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Alright, morning everyone. Thank you so much for being here. I think we need to buy some more chairs for the next time. Welcome. My name is Kristian and with me is Louise. We are both Transition designers at 1508. And even though the topic of today of, systems thinking and transition design is hardly a new one, if you go back in the history books, it has come to play a quite pivotal part in the strategic direction and positioning of 1508 lately.

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So we have, very much been looking forward to share these perspectives with you today and what that also means for our collaboration and work with clients today and going forward as well. So, thank you for being here. And, without further ado, do you wanna start us off, Louise? Definitely, yes. I'd like to start off by actually painting a picture of a system in all your, in all your minds.

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So, I don't know, just a quick raise of hands. How many of you actually got here by bike today? And please keep your hand up. Okay, so that's definitely more than than half of this room. I love cycling to work personally. It is where I do some of my best thinking and check in with myself and so forth. And I think as copenhageners we quite often take this for granted that we just cycle around it.

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It's easy, it's safe, it's healthy. All these, all these things. And I'd like to invite you to, because it hasn't always been like that. So, I'd like to invite you to come back to the sixties with me. Sixties Copenhagen. This is an image of Strøget, the big pedestrian street, that we have.

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And at this point in time, cars was really ruling the city. It was a status symbol. people loved cars. It was new, it was modern, all these things, but it also had a lot of, bad things coming with it. So congestion, severe traffic, congestion, pollution, noise, declining urban health.

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it wasn't that livable as a city. People would come here to shop, but not to hang out it was not a nice place to be in that way. So the reason that I kind of wanna start thinking about this system is that there's been quite a bit of a transition. So of course at this point we didn't sit down, and well, we or they and think, okay, let's, let's design a transition journey and this is our status quo and here's our future vision.

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You know, we have this bike friendly city where it's healthy and there's clean air and it's nice to be and it's easy to get from A to B and so forth. but it's a nice example because what did it actually take to get from here to there? And also it is an example that, kind of highlights all the different actors and, you know, everything from, well let's actually look at some of the initiatives

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that it took to come to this future vision. So one of the things is, Copenhagen was one of the cities where you systematically and we can thank one of the really famous architects for, initiating some of these studies in the sixties and the eighties and the nineties and the two thousands, of actually starting the city and feeding back to city hall planners and politicians.

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so thay had the right arguments and also when you were doing a change, actually testing it and feeding back on how is it working. So obviously there's been a lot of structural change. One of the big ones was pedestrianising Strøget in 62 at that point. Actually the shopkeepers, there was a big drama 'cause they thought it was the worst thing in the world and they thought they would lose out on business because what if the cost can't go here, then how are we gonna sell anything?

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other things like prioritizing health, you can probably recognize some of these playgrounds or communal spaces where you start thinking about getting people out in the city and swimming in the water and, playing around on these, in these things. Obviously, the infrastructure has played a big part. everything from all the bridges connecting a water city, what Copenhagen is, it used to take ages to go to Holmen, but now you just, you know, you have a bridge

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or you have, yeah, all these super cykel stier. So you also started thinking outside of just the city center, how do you then connect it? Another system comes into place, goes, what about public transport? Some of you might have taken your bicycle on an S train today and then cycled further. So thinking about these, journeys through the city.

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So rules and policies, obviously the Copenhagen kommune the municipality, has played a huge part in really strategizing, about this, convincing, the right people, actors, stakeholders in this and least, but not last, and this is not a chronological order. It's all the different organizations that has been working to promote cycling, cycling culture.

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It's not just something that happens from one day to the other. It's taken lots of effort, lots of different initiatives, lots of campaigns, yeah, and you might know some of these. So that's really nice that we've ended here, and this was just to paint, a picture of, what a system is and why it's a complex system, because it has lots of different interests and stakeholders and there's economic and health

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and there's all sorts of different things weaved into the system. So it's interesting now that, actually a new challenge arises, 'cause if you, have probably been, in Copenhagen cycling at peak hour, it can be, pretty intense. There's quite a bit of congestion, in these peak hours.

