"Enabling Innovation Through “Emergent Transformative Design” ™
Introduction
Today’s global environment is increasingly networked and connected, presenting challenges and opportunities that simply didn’t exist a few short years ago. These challenges and opportunities exist in virtually every realm of human activity, whether economic, security, social, political, technological, or informational. Industrial and even Information Age models, processes and heuristics are insufficient to produce the innovative approaches necessary for success and resilience in the global environment of today and the near future. This course presents an approach to design innovative solutions to the emergent problems and opportunities. The foundation for such a new approach to innovation must be learning: learning about environments, about contexts, about opportunities, about solutions, and about what might be solutions. New approaches to individual, team and organizational learning will result in new ways of thinking, new ways of problem solving and ultimately a culture that enables innovation.
An emerging approach to such learning is Emergent Transformative Design (ETD). ETD is a learning, thinking and decision-making approach that enables innovation by integrating knowledge curation, connectivism, and action learning. Knowledge curation is a collaborative approach that progresses through the learning taxonomy to understand the meaning found in new environments and contexts. Connectivism connects learners, planners and decision makers both internal and external to the organization to new sources of knowledge, develop new heuristics and create new understanding. Action learning enables collaborative creation to produce innovative solutions to the problems and opportunities that emerge. ETD builds upon the advances in design in the instructional, security, and business sectors, harvesting best practices to create a coherent methodology that can be implemented by any organization to create and exploit an innovative culture. ETD builds upon and is consistent with current US military Joint doctrine for operational design. Together with participants, we are working to co-develop “next generation” operational and organizational design to support leadership education and analysis for development and security.
Experience has demonstrated that design expertise is best acquired through experiential learning – said differently, the best way to learn design is by doing design. Our approach to ETD is exactly that, participants are introduced to individual and collective thinking and learning skills and then practice them in a collaborative learning environment. Our structural approach is that the participants are organized into one or more “design teams,” and use a problem specified by or applicable to the specific organization as the basis for the problem-based and inquiry-based learning methodologies. This enables participants to not only learn design, but also to learn to lead or be a member of an effective design team. Experience has also demonstrated that design, and more specifically ETD, is best learned by concentrating first on developing an understanding of the methodology, then applying the methodology, and then reinforcing the learning. Our approach is a two-day seminar to develop an understanding of the ETD methodology. Since the seminar is only an introduction to the thinking and learning skills, a practicum to ensure the learning is necessary. Thus, the seminar is followed by a five-day experiential workshop to apply the methodology against a specific problem to “learn by doing.” Lastly, a two-day seminar is conducted after participants have had an opportunity to reflect on their learning and experience to enable the participants to adapt what they learned to their specific organization, role and responsibilities. We term this the 2 - 5 - 2 approach.
In facilitating the learning and application of ETD, the LEADS Institute will provide a team of expert and experienced designers from both the public and private sector. Our Design Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) have years of experience in teaching and facilitating design, as well as the practical application of design to address complex environments and problems that confront national and homeland security, business and industry, and organizational change. For a course of up to 25 participants (four design teams), the LEADS Institute provides four Design SMEs for facilitation. For courses of 25 to 40 participants, the LEADS Institute will provide six Design SME facilitators.
The 2-5-2 Approach: “Navigating complexity through inquiry for action.”
Emergent Transformative Design Seminar (2 Days)
The purpose of the ETD Seminar is to build the foundational learning and thinking skills necessary for design and to introduce the ETD methodology in the context of a design team. According the two-day seminar is divided into four half-day modules as follows:
Module 1 – Introduction to ETD and Leading a Design Team.
This module introduces design generally and ETD specifically as learning methodologies aimed at managing complex problems. The module also enables the class to form into design teams and develop an understanding of the characteristics and attributes of effective design teams and how to lead such teams. An initial practical exercise builds visual learning and communications skills, while serving as an icebreaker to begin to build effective intra-team dynamics.
Module 2 – Knowledge Curation.
The second module introduces the learning and thinking skills necessary for knowledge curation as the first step in ETD. The module introduces systems thinking, critical thinking and creative thinking as three foundational design thinking skills. Each of these skills is practiced using a mini-practical exercise.
Module 3 – Connectivism.
The third module is conducted in the morning of the second day and introduces the participants to connectivism as a collaborative approach to learning. Participants learn to employ connected learning in support of design for the team to frame and understand operational environments and complex problems. The module includes a practical exercise that builds on the knowledge curation exercises to apply connectivism to a specific environment and complex problem set.
