Poverty is everywhere. The state of being impoverished, poverty-stricken, limited or depleted is not exclusive to the bottom of the pyramid, and the bottom of the pyramid is no longer exclusive to the countries we call developing.

Poverty is also not exclusive to our species. The human, particularly western, proclivity to define poverty as the absence of money makes it something from which only people can suffer, but just as money alone is neither the cause nor the answer to poverty, people alone are not its victims. If we consider the loss of home, food, freedom, the murder of our leaders and parents as a state of being impoverished, we include a much larger, more diverse population in it, and significantly expand the bottom of the pyramid. We will indeed expand the bottom of the pyramid if we make room there for elephants, which is what I hope to accomplish here.

In Nairobi, Kenya, is the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, an orphanage for elephants and rhinos. It is a place filled with young elephants, each with their own story of terror – of watching their mothers be killed by poachers in front of them, abandoned when they fall into man-made holes and ditches, wandering alone in the bush being attacked by predators, shot at and starving. And it is a place filled with as much love and joy as I have ever felt. The keepers are surrogate parents who have learned to keep the babes alive in the most dire cases, and who mourn for each one when they can’t. They know how to touch them, hold the bottle with milk formula (itself a great feat to develop), help them acclimate to the society of the other orphans, douse themselves with dirt to avoid sun burn and chase away the occasional hungry lion. They sleep in their pens, and wake up every three hours during the night to provide meals. There is heart-melting love among the orphans themselves as well. To see a new arrival being patted down by an octopus of individual trunks is to understand how complex and rich elephant society and emotions are.

Katy Payne discovered elephant language while sitting outside two elephant’s pens at a zoo, and founded the Elephant Listening Project at Cornell. She has proven that elephants have a complex society, and are even more important to the ecological system of African forests than we had imagined. Not surprising to anyone who has seen one is that elephants are some of the most extraordinary creatures on earth, humans included.

Science is just beginning to understand the role of the elder in nature. They believe that the old, large cod (the prize catch) might have led the schools to safer spawning ground and avoided the collapse of the species in New England. Older matriarch elephants have lower infant mortality in their families during droughts because they remember where the reliable watering holes are.

The bottom of the pyramid rightly gets the attention of NGOs, governments, academics, financial institutions and citizens. They all work assiduously, and spend enormous energy and money, to help alleviate poverty, not only because it causes pain and suffering to those living in it – but also because the health and well-being of all people are critical to the health and sustainability of the planet. The truth is that the health of the world is dependent on the health of all its creatures, not just some. The only way to change the dynamic is to recognize it – to count these magnificent brethren when we measure poverty, to see that their problems are our own, and to fix them. Adopt an elephant.

The photo is of Orwa, a gentle bull calf at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, and a new member of our family

If you’d like to read more about elephants:
Animal Talk: Breaking the Codes of Animal Language, Tim Friend
When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
The White Bone,  Barbara Gowdy

Such is the excitement we feel about our first cohort of students in this ground-breaking masters program. After months (could it be nine?) of recruiting, Skyping, answering questions, reviewing applications, following up on missing bits of crucial information, reading essays and hours spent deliberating the perfect combination of brains, commitment, talent and diversity, we have chosen our very first students. They will be the only class to have the faculty all to themselves for a year; likewise the only ones to use the brand new space and tools without having to even think about sharing. Most important, they will be the only class to receive the exclusive attention of our entire community – advisors, lecturers, clients, mentors.

If we do say so, our first class is extraordinary: From an extremely impressive group of candidates, we have chosen these future colleagues and collaborators from many different cultures and geographies – Indonesia, Pakistan, Kenya, Canada, Germany, Denmark, Korea, Mexico, Kuwait, Australia, California, Maine, Washington, DC and Brooklyn(!). They have degrees from some of the best schools in the world, like Vassar, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, U Penn and Tufts to name but a few. They will apply a breadth of skills to solving the challenges we face as a global society; as filmmakers, interaction, product and graphic designers, architects, landscape architects, choreographers, engineers and photographers. They all have in common a deep commitment to social innovation, the talent and character to be leaders of innovation and impact, and the conviction that design is the integrating force that can help realize our potential to create sustainable change.

Non first-born children, a position I know well, typically inspire a congratulatory phone call or card. They turn out well for the opposite reason – clarity, from the start, that the world does not revolve around them, the ability to share, and early acceptance of the fact that they had better learn to take care of themselves.

