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CATALYZING the Conversation: Designing Wellbeing For All and Each

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CATALYZING the Conversation: Designing Wellbeing For All and Each

Dr. Mary McBride
Issue 5 Fall 2010

Designing wellbeing requires an understanding of interconnectedness and interdependency. Wellbeing cannot be designed in after business strategy. Ideally, the intention of wellbeing informs all we shape, make and use. In this issue of CATALYST, we explore how the strategic design of products and processes can create economic value while enhancing wellbeing.
CATALYST ISSUE 5-CoverSmframe
When strategic design intelligence is used at the “fuzzy front end,” it can create alternatives that are cost effective and toxin free. Chemicals of concern can be screened out and wellbeing designed in. This issue provides examples of food-based paint that smells like a milk shake and contains no polyvinyl acrylic and welding processes that reduce the use of argon gas to zero. Both alternatives are cost effective and contribute to wellbeing.

This issue of CATALYST demonstrates that it is possible to design a future with robust wellbeing as the core of the design brief. We present research that argues that

design-driven innovation is essential to the engagement of users in the selection of choices and adoption of behaviors that enhance wellbeing.

As we send out this issue, we watch the petrochemical economy threaten the livelihoods of citizens and the security of states as BP continues to mop up its mess. The petrochemical economy is, at core, an unsustainable one. It now produces economic value for a few at a significant cost to the many. It trades off human health for limited short-term return on investment. And, as we now see with BP, it puts our world at risk.

We invite you, our readers, to move beyond petroleum and its politics of loss. We invite you to read about the individuals and organizations designing for a new economy and redefining the role strategic design plays in policy making and social innovation in communities and countries around our shared world. We invite you to act on your intuition, inspire each other and use your skills and intelligence to change the way we trade, exchange and create economic value.

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TagsEnvironmental SustainabilityStrategic DesignTriple Bottom Line (TBL)Wellbeing

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About the author

Dr. Mary McBride

Chair of Pratt Arts & Cultural Management and Pratt Design Management. Partner, Strategies for Planned Change, an international consulting group specializing in strategic leadership of creative industries; visiting professor international universities including Esade, Spain; Koc University, Turkey; ISG, France; European University, Russia; former director, Management Decision Lab, Stern School of Business, New York University. Mary McBride has spent her career researching, redesigning and refining the meaning of design and its potential to encourage positive change within organizations and the world at large. The stakes in the 21st century are high, corporations are most able to marshal the resources needed to implement global solutions and the in-house design team of the future must play a role in how those solutions are undertaken. Mary's model called The Triple Bottom Line by Design succinctly yet powerfully defines the opportunity for design and designers to innovate to improve their companies¹ profitability while creating sustainable environmentally sound products and services that truly benefit our society.

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