Designing the Emerging Future

Episode 78 on the Inspirational Insights podcast explores how to design for a better future which results in less waste and more opportunity. Ksenia Benifand came on Dawna Jones’s radar (podcast host) when she presented to the Ellen McArthur Foundation Disrupt Innovation Fest in 2015. Dawna (that’s me) had just finished writing Decision Making for Dummies so when Ksenia shared data on the high costs of linear decision-making, I paid attention. Zip forward to 2020 when a pandemic comes along effectively disrupting routine patterns — to offer an opening for innovation.

One year ago today, Emanuele Rapisarda and I ran a webinar called Collectively Designing the Future Using the Covid Interruption featuring Emanuele’s music as a bonus. It was intended as a call to utilize the immediacy of disruption to do things differently, and cooperatively design a world that restored social and ecological health.

On May 21 2021 I cannot help but ask: how much inspired innovation came out of last year? Back in 2003, when I focused on shifting the consciousness of business decision-making, I asked myself and researched what it would take to inspire the release of human potential in personal life? (an easier question) And what would it take to shift the contribution of business to a much higher level of value and service in the world? Or would the economic engine, ignoring the power of human creative talent, continue to limit what was possible; continue to suppress possibilities, inspiration, and meaningful contribution?

My conversation with Ksenia Benifand about designing the future shed light on how people respond to change. Ksenia is a social researcher, a futurist, and a change designer who has worked across different industries and in nonprofit and education. Her question, “how do we take the future’s thinking down to the ground level and apply it to social change?” (with an eye on economic vitality) opens up a lot of doors

Most companies won’t recognize that in the quest for profit a lot of money is thrown away by poor design and a destructively…