But that’s the next classes’ lesson. For this year we will spoil our first arrivals, and devote all the energy needed to ensure that they succeed fully at their brilliant dreams.

The opposite is also true. In India, Untouchables have no one to tell them they deserve anything more than a meal or two a day. That becomes the reality, and the identity that they accept.

Identity is our assumed context in the world – our self-image as we perceive it in relation to whatever society, company, world in which we include ourselves. Individuals have identities, as do corporations, cities, countries (and maybe planets for all we know). Identities are dialogs between the outside and the inside of us; they are self-fulfilling prophecies, conformity to societal expectations, and the belief we hold of what we can expect.

I have been, in a short stretch of time, to Buffalo, Nairobi, Mexico City; and Detroit. Each of these cities has its own colorful, distinct identity, and shares in common (but not exclusivity) a struggle with deeply-rooted poverty.

Many aspects of poverty look the same wherever they’re found; a struggle for food, work, shelter and safety, and a struggle for hope that the means or the opportunity will ever exist to change things. While it’s difficult not to compare the causes and commonalities of poverty in these vastly different places, it’s more useful, perhaps, to explore the role that identity might play in solving it.

The iHub in Nairobi is an accelerator for tech start ups. The crowd of young social innovators and entrepreneurs who showed up for a workshop there were full of life and promise. Africa is exciting, on-the-come, the “it” continent. Young social innovators from America want to work there, and when they do, they fall in love. Nairobi has been called the Silicon Valley of Africa – young Africans have heard it and believe they have the power to change the game.

Mexico is filled with talent of a very different kind, in people with a vastly different view of themselves and their place in the world. Art is pervasive in Mexico – each region of the country, each village has a specialty – a molé, a type or color of ceramics, painted wood, baskets, rugs, puppets, jewelry or glass. Exquisite work, much of which on the streets of Milan would make them successful. When ConArte brought social entrepreneurs, foundations and artists together to jump-start entrepreneurial businesses, it was clear that unlike the young Kenyans, these artists are not convinced of their own value or of their potential to create change. They do not have an appreciation for the rarity of their abilities, or how to put them to use in creating a new future for themselves.

Closer to home, Buffalo’s identity is colored by its own illustrious past. At one time the home of more millionaires than any other city in America, Buffalo was arguably the place where America’s rise to world leadership began, as the country’s biggest inland port, and the home of some of its most important innovators. Now, any Buffalonian will tell you that the city is famous for it’s winter weather and its struggles. But after years of feeling that the magic was gone, Buffalo is beginning to see itself as a winner again, with palpable energy converging, and optimism on the rise.

A young woman said, at a meeting of the Detroit Creative Corridor Center, that “We’re all superstars, we’re just waiting for the rest of the world to figure that out”. Relatedly, another person said that, “Living here is a cause all by itself”.  In Detroit, as in Nairobi, the young people working to change things see themselves as heroes, and that can’t be bad for their ability to pull off super-human feats.

Buffalo and Detroit feel familiar to me because I grew up in another rust belt city called Pittsburgh. There is an ethos that is shared; a sense of honor, of pride, an appreciation, and even a love, of hard work. And a chip on the shoulder. You’ve heard all the jokes about the place you come from. Also an assumption, wherever you go, that the rest of the world has a picture of you, your history and your future that you do not accept and are not willing to cede to them. A case of stolen identity that forces a degree of self awareness that would otherwise not be possible to sustain.

America sees itself at the moment as past its peak. Our rust belt cities are the poster children for what ails us – industry gone, unemployment structural, middle class under siege. This is old news to Buffalo, Detroit and Pittsburgh, and any picture they have of what is possible for them is in the context of a country that is, at least for now, pulling them down instead of ahead.

In an individual, identity is the purview of a shrink, if people can afford them. In organizations, it is the work of design. It involves helping to clarify, or remember, what they stand for, and why they matter in a world where the old rules no longer apply. It includes helping the organization see itself in a new light, align around a shared vision for the future, and communicate that in a way that inspires people to help make their potential into reality.

Self-image it not always logical from the outside, but it inevitably creates the identity that others see. Jeanette Winterson, in her new book, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, writes, “The other thing a working-class kid learns about the life of the mind is this: Whatever is on the outside can be taken away at any time. Only what is inside you is safe.”

Companies that share a vision of themselves as winners tend to win. Places are like that too. A spark starts, people believe it can spread, so it does. I am convinced that this can happen for cities as well as for business – that the design process of creating a new identity, made from deep truths and real potentials, can have the same affect.