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So the interesting question to ask then is that then a complex system? Is that a complex problem? This peak our, congestion, challenge? At 1508, we use a framework, that helps us identify, you know, what kind of strategy is good for tackling this kind of challenge that we have at hand.

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And is asking four questions. So first of them being what is the nature? Is it well understood the problem area? Or is it something where we are not really sure, let alone thinking about what might the right solution, be for this? It's also how do people engage with this challenge? So is there high level of consensus or are we over here where we have significant diversity and, you know, even conflict, with stakeholders about what to do about this problem?

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Oops, I had a bit too much clicking here. Third one being, what's the nature of the environment? And this is what happens around the problem. So something like the political, the social, the economic, is it a self-contained problem or does it have, you know, connections and lots of different dynamics, around it.

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And last one being, is it a short term goal or what are your goals? Is it more on the long term? You know, long term sustained change at a broader scale. And as a click before you see these, these dots you can kind of add up. And if you're leaning towards this side, then you might as well use a different strategy. it could be design thinking, it could be any other way of approaching your problem.

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However, if you are leaning your problem more towards this side, then a systems approach might definitely be a good way to start untangling and unraveling this complex problem. So thinking back again to our new novel, challenge in the system that we were describing before, is that then a complex problem?

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I'd say no. It's probably something we wanna solve quite quickly. It's a long term goal. There might be some structural changes that we can already start thinking about. So, I think the reason I wanna emphasize this is that it's not all challenges that are systemic.

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So we are not here today to convince you and say, well, it's universally system thinking is universally better than, for example, design thinking. No, it's every approach. There's a time and a place for systems thinking and that's when you have your complex problems and there's a time and a place for other approaches, right?

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So that was just a little intro to actually working within the system. Alright, so transition design, planetary social societal crisis of today, call for new answers. And at 1508, this has been our why for many years now, dare to matter to create meaningful change.

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And we are always doing our best when we are designing experiences to really create meaningful change. But when you look at the crisis of today, then what does that mean to create meaningful change, for us as a design company. And we believe that, you know, we want to take, Oliver, I think you said this once, we want to take our problems to work, not to talk about them, but to act on them.

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And that's why we've gone all in on facilitating systemic transitions. it's part, as Kristian mentioned as well, it's part of a strategy that we are saying, well we actually want to be part of this. We want to be part of facilit.

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We think transition is necessary and how can we be a part of that? That is through a design led practice like transition design. So let's for a second. well, I also wanted to of course to say that we take it very seriously. So that's why we have a design team dedicated to working with transition design.

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And Kristian and myself are part of that team. So let's just for a second, move back into academia. 'Cause transition design is rooted, deeply rooted in academia, and we can thank the good people at the Carnegie Mellon University who first kind of proposed this as a new area in 2015 to start researching, studying, coming up with solutions in this.

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So let me just say what were there. So transition design addresses complex systemic challenges such as climate change, social inequality, and unsustainable lifestyles by envisioning and facilitating long-term societal transitions towards more sustainable futures.

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So to us, as a company, that's very inspiring and we are acknowledging the academia for really taking this and researching and looking into that. But we also think that it's time to move it out of academia and also start working with it as designers.

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So in a way, you could say, it kind of represents a shift in design where it proposes that we as designers can actually actively engage in shaping sustainable futures. and we should, and this is what we are really inspired by.

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And one of the reasons that, or one of the practices, that other practice that we've developed around it is also deeply rooted in acknowledging that work that they've been doing at the, for example, County Mellon or other universities. If you were here for the last Morgenbooster, you might know this case.

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'Cause what we're gonna do now is, talk to you about two different cases that we've been working with at 1508. We have recently designed an app for people in menopause together with Kræftens Bekæmpelse, the Danish Cancer Association. And, as I said on the last Morgenbooster that we really went into, how do you design with empathy for people in this transition?

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That menopause is, I'm not gonna go much into that today, but I brought it with me because it highlights a frustration that we quite often meet when we are doing client projects. So, when designing this app, it was clear from the beginning that menopause is something that doesn't just, inflict the individual.