Module 4 – Action Learning.
The fourth module in the seminar introduces Action Learning as the means for a design team to achieve learning and understanding at the upper levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Evaluation and Creation). Action Learning enables the development of innovative and creative solutions to the problems presented by complex environments. This module includes a practical exercise that builds on the previous exercises. Taken together the practical exercises illustrate to the participants the full application of ETD. This module concludes with a summary and introduction of the organization-specific environment and problem for application of ETD in the second phase of education, the ETD Workshop.
Emergent Transformative Design Workshop (5 Days)
The ETD Workshop is focused on employing the design methodology in support of learning, thinking and decision making about a specific environment and challenge faced by the organization. To do so each design team within the course establishes a “design studio,” in which they will experience ETD progressively throughout the week, transitioning from knowledge curation, through connectivism to action learning. At the completion of their design studio they will present their design products to demonstrate their learning.
Each day will begin with a reflective period to review and discuss any issues or skills with which the participants are interested in learning more. Following the reflection specific individual or collective skills will be learned in support of design. The remainder of the day, at a minimum the entire afternoon, will be devoted to applying ETD in the design studio. This learning rhythm of reflect – learn – practice will be repeated each day to optimize learning. Embedded within this learning rhythm will be specific physical and cognitive activities that enhance the participant’s ability to learn at a high level throughout the day. Each day’s learning will be preceded by an evening learning activity such as a video or reading that will introduce the major learning outcomes of the next day.
Day 1 – Knowledge Curation
Day 1 morning will begin with a review/reflection on ETD and then include the following design learning and thinking skills:
Day 1 afternoon will begin the design studio, focused on understanding the environment as a system. Day 1 design studio activities will include:
Day 2 – Connectivism
Day 2 morning will begin with reflection and then include the following design learning and thinking skills:
Day 2 afternoon will continue the design studio, focused on developing a range of alternative future environments as a basis for later ideation and solutioning.
Day 2 design studio activities include:
Day 3 – Connectivism
Day 3 morning will begin with reflection and then include the following design learning and thinking skills:
Day 3 afternoon will continue the design studio focused on developing the challenges and opportunities emergent from each of the alternative scenarios.
Day 3 design studio activities include:
Day 4 – Action Learning
Day 4 morning will begin with reflection and then include the following design learning and thinking skills:
Day 4 afternoon will continue the design studio with a focus on ideation and solutioning. Design studio activities will include:
Day 5 – Action Learning
Day 5 morning begins with reflection, then has a single skill development session aimed at understanding how graphics and narratives are employed to transition from design to detailed planning and eventually implementation. The morning then continues with the conclusion of the design studio and the development of a design concept.
Day 5 afternoon begins with each design team presenting their design concept, how their design journey led them to that concept and offering an opportunity for discourse with the other participants. Each design team will spend one half hour in presentation, with another half hour for general discourse.
Day 5 and the week concludes with a wrap-up review of ETD, Kirkpatrick Level 1 assessment (participant feedback) and Level 2 assessment (learning outcome achievement).
Emergent Transformative Design Reframing Seminar (2 Days)
The ETD Reframing Seminar provides an opportunity for participants to reframe their learning after they have had a chance to apply design thinking skills and ETD methodology. Ideally this seminar is conducted 3-4 weeks after the larger workshop. This provides the opportunity for application of what was learned. Like the initial seminar this seminar consists of four half-day modules.
Module 1 – ETD Application - This module is an opportunity to review ETD and for student discourse into best practices in the application of ETD and what design thinking and learning skills were applied in the conduct of their daily missions and tasks.
Module 2 – Design Reframe I - In this module participants break back out into their design teams and conduct a mini-design studio to identify what they would reframe from their original understanding of the environment, challenges and opportunities and solutions.
Module 3 – Design Reframe II - In this module participants continue their mini-design studio and develop new solutions and a new design concept based on their new understanding. The output of this module is a new graphic and narrative describing their reframed design concept.
Module 4 – Presentation and Discourse - As with the longer 5-day workshop, this concluding module is an opportunity for each design team to present their reframed design concept and to promote and engage in discourse on the value and application of an iterative approach to design. The module concludes with a final opportunity to address any learning outcomes that require additional discussion or examples.