None of these observations are based on data, and if there is data to support them, it is not known to me. There is no intent to portray poverty as something that can be overcome simply by believing it will go away. But everything big starts small. Identity is how we make sense of the world, and the beginning of change is to feel, then to see, that change is possible.

Photo caption:
Barbara Muriungi from African Digital Art at a workshop in Design for Social Innovation at iHub in Nairobi.

This article was written for NextBillion.org

Minds met, ideas and new relationships were formed. In the thick of it, energy focused on discovering and building upon what participants had in common – shared insights, histories, programs with potential synergies, aligned purpose and networks that intersected in surprising ways.

Reflecting in the air on the way back to Brooklyn, what holds the most potential are the spaces in between that common ground. Just as in quantum physics – it’s the relationships between things that determine the nature of the things themselves. Potent questions emerged from the interactions of the group:

The common ground
Climate change is putting the Millennium Development Goals at risk: By 2050, it is predicted that there will be 200 million climate migrants.

Seventy percent of the world’s poor are women, and they are more affected by the stresses of climate change – the increasing challenges in providing food and water, lack of mobility due to social inequities, the invisibility that early marriage engenders, early pregnancy, and even less time for school.

And the gaps between
… placing the burden of responsibility on the drivers of climate change and shifting to an expectation for its victims to adapt. “Changing their behavior is easier than changing ours.”
How can we avoid forgetting our developed world’s own critical need to adapt to a different way of living as well?

…those who believe that gender equality is the answer (and should be the point of intervention) and those who think it’s a symptom of what affects everyone.
How can we fully see and mitigate gender inequality without politicizing it?

…the countless discrete projects aimed at fixing one part of the system at a time and the technology and social platforms with the potential to connect and raise them to a tipping point of real change.
How can we make space for shared experimentation that can multiply, extend and amplify innovation rather than silo our best efforts?

…the rare but encouraging positive deviants who prove that it’s possible to thrive in the same circumstances in which all their neighbors struggle but can’t figure out how to change.
How can we make success contagious?

…the people (in this group and everywhere) who think they have the answers and those who remain willing to ask questions.
How can we avoid being lulled into thinking we know what to do by the self-appointed experts who talk the loudest?

…transparency, understanding, data, access and vulnerable ignorance.
How can technology and leaps of innovation and insight make what is currently seen as impossible commonplace?

…the bottom and the top.
How can we include the voices of the unheard, who have much more disruptive wisdom to offer than the dominant voices we commonly hear?

…the start and the outcome. “Things always fail at the start.”
How can we help rural communities build success into their work by helping them connect to vital information and better decisions?

…our own entitlement and equality in the world.
How do you convene a group of global change leaders in a five star hotel without disconnecting from the people who most need the change?

…all of us who want to collaborate and yet live distant demanding lives.
How can we as a group model the change we are trying to create?

…our species and the rest of the ecosystem.
How can we overcome our fatal habit of pretending that we can save ourselves without saving the rest of life on earth?

As in any challenge where creativity is required to succeed, answers will emerge when we first learn to see the spaces in between, and then accept that they are the only places in which to build a viable way forward.

Photo caption: PopTech Climate Lab participants traveled two hours east of Nairobi to participate in a community-based scenario game focused on climate change and gender. (Image credit: Peter Durand)

In a colorful, modern light filled space with a balcony and awesome coffee never more than 20 steps away, the most inventive technological minds in Africa huddle over laptops and intense conversations. Nairobi has been called the Silicon Valley of Africa, and iHub is its pulse.

Last Saturday I participated in an event there sponsored by ADA – African Digital Arts. Fifty five or so designers and social innovators gathered to hear presentations by Kuweni Serious, a small team dedicated to social awareness by empowering youth to action instead of apathy: Nathan Collett of Hot Sun Films: a film maker working & training youth in the slums about filmmaking: and Yvonne Owour, a writer / Film Fest Director / Liberal Arts Educator take part in a workshop based on our new MFA program at SVA, Design for Social Innovation.

Thank you iHub, thank you ADA, thank you to all the wonderful participants who taught me so much about the passion and commitment of African designers. I hope this is the beginning of many conversations to come.

It stands to reason that we will not ever, regardless of right-minded missions, make the social enterprise economy sustainable or scalable if we expect everyone to work with only soul-satisfaction as payment. Moreover, if help remains free, we lose one of the most important measures of its potential to ever become self-sustaining.