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It's also, there's a lot of actors here. So there's your close relations, your partner, children, your mother even, there is a society and everything that's going on from the health system to, you know, even your workplace or doctors, gynecologists and so forth. And obviously nature because it's a natural thing.

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But biology is a big actor here. And when the team started mapping these dynamics, it was pretty clear that, you know, we are just scratching the surface of a very complex problem with lots of stakeholders and lots of system dynamics and lots of places where you might intervene.

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This app being a client project, with kræftens Bekæmpelse, the Danish Cancer Association, and you all know that you, obviously you're working within constraints and we decided three intervention areas that we were gonna deliver within in this project. So one of them was information, the other being action and the last one being a conversation.

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So, we wanted to really offer users credible information about this. We wanted to give an overview of what menopause is and how you can actually act on it, get some treatment maybe and last but not least there's a whole social stigma, taboo around this. So could we start providing people with a language to start having conversations about this?

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So it's like that with client projects, you kind of, you can't solve everything in the whole world or in this system, that we slowly started mapping out. And it means that we are launching an app now and our app can definitely be part of solution. But when I was talking about frustration before, it's being here and seeing, well, there's so much more we can do and acknowledging that.

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so we definitely, this is gonna have some impact because we are creating some value in the intervention areas that I just mentioned. But an app probably also has an expirering date. So whether it's five years or whatever, how can we, it's kind of frustrating when you know, there's so much more going on in the system.

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So this one is definitely delivering some value now. But what about if we think back to the definition of transition design, the long term and solving and moving something within the system, that might mean that this app wasn't even necessary if those root problems were dealt with in a different ways addressed.

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So, this is, something that we encounter quite often when we are designing experiences, is that we are working within a problem area where we can just see, wow, this is part of something much bigger. You know, there's some gender bias in medicine or there's a lack of research in menopause or let alone women's health, under prioritization in terms of public health maybe, or even workplaces are not able to.

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So there are so many, it's so clear that this is part of something bigger. And at 1508, when we are facilitating these transitions, we also are not afraid of trying to coin that problem. So the container being women's health, but you can say well, what is the problem?

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Well, if you're heading it, it might be that the average size is man, and it's not to say there's anything wrong with men or women or the biology, it's more the sociocultural things and the way we've done things for years and the tradition of male being kind of the default. So what we can definitely see here that if we check with the, with our, scales from before, we are definitely in the complex area

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and with complex problems. It's fair to say that there's multiple problem owners and Kræftens Bekæmpelse, the Danish Cancer Association can be one, but there's also multiple solutions and there's also other owners of that problem and this leads me to say that what we are doing now, is trying to facilitate and elevate, this complex problem.

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And working with it is to try and move from this level where you're working on an individual, with an individual organization on an intervention, on an app that has a product vision. But if we really want to start doing something about these structural and these system challenges, we need to move it to an ecosystem of stakeholders and collectively build that future vision that we were talking about before.

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And this is what we, this is one of the areas where we are trying to, I would say maybe as a launch tradition design, actually it started out as a client project, but now we're trying to do this. So it leads me to this, the last thing I'm gonna say a little bit about now, is our role then, because we are not academia, but we are something else.

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And that is our unfair advantage. And facilitating a transition is, is a different beast than facilitating a meeting or workshop. It's a different set of tools and competencies, so, and roles as well. So one of the really important roles, and which the last example actually exemplifies is that working as a problem framer.

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So calling out the problem, and also kind of scoping the problem. So how big it is, how big is it? Where are we gonna set the boundaries when we are working with this it's the co-creating a system mapping. It's co-creating a shared storytelling that we can then, the role as to organize the unorganized.

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Because it's not to say there are many great initiatives happening within the space of women's health for example, but how can we support that movement and also try and organize that movement and maybe even also applying for some funding together so that we can actually work on this movement.

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Because if we wanna create long lasting change, we kind of need access to work together in in a different way. The last bit about our role, the app is an example of that, co-creating these interventions. We've done that for 25 years, so that's not something new.

