Course: System Innovation – A Nordic Community of Practice

What you’ll learn

We will work with methods and tools to analyze and map the materials of systems and the drivers which create and maintain undesirable situations for people and society. Lastly, we will look into hands-on examples of shaping new systems and the tools, ideas, and leaps needed to realize them.

Across the entirety of the course, the following questions will guide our conversations:

1. What is the difference between a systemic problem and a systemic opportunity?
2. How can you work to change existing or enable the creation of new systems?
3. What roles are vital if we want to change or build systems? What do they contribute, and how do we invite them into our work?

Who is this for

Since the ambition is to start forming a coalition around system innovation in the Nordics, this course is mainly targeting people working in that region. The course is relevant if you work with complex problems and seek new methods, concrete tools, and perspectives for addressing systemic problems.

Some thoughts on the subject

If you haven’t already, we highly recommend reading the article How to Turn Wicked Problems Into Ambitious Opportunities by our colleagues Anders Erlendsson and Sara Gry Striegler. Some crucial insights from the piece:

“Systems innovation is more than just optimizing or fine-tuning existing systems in times of crisis. It is about boldly asserting that we can create better conditions and systems than today. Some may argue that systemic opportunities exist only theoretically until someone seizes and implements them. But one thing is for sure: we can not do it alone, not at the community level, not in the private sector, and not at the state level. 

Instead, we must collaborate in new ways, challenge the status quo, and share our important learnings. This requires that we seize the opportunities and insist that we can influence, even shape, the future we want.

At DDC, we simultaneously apply hands-on design methods to address problems and opportunities. By mapping the material of systems – including purpose, power structures, resource flows, and patterns of relationships –, we examine and challenge prevailing understandings of problems.

The material composition is what defines a system and sustains its function. Mapping helps us understand two things: 1) the characteristics of the system we want to change together, and 2) how changes in the material composition turn the problem into an opportunity and open up new and unexplored possibilities.”