Reason aside, I have continued to strategically give about 25% of my time for the past ten years to people and organizations that I believe will have significant positive impact for others. I have done this without expectation – or frankly much hope – that things would ever change. I did this because I couldn’t think of anything more or better to do.

Something remarkable has happened, though, that I would never have noticed were it not for the fact that at this moment I need help myself that I could never hope to pay for with money. I find myself on the receiving end of this “kind” economy – helped by people I know and many that I don’t.

The realization that there is an enormous networked resource to draw upon that is real, available and willing can’t be called a surprise but somehow is. There are people who will stop what they’re doing – some just for a moment (thank you Malcolm Gladwell), and others over an extended period of time – to become partners in the endeavor. This is value that no amount of money could buy because it is spontaneous and fueled by passion to contribute. Some of it comes from the people I have dedicated time to, and some from out of the blue.

It is a bank account that should never be balanced, should never be abstracted in the way that we treat or count money. Accountants have no role in it, and deposits cannot be made with the expectation that they can be withdrawn in the same form. It is an economy of relationships, of giving. The degree to which it is fungible makes money look as inflexible as it has in fact become.

Gwendolyn Hallsmith and Bernard Lietaer, in Creating Wealth, Growing Local Economies with Local Currencies, wisely wake us to the possibilities of new systems of exchange by matching unmet needs to underutilized resources. Exciting ideas indeed, but how long will it take for all the local economies to add up to global impact? Gar Alperovitz writes in America Beyond Capitalism that our current economic system, in which a very small number of people make all the money and are encouraged to share with everyone else, simply does not work and never will. Gar argues for a worker-owned model, with ownership shared by all participants. But a shift in our culture from greed to a willingness to share will not happen until we change our relationship with generosity first – recognizing, prototyping, honoring, enjoying, appreciating it so that it assumes a real and present value.

I’m not an economist, which is amusingly obvious to anyone who knows me, but I’m willing to be laughed at here and ask some questions of those of you who are.

Instead of trying to measure the value of everything we are and do in cash, what if we recognized a “pre-cash” economy and studied it as a legitimate on-ramp to money-generating enterprise?

How can we make it part of our mainstream economy? How can we spread it to people in the base of the pyramid who we can’t see, can’t talk to, and who don’t have obvious value to give in return?

What if we could evaluate its useful trajectory to making people and individuals financially solvent? Not all help is equal, after all, some of the kindness circulating in this economy is as useless as money poorly spent.

Could it ever become a kind of bank? Would the corporate world join this experiment and could it ever help them see the value derived in their quarterly earning statements?

What I now see all around me is that this economy of kindness is already gaining traction.
So what if we treat it like it’s real? What if we recognize it as the beginning of something; not automatically discounting it because it is the almighty dollar inchoate but not yet pocketable.

To those of you already heavily involved in this economy of kindness, thank you. I am humbled by the help that has been offered and delivered.

Invest in kindness. It pays.

The point of the article is that CREATIVITY DOES NOT HAPPEN IN GROUPS. It’s an important read for everyone in business or education – and one that holds support more than surprise for those of us who spend our lives creating on demand.

It’s why, at MFA Design for Social Innovation, we‘re building a quiet room into our facilities – a place for meditation and uninterrupted thought, deep or otherwise.

It’s why my husband and I attribute our long and wonderful relationship to the fact that we consider it perfectly civil to say, “Would you do me a personal favor and shut the …. up?”

It’s why we named our dog “Ray” after Raymond Carver and his short story, “Will You Please be Quiet Please”.  Which he is not.

It’s why Ric Grefe, Executive Director of AIGA called me a “failed introvert”, and why I loved it.

In truth, it is inaccurate to say that groups are not important and don’t have their role. But it is absolutely critical to dispel this notion that everyone needs to participate in everything trying to be new. As for the adage that “none of us is as smart as all of us”, I have always felt it was at least equally true that “none of us is as dumb as all of us, either”.

Deep understanding of the creative process is required, but scarce in business. There is a rhythm to creation and collaboration – coming together, iterating, going away, using silence, solitude. There are certain components of the process best done in groups, others best done by individuals or pairs. Each has its place, but insensitivity to the natural rhythms is counterproductive and frustrating. Also it’s important to understand every member of the team. Some people aren’t comfortable in white space, when you don’t yet have the solution, which is such a critical part. They need always to know the next step. They can disrupt and shut down progress. Facilitators rarely do the homework to think through who is in the group, what their needs and temperaments are, but it’s a critical part of the process.