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But the new thing about doing this with a different intention is doing it with the intention of shifting something in a system that is bigger than the sum of its parts. Alright, alright. Feeling enlightened, confused. That's great.

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Alright. Yeah. So it's complex stuff and the example of the menopause app is how as Louise is mentioning how what we have been doing for the past 25 years, how we can actually use this as a launchpad to begin thinking deliberately about systems thinking and transition design. But the next, there we go.

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The next case, I'm going to walk you through is, it takes a bit of a different angle because this is an example of how we are moving, forward with transition design more from a get go. So that's the very foundation of how we begin to think about the complex problems. And I just wanna align on expectations because this case walkthrough is not maybe what you are used to if you are coming to these morning boosters where we talk about a specific challenge.

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We propose a solution and we see an expected outcome, as you probably guessed by now. And everything Louise said, it's a bit more, intangible in that sense. So just keep that in mind and keep your mind open as we walk through this. But, this case is something that would eventually come to be known as the Land Use Movement. And, it's a collaboration with a Danish foundation to address the degeneration of soil and biodiversity due to how we use our land in Denmark.

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So Land Use in this case is not a poor translation or the Danish word for agriculture. It quite literally means how we use the land in Denmark and the consequences of that. However, ironically, considering that 60% of our land is used for agriculture and 90% of that is used within a very extractive practice of conventional agriculture, it's difficult to ignore.

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But that's just, if anyone of you thought that that's a bit of a strange translation, then it is not. So this foundation whom we had previous collaboration with, they approach us with this challenge and they have some ideas about initiatives and projects that they want to launch, to address some of these things.

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And they want to spar with us, try to frame their solutions and scope it in general. And we said sure, we would love to do that but are you also keen on maybe just taking one step back? Because once you start talking about this, all of these different nodes of something greater, something more complex, start to show up in your head. So we propose that maybe if we take one step back, one step to the right, a trip up in the helicopter, and let's see if we could actually frame this if it was

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a potential issue that we could work with from a systems thinking and transition design point of view. So coming back to this one that you saw with the the biking case, once we dive into really understanding if this is the challenge that we are seeing, what do we actually know about the status quo? Why are we talking about this challenge?

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Why is the current system, the current status quo, malfunctioning as we see it? And if the project and initiatives that they propose to us and brought to us, if they were something that would fix things within the system, would that be on a symptom level or would it actually be something that would slowly transition the system towards a more desirable future? So that was kind of the framework that we wanted to use to go into this discussion.

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So the first thing that we did together was really trying to zoom out and think about this holistically. And the way we do this is that we begin to map the nodes or the factors, the elements, the variables that the system we are talking about co consist of. And it could be anything from quantitative parameters such as how many pesticides are we using in the agricultural industry, how much yield are we producing,

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how much profits do we make? It can also be power dynamics such as what is the power of lobbying organization, power of employees and employers. And it could also be something more abstract such as the, our individual sense of responsibility to nature. So all of these nodes we begin to point out and just put on a big map. And we want to keep these nodes as variables.

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Something that can either increase or decrease or have more or less depending on what it's because when we keep it to that format, we can begin to talk about the causal relationship between each of these nodes. So for instance, if we increase the conventional farming methods, we might get more yield, but we might also degenerate the soil that is also a condition to actually produce yield.

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And we begin to see these loops that the system consists of and it also help us actually scope and limit what we want to see because this can also quickly go outta hand. And we think about systems within systems within systems, and all of a sudden we just paralyze ourselves. So this is a great start to actually figure out what is our primary variables, what are we really concerned about?

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Well, that is a degenerating situation of soil and biodiversity and trying to map what are the key causes of effect towards that. So when we're doing this exercise, we begin to see there are different arenas, different loops, different dynamics that actually cause this. And this is the indication of why the system behaves the way it does, why it is stuck in this way perhaps.

