Australia needs to get very practical and very real about the way it shapes its future to be competitive. The establishment of an Australian Design Integration Network looks to be a step in the right direction.
Australians should have great expectations about the future, but we need to face the fact that our great expectations should not be about entitlements received, but rather potential achieved.
To achieve our potential as a nation we (including government) have to be smart, creative and nimble in securing a competitive advantage. Traditionally this leads to a call to be innovative, but innovation is one of the most overused and least understood words in the national lexicon.
Calls for innovation are like calls to be healthy. There is violent agreement, much virtuous intent but no clear path to action. We need to change our approach.
We need to deconstruct “innovation”, recognising that, at its heart, innovation is about finding creative solutions to problems.
Design thinking is the process underpinning innovation. Through its discipline of upfront probing, it ensures that the problem to be solved has been correctly identified from the user perspective, and then applies systems thinking to find a solution.
Patterns of innovation are culturally dependant, so it’s helpful to explore innovation in the context of the Australian...