I hope that everyone (and there are billions of you) who organize brainstorming sessions and can’t figure out why you are left with nothing but a bunch of post-it notes takes note of  Susan’s article.

There is an African proverb that says, “Alone I have seen many marvelous things. None of which are true.” I would only add, for all of us solitary dreamers…”yet”.

Here’s to loners and introverts. Let us acknowledge the contribution of generalists next.

As a society, we are strangely unaware of the multiple dimensions of time, and therefore of its full power. The accepted cliché, that time is money, inclines us to treat it like a commodity – assuming that it’s all the same when it’s not. We buy one silly appliance after another because we believe they will buy us time, always wanting more of it like we want more money. But they don’t.

Time can only be appreciated with longevity as it were, time over time.

It is when we’ve worked on something for years or even decades that we appreciate the depth and heights that patience and considered efforts reward. We are able to see things with perspective that only distance and a long road awards. We see the results that continually working to make something better can bring – different from the fast win, and so much more satisfying. It’s the simple, quotidian truth of cooking, named and championed by the Slow Food movement. I see it all the time with my students, who fight reworking or rethinking something until the turning point comes, when they realize they’ve done work of which they didn’t know they were capable, something far beyond their first idea or instinct. It is true of every deep relationship that doesn’t seem like it could get any better and then does, year after year.

And not all time is equal. Some time is meant for contemplation rather than action – from the Tao, “The sage does nothing and everything gets done”. Other time is right for full throttle action, abandonment of balance and rest in the service of building and creating. Knowing the difference makes all the difference in the world.

These deeply satisfying and illuminating truths about time, like so many other important aspects of life on earth, are rarely discussed in our give-it-to-me-fast-or-not-at-all culture.

Place is nature, community, history, culture, earth, air and water that is specific to one spot and no where else in the universe. Some First Americans believed that you simply could not tell a story without including where it happened, because the place had so much to do with the event itself. At one time the world was filled with, and honored by, indigenous people who recognize the unique sacredness of every river, mountain and prairie.

In 2012, we are mostly abstract in our thinking about place, just as we have become about time. The extraordinary collection of essays edited by William Vitek and Wes Jackson, Rooted in the Land, makes the point that nature has become an idea; nature is national parks, something somewhere else. Yet a paltry number of Americans know where the water they drink comes from. We ignore or at best intellectualize rather than sense. We live in bullet points, top lines, executive summaries, goals and agendas. In all of that empty busyness, we tragically lose the things that place has to teach us.

Which is everything. Mark Goldman, in his book about Buffalo, City on the Lake, writes about the horrific “urban renewal” projects in American cities in the 70’s. Communities uprooted from their homes and businesses, gardens and fruit trees flattened and left deserted, all to fit a trendy “idea” of what an American city should be, and politician’s and real estate developer’s neat personal agendas. I imagine people sitting in windowless conference rooms high above the city making decisions based on opinions completely unconnected to the places they destroyed. This kind of slaughter of place simply does not happen if you listen to it, and involve the people who live there. But it is our repeated history.

Elif Batuman’s article on Gobekli Tepe, “The world’s oldest temple and the dawn of civilization” reveals a religious sanctuary of megaliths built by hunter-gatherers around 9,000 BC. There are several facts contained in this one statement that completely smash our assumptions about hunter-gatherers and the dawn of civilization. Until now, it was presumed that hunter gatherers didn’t make art, they didn’t have religion, and didn’t have the sort of structured societies that would supply a work force for building something so monumental – over such a long period of time. The discovery of this site may upend our ideas about how our modern culture began – from an assumption that agriculture and a hierarchical society came first, then art and religion. Here, Batuman proposes that the desire, or the need to create a monument to their religion may have necessitated the settling of land and structuring of a society with the requisite division of labor to build it.

That’s a big revelation, but one again that, as with any truth, feels like common sense. It is always and inevitably a vision, and the desire to create that drives change. If we could now learn to design change with time in mind, listening to place, we’ll be making progress: To start now, taking the long view, and listening to earth and the needs of community. That would be a happy new year indeed.

Our three schools partnered on the effort – the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, Columbia SIPA (School of International and Public Affairs, and SVA Design for Social Innovation.

Last weekend, the Boot Camp attracted a sell-out crowd, and was a truly inspiring event, with a character all its own and qualities that many “professionally” run events miss.

By students, for students.
The content was driven by what the participants want and need to know. It was not somebody else’s idea of what should impress them – it was their own self-designed, self-help session.