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And this is also the first indication of what are actually the insights that we are trying to produce from this exercise. So when we are beginning to map this, we can kind of deduce some sort of regional stories or key dynamic insights based on these different arenas that individually might not be that interesting or pivotal, but when we see them in a holistic perspective we might begin to understand why things are the way they are.

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So in this example, we produced four of these stories, one called Extract While it Lasts, it refers to the fact that even though intensifying the conventional methods of agriculture does produce more yield, it also degenerates the soil and biodiversity, which is a condition for yield. So you might think that this would counterbalance each other so that you would lessen the intensity of those methods because the soil couldn't keep up.

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But instead what we see is that you're basically just doubling down because you need to meet some sort of expectations based on the supply chains we had. So even though it's clear to see that this is heading for destruction, we are basically just thinking how can we extract as much as possible as long as we are able to? And this is also a dynamic that is kept in place by a lot of economic myths about how profitable is agriculture really and how dependent are we on it in a country like Denmark, and how are we even calculating the profitable effects

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of conventional land use because we are externalizing a lot of the ecological costs, something that could perhaps show us that if we are moving this way, we are actually also destroying the the very basis of making profits. But we are also masking that by subsidies. We are also dealing with kind of a zero sum game.

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We only have so much land, and basically everything is taken. So, if 60% is used for agriculture, 90% is used for conventional agriculture. There's very little room for alternatives. So this is also one of the factors that may tell us even though we can't see alternatives, we are kinda stuck in place in terms of the ownership of the land already claimed. Because we do actually have some positive sides of things, the one we have called the thin green line.

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Because even though there are ecological farming and regenerative farming, even the adoption of that should produce a higher priority in terms of curricular and the knowhow to actually foster this. But because it is dominated and discouraged by the whole extractive narrative, this is becoming this thin green line that it hasn't tipped over to become the dominating practice of the system.

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So again, if we sit at a coffee table and just pick one of those out and talked about that, we would probably be like, yeah that sounds about right. I read that somewhere and I can buy into that. But when we look at it from a broad holistic perspective, we might see, okay, so maybe a solution, maybe what we need to propose here to move towards a different system to actually move things in the system. We can't just close in on one of these areas.

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We need to understand the holistic perspective of why things behave the way they do. And there's a great degree of storytelling in this as well. So, this map could be a lot bigger, it could be a lot more nuanced and we're trying to break that down into like, what are the key messages we want to say here. And basically everything what this boils down to is that this is our description of the status quo.

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So in essence, regenerative land use alternatives are undermined by the dominating force of extraction narratives and the weak knowhow. So this is perhaps a gross oversimplification, but we need to think about, we should be able to tell that story quite fast. And whatever we need to dive into of nuances, we can always go back to the map in the beginning.

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So when we're trying to make this framework work for us, this could be a way of simplifying what we mean with the status quo. Now, the future vision is, a bit, is a kind of a different beast because while the status quo can almost feels like a math equation, like if you have enough of the nodes mapped and the causal relationships are correct, it's hard to argue about that part.

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Whereas the future vision is more something that you need to be able to guide the whole movement towards. It needs to be this mutual third that is kind of devoid from specific private interests that we all basically could see ourselves in. So if you are familiar with the futures thinking, that is very much speculates about these future scenarios based on a specific organization, a company strategic goals, this is not something that is hinged upon a single organization.

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So instead we want to be a bit dreamy about what this future state and future vision could be. So we might imagine something like a balanced system where land use supports ecological regeneration by embodying practices that sustain both people and planet. And we weigh each word quite carefully because we want to mention the people as well. We're not trying to create a regenerative land use where people are not part of it.

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We still do depend on that. And when we did this exercise with the partner, we had a lot of different very colorful images of this future vision, like how we would walk through the landscape and we can hear the birds and the bees and everything. So that's part of the exercise trying to get to that point. But it is not, really an exact science similar to the ones we are trying to apply when understanding the status quo.

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Yes, and as you recall from earlier, everything in between here is then the transition journey. So how do we get from the extraction status quo to the regenerative future vision? So everything in here between is our transition journey. And what we want to do at this point is that we begin to look for leverage. We are looking for leverage points as in things that we believe need to change in order for the system to alter itself.

