2020 REINVENTING Q4ISSUE 2 Reinventing DAVE GILMORE President and CEO MARY PEREBOOM Principal, Research and Administration MICHAEL LEFEVRE Managing Editor CHYENNE PASTRANA Marketing Director ROB HART Contributing Editor BECKIE HAWK Graphic Designer DesignIntelligence Quarterly is a publication of DesignIntelligence LLC which comprises the Design Futures Council, DesignIntelligence Media, DesignIntelligence Research and DesignIntelligence Strategic Advisors. DesignIntelligence Copyright 2020. Reproduction for distribution violates copyright law. 3 Reinventing Contents 4 Context 66 Preemptive Reinvention Troy Thompson 6 Talking about Transformation Dave Gilmore, Michael LeFevre, Bob Fisher 79 Technology Transformation: Are We There Yet? 17 Reinventing Leadership Dennis Shelden Michael LeFevre 93 Reinventing Communication 28 Pace and Place, Planet and Purpose: Hamish Caldwell Reinvention Required Paul Hyett 105 A Conversation with a Global Citizen Dr. Calvin Kam 34 Ripe for Reinvention Scott Simpson 118 Economic Review: Reinventing in 2021 Bob Hughes 40 Reinventing Design Process Kirsten Lees 126 Senior Fellows | Voices Senior Fellows Recognition 55 Reinventing the Firm Dan Noble 4 Reinventing CONTEXT: REINVENTING EDITORIAL ROADMAP 2020 To culminate an inconceivable year of change, a year in which “truth” has been stranger than fiction, our fourth quarter issue looks at Reinventing - the anchor leg to our four-part series - with themes of Research, Reframing, and GLOBAL GEOPOLITICS Redefining from the first three quarters. DOMESTIC POLITICS ENVIRONMENTAL DYNAMICS To explore the notion of Reinventing, we feature interviews with managing prin- “REINVENT” “RESEARCH” cipals from three leading design firms. From Grimshaw and Partners in the UK, Kirsten Lees discusses exploration Q4 Q1 • THE FUTURE • ACADEMY as design process. HKS CEO Dan Noble • LEADERSHIP CONSTRUCTS • PRACTICE offers a contemplative inside look at his • RELATIONSHIP DYNAMICS • INDUSTRY firm’s value-based makeover. To complete the trilogy, Troy Thompson overviews “RESILIENCE” SmithGroup’s restructuring and design ENSURING A FUTURE RISKS process evolution in the current context. DISRUPTION For an out-of-industry perspective, Wireless Insiders Network partner Hamish Caldwell Q3 Q2 gives us a primer on wireless networks, their relevance to the built environment “REDEFINE” “REFRAME” industry, and suggests new leadership • VALUE INVESTMENTS LANGUAGE • CONTRACTS / APPROACHES skills. Dr. Calvin Kam’s multitasking, • SUCCESS • COMPENSATION • RESPONSIBILITY (ACCOUNTABILITY) • CULTURAL PURPOSE boundary-crossing technology observations • IDENTITY • TECHNOLOGY USE extend the frame internationally, to sur- vey optimal recipes for private innovation and government technology mandates. RPI’s CASE director Dennis Shelden 5 Reinventing speaks candidly in an epochal discussion and essays to share world class thinking of technology’s potential to enable scaled among the DI community. With an analysis and simulation data to solve aspiration to maintain the quality of systemic problems. He answers the content and contributors, in 2020, we question: Are we there yet? began an intentional journey to become more approachable. More accessible via Design Futures Council Senior Fellows digital media, a more graphical visual and regular DI Quarterly contributors format, and a more personal, human Scott Simpson and Paul Hyett share tone. We hope our efforts have struck a more than a century of perspective in chord for deep content. their respective essays Ripe for Reinvention and Pace and Place - Planet Like you, we had little ability to foresee and Purpose. My three-way conversation the COVID pandemic and other crises with Dave Gilmore and Bob Fisher, and that have rocked this year and that seem my own essay on Reinventing poised to continue well into next year. Leadership punctuate the need for firms to understand the 5 Tiers of Change and We hope that you benefit from this seize the crisis-driven opportunities that content - the collective wisdom of a confront them. Bob Hughes’ essay gives dozen industry thought leaders - and us a post-election economic outlook for that it spurs you to action in the year to 2021, and, hopefully - a post-COVID come. We wish you a positive conclusion worldview. to what has been an unfathomable year -- and a better outlook for 2021. For years DesignIntelligence Quarterlies proffered a series of scholarly interviews Talking About Transformation 7 Reinventing DI’s Dave Gilmore, Bob Fisher, and Michael LeFevre discuss 5 Tiers of Change and the principles of DAVE GILMORE reinventing businesses. President & CEO, DesignIntelligence Michael LeFevre (ML): Our theme The second tier is marked by event- for this issue of Design Quarterly based, adjustment-oriented change. is reinventing. Dave, you suggested An event occurs, we adjust to it, and the three of us come together for a that creates a change. That is also BOB FISHER discussion on transformation, as