is undergoing and highlighted how much further we have to go.

Richard Eisermann, Prospect's Strategic Director, attended the conference and posted these thoughts:

As I have heard at any of the large gatherings of designers I’ve ever been a part of over the last 20 years, there was a lot of questioning as to why we are not being taken seriously in the boardroom, not having more influence in business decisions, not being invited to tackle the wicked problems. While we have come a long way, we are not there yet.

Surely, one of the reasons is that design is a process, one that is always adapting. By definition, we are hard to pin down. Nor do we like to be. What we need to do as a profession is be comfortable with the constancy of change and enable everyone else to be comfortable along with us. Let’s not get hung up on definitions. This does not mean we need to re-invent ourselves, but just be prepared to tailor and scale our interventions appropriately to leverage the contexts we find ourselves operating in. One size has never fit all and that is an adage confirmed by the conference.

Two fundamental themes emerged. The first is the divide between incremental and radical innovation. How much should designers try to push the envelope of what business is doing? On one side were the incrementalists, such as Mike Ganderton of LEGO and Francois Lenfant of GE Healthcare, working from the inside, aligned with the business to take a measured, step by step approach to implementing long term change. On the other are the radicalists such as Julie Mayer of Ariadne Capital, who see the design of game-changing business models as the key to transformation. Her thesis is that designers must work outside the bounds of “conventional” business, but still stay mindful of the ecosystem that supports them.

The second theme that surfaced from the conference is a focus on the design of decisions. Elizabeth Pastor of Humantific argued that SenseMaking is a key skill that designers need to develop. We will never be able to address the big issues if we cannot facilitate the teams necessary to tackle them. Marshalling the resources of many different disciplines will be essential. Likewise Geoff Mulgan of The Young Foundation, who feels that designers need to show much more humility in their approach, by admitting that knowledge of existing research and an understanding of history might serve us better than a constant pushing for the “new”. They argue that building consensus makes change. We just need to be radical in our approach to inclusivity and getting the best from teams.

Ultimately, we will need to be comfortable navigating the co-existence of extremes, as Charles Bezzera of GAD’Innovation refers to our current condition. We find ourselves collectively facing a seemingly overwhelming assortment of issues, which Mat Hunter of the Design Council pointed out: “There is no money, we are getting older, the planet is warming up and war is everywhere.”

What is clear for me is that we need to work on developing a culture of design, one that creates the conditions for innovation within either context, incremental or radical. We must make proposals for living that roll historical perspective, future vision and our current state all into a seamless whole, provoking, but not alienating, the audiences who we will be engaging. It is a high wire act. But we still must push to make business aware of the cultural opportunities that may have been overlooked. Michael Schrage of MIT Sloan School of Management who argued passionately for designers to be bolder, may have the clue: “Innovation is not what designers do, it’s what customers adopt.”