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So looking into the map, looking into the causal relationship, if we can make different changes at different areas of the system, what do we believe will make such an impact that the system will begin to alter itself for good. And this the notion of a leverage point and leverage come from this image of pulling a lever. And, the same force can have different impact depending on where you apply it, which sounds great because that could mean that even a small effort could have a great impact on the system.

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And that is also sort of the origin of this notion. However, it is also one of those things that have been criticized a bit, because you can't really ignore the power or the force of the hand actually pulling the lever. So depending on who you're doing this exercise with and the foundation that we did this with, you also kind of ask yourself, one thing is where do we see leverage but also where do we have leverage while also keeping this balance in terms of we know that we are not going to be the sole carriers of this transition journey.

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So we do need to consider that there may be leverage points that we can't influence ourselves, but are extremely important for us to actually make this journey, and over maybe 30, 50 years reach our final destination. So this is also kind of a priority exercise and what we ended up with in this case is three leverage points. So things we needed to change, outcome we believed had to happen in order for the system to change.

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So what we caught them as was that we need to see that la liberation of land use from extractive interests. We need to enable the establishment of regenerative land use and we needed to localize supply chains. And the last one refers to the fact that we don't see a regenerative future unless we rethink our supply chains, primarily this meaning food, that what we have today is too dependent on monoculture and hyper optimization.

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So that is kind of the belief we have when we are talking about this transition journey. So this also becomes kind of our theory of change so to speak. It's our theory of what we believe must happen, the outcome we need to see for this system to change for the transition journey to move forward. And we are picking the notion, believe, quite deliberately because while the status quo, I quite cheekly talked about as a math equation,

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you can kind of put two lines under the final result. The actual transition as systemic change is inherently unpredictable. So our theory of change combined of these three leverage points is kind of a hypothesis. So each of these leverage points represents a leverage hypothesis. And the great thing about a theory of change is that a theory can be validated, and maybe some of you are starting to see where I want to go with this because we're, what we are moving into now is,

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kind of the beautiful union where the holistic perspectives of systems thinking meets the hypothesis driven process of design thinking. Because each of these leverage points represent a leverage hypothesis that we can put on formula into a template and work with like any other hypothesis that we have done for the past 25 years.

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So when we are talking about liberate land use from extractive interest, we're talking about that the issue is that extractive interests keep land distribution locked in by sustaining the economic myths and discouraging alternative practices. There's a short term impact if we actually begin to see this outcome, but the short term influence might just be that we are allowing the soil to degenerate at a slower pace.

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So at first, if we are successful with this in however way possible, we might really just buy ourselves time. But when we are looking ahead, we might see that in succeeding with this, we will see that the narrative in favor of extractive practices will be out balanced by the force of a regenerative one, such as the dynamic forces fighting in the system would actually shift that the adoption of regeneration and adoption of a regenerative practices would actually be the one reinforcing itself, while the extraction one would be the weaker one.

[00:37:30–00:37:53]
So we can put more into words in terms of why is this a case? We can move back to our map again and talk about these key barriers, key frictions as why is this not the case today? Why is this the case today to sort of in a workshop format come a bit closer to wanting to think about the ideas and the projects and initiatives that should move us forward to this outcome.

[00:37:56–00:38:28]
So basically we are moving into a quite comfortable place in terms of asking, broad, how might we questions of how we want to address our leverage hypothesis, what we believe would happen if we do certain things. So basically any answer to each of these how might we questions under the leverage hypothesis could be a specific project, it could be a specific solution and action, a piece of communication, you name it.

[00:38:29–00:38:51]
And this is what we are also referring to. And as Louise referenced this, these are things that we have been doing for the past 25 years. Maybe a lot of you are already doing these kind of things, but there is a key difference. And that is this word here because we're not talking about these projects or solutions as just that we are talking about them as interventions.