incremental over time. The third tier opposed to more gradual is planned incremental change. Editor at Large, incremental change. I’m thrilled to Think of the discipline of project DesignIntelligence be a part of it and to be here with management. It’s planned you. Why is transformation so incremental change from a current important? state to a future state. The fourth tier is transformative change, and the Dave Gilmore (DG): I believe it’s fifth tier is change driven through MICHAEL LEFEVRE more than transformation. In my intentional re-invention. recent podcast, I talk about the five Managing Editor, tiers of change. I’m most concerned That last type is volitional re- DesignIntelligence with the last two in this COVID invention and intention to do Media Group period. The first tier of change something. I’ve laid out this occurs through the natural passage hierarchy or taxonomy of change for of time. It’s what we experience in us to consider, because as I noted in our bodies, growing year over year, the podcast, Heraclitus is attributed decade over decade. Our bodies as saying, “The only constant is change through the natural passage change.” I think he meant simply the of time. natural-passage-of-time kind of 8 Reinventing change, that things change on their DG: Each aspect has had volumes from base level survival to self- own, but he disconnected us from written about it, but I assembled the realization. In your model, the five having autonomy in our choices to five tiers into a taxonomy. That’s how types could be concurrent. Would determine change. That’s where we I think about it. you agree? find ourselves now in this series of crises. They are forcing us to a new ML: You called it a hierarchy or DG: They could be. There is a posture around change. taxonomy. It brings to mind difference between transformative Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, change and intentional reinvention. I ML: I wasn’t familiar with that although, I’m not sure it’s talk about those differently, because I structure. I’m assuming it’s original hierarchical, where one tier builds think of transformative change, like to you. on the last in importance, on a path the transformation in a Chrysalis from the larva to the butterfly. What is so interesting in that transformation is that a gooey little thing inside a cocoon morphs to the unbelievable beauty we see in a butterfly or a moth. The interesting thing here is the DNA is the same. It’s a change from one state to another, but the essence is the same. Reinvention is dramatic. Several years ago, at the Design Futures Council in La Jolla, Billy Sorrentino, the former executive creative director and head of creative at WIRED magazine, challenged the audience to make sharp left turns. There wasn’t the obsession with political lefts and rights we have today. He was simply saying: you get to this place and simply make a sharp turn. What 9 Reinventing you’re doing is radically changing Bob Fisher (BF): The reason I have a direction, which changes the job, and why that degree of change is trajectory and the outcomes. You’re important, has to do with what Dave reinventing altogether and saying, just referred to: the characteristics of “The old is not satisfactory. We must change in the time we’re in. We’re all create something new. Both experiencing a broader global transformation and reinvention are environment and an industry challenging us as an industry. The changing more rapidly and challenges have probably been in fundamentally. These changes are place for a while, but they’ve come to coming at us quicker, more deeply, the fore now, forcing firms to make and with more lasting impacts. Those When we realize what we’ve choices. Intentional reinvention is not prone to change or who want to been doing and offering the usually triggered by the question of stay the same are going to become relevance. When we realize what irrelevant in the new context. markets might no longer be we’ve been doing and offering to the market might no longer be relevant, We’re being challenged in new ways. relevant, we are confronted we are confronted with the choice to Change is difficult, but that’s not with the choice to deny this deny this irrelevance or reinvent our necessarily a bad thing. It’s a clarion doings and offerings towards call for us to use our imaginations, to irrelevance or re-invent our relevance. This is where the built figure out how to respond to all this doings and offerings towards environment industry is poised change happening, and how to be today. more proactively adaptive to stay relevance. ahead of it. Firms that recognize that ML: What a great framework to are why I have a job. begin the discussion. Bob, through DI Strategic Advisors, you help ML: I think about Darwin and the firms with their business sigmoid, S-curves, life cycle curves transformations. Why do you have discussed in Jonathan Salk’s book, a job? Why is it important for firms A New Reality.