A hunger to learn.
Students acted like students. They weren’t afraid to ask questions, to push to understand things that didn’t make sense. During Jeffrey Hollender’s wonderful opening keynote, the questions were personal (for them, not him) and practical. There was a no-nonsense quality to it – of an audience filled with people who have an agenda to start something good and big, and no time to waste in getting to it.

A model of collaboration.
It raised a few eyebrows outside our group that NYU and Columbia were working together, let alone inviting an MFA program to play among all the MBAs. We can all learn from the way that these students put differences aside for the benefit of all.
Gratitude.
There was joy in the room, appreciation for the speakers, and for the event itself. Even the somber atmosphere of the NYU School of Law where the first day’s sessions were held did not diminish the smiles and head nodding that spread through the rows of participants all day long.

I would like to add my gratitude here, for the inclusion of Design for Social Innovation in this wonderful effort, for the chance to learn from students as I always do, for the opportunity to design with MBAs, for the extraordinary effort the whole team put into making this so awesome. Thank you Francisco Noguera, Dan Pargee, Catalina Spinel, Fallon Casper, Natalie Tang, Valerie Varco, Erin Hersey and Despina Papadopoulos.

Upon further reflection, and after hearing a thousand more people using those words to contain the entire history and potential of design, additional reasons for this expression’s insidiousness have occurred to me.

1. It’s a 900 lb. Gorilla’s marketing ploy to rebrand and therefore own the creative process. Hooray for them, it seems to be working.
2. It converts too easily into a business book to be trustworthy
3. It’s a sign of design’s insecurity to need the word “thinking” attached to it. Do doctors feel the need to remind us that they think about health? Do MBAs? Inventors? Do designers feel they have to announce that they think? Really?
4. The process has become an inadequate substitute for the real question we should be asking, which is “what is the real question we should be asking?” In other words, as I have seen it practiced, it often presupposes as correct the existing definition of the problem to be solved.
5. Branding what we do as design thinking implies that creativity, instinct and experiential wisdom are not part of design, and even inferior.

During a conversation at the Winterhouse Symposium on Education and Design for Social Innovation, I was sorry to hear someone say that designers need to be “more like McKinsey” in order to be respected. Actually, I think McKinsey should be more like us.

Walter Isaacson’s article in Sunday’s Times was on point. Steve Jobs didn’t do the math, he didn’t rely on data, he didn’t feel the need to name or institutionalize his method. He did not apologize for using his intuition and his gut. And, he proved that gut and business genius are not two different things, they are one; that being instinctive does not preclude strategic brilliance and that in fact that the opposite is true.

For too long now, designers have been insecure about being “creatives” in the C-suites of business, and worry that we can’t succeed in getting a crack at the big challenges as “boutique” creative shops.

It is a self-defeating mistake to try to emulate the data-crunchers and process wonks who are so practiced at imposing the seeming safety of their methods and faux-certainty on potentialities. We give up something far more rare and important if we do. I have been in hundreds of those rooms with purveyors of data and dogma. I know how hard it can be to hold a space there for imagination, or to say “I don’t know yet”. But it can be done.

It’s time we stopped being embarrassed that what we do is built on more than logic – time to revel in our creativity and free it from the world of thinking alone.

Not for one second do I mean to imply that deep knowledge of context, methods, strategies, data, models, systems, theory and all things like them are not essential. They are. I only mean that, like design thinking, they are not the whole story, and are simply not enough.

I began this entry on the plane home from speaking at the Net Impact Conference in Portland, Oregon, where 2,600 people gathered – three quarters of them MBA students – to talk about the impact they want to have on the world (and where oh where they will find jobs).

I am finishing it on another plane to Oaxaca, Mexico, on my way to work with social entrepreneurs there, and discuss a collaborative program between Hub Oaxaca and MFA Design for Social Innovation. In a presentation I’ll give to a group of Latin American social innovators and artists, I describe Design for Social Innovation as the relationship between creativity and enlightened enterprise. By enlightened I mean aware – seeing and honoring the systems of earth and humanity that contain us all. I do not believe that we are capable of enlightened enterprise by thinking alone. It will take all our senses, all our conscious and unconscious minds, and all our creative power.

Isaacson said that Jobs, like his hero Edwin Land, stood at the intersection of humanities and science. As designers, we can stand at the intersection of creativity and enterprise; the place where thinking and feeling and knowing and creative leaps of faith are integrated. We can claim it, step into it with all humility, and change the course of history.