[00:38:52–00:39:25]
And when we're talking about it as interventions, we are talking about the intent. We're talking about that we're going to do these things because we believe if we create a certain outcome on a transition journey. So things can't really stand on their own unless they are framed within a status quo and a future vision. So you could basically repeat this exercise across all of the leverage points because the whole point of having all three of them is that we don't believe

[00:39:25–00:39:52]
that simply liberating land use from extractive interests will be enough, because we know that there is also a very weak know-how in terms of maybe converting that land into regenerative one. We also believe that unless we figure out a way to localize our supply chains, the systems might shift back into its original state, because we are building our supply chains on monoculture and producing a lot of a single piece of yield, transporting it to the entire world.

[00:39:53–00:40:21]
So we can't really stand alone on one of these. And when we, you begin to see this picture, and remember we did this together with a single foundation who came to us with one approach to the interventions that they had in mind, though at that point it wasn't talked about as interventions because we hadn't done this exercise. And when you begin to do that, you also begin to see the picture in terms of, well, a lot of things are already happening out there right now.

[00:40:22–00:40:45]
We already know that people are working towards some of these goals that we are also doing. But perhaps not in a organized way, perhaps not considering that as intervention, as something that needs to shift a system towards a future vision. Because a lot of these without that perspective perhaps are focused on the more short term impact.

[00:40:45–00:41:08]
They want to fix something for someone in a specific situation, the human-centered design approach of design thinking. So this also becomes a map about who do we actually need to go out and activate? Who do we need to get part of this movement? Who are we depending on if we want to actually make an impact towards the future along the transition journey?

[00:41:09–00:41:33]
And this is kind of where the, beauty of things come together because this proves that transition design is not an alternative to fix the most immediate issues that we have in front of us. We are still able to make real impact right now for real people while also considering that that is a step in a direction on a transition journey similar to the menopause app.

[00:41:33–00:41:56]
It fixes something very immediate. It might be a reaction, to a, to a system and those dynamics sort of playing by the rules, but if we see it in a different perspective as an intervention, we can use that as a leverage in terms of changing the system. And, so this is not a, this is not a framework for project management or anything like that.

[00:41:57–00:42:17]
It's more an image of how we see that the holistic approach of systems design meet the practical and hypothesis driven approach of design thinking coming together in the practice of transition design. And, we believe that is the true power of what this can do. That would be a great place to leave things.

[00:42:17–00:42:50]
But, I'm not gonna let leave you hang. So, where are we now with this case really? So if you remember back to the three points that Louise made. Like, so what is our role? We are a design agency. We are consultants. Well, it's based around the framing, the mobilization and the facilitation. So in this specific case, this partner foundation is now able to move on ahead with their initiatives, but they're now framed as interventions and we are working towards mobilizing all of the different actors, perhaps unknowingly already working

[00:42:50–00:43:20]
within this transition journey, trying to get a part of the movement so that everything that's already happening will now happen with intent. And finally, we are trying to raise funds for actually the facilitation part because while on, an intervention level, we might see the more classical, client partner relationships, we are putting something out there in the world with a specific outcome, but there's this whole middle layer that can't really be owned by a single actor because the problem is not owned by a single interest and neither is the solution.

[00:43:22–00:43:42]
So finding a way to actually finance that part is something that we consider foundations philanthropic one to be a key player in. Yes, Louise. Alright. So it's time to wrap this up. Let me just do a quick time check.

[00:43:42–00:44:15]
Yeah, we've got 15 minutes left, so let's wrap this up. But you're also welcome to start thinking about if you have any questions for us. We'll leave a little bit of time for that. So just to wrap up, at the moment we are approaching transition design in two ways, being 1508. So one being that, you know, we have a client project and we kind of, there's a system revealing that we can see really needs to be adressed in order to change something that really has the potential

[00:44:15–00:44:37]
to be part of a bigger transition. So that's one approach. And the other one being where we are kind of looking at the system as a start. So this one we look at the intervention and over here it's more of a mapping the system and then starting from that point. So those are the two different approaches that we are working with at the moment.

[00:44:39–00:45:05]
And, at the moment we have some areas that we are looking into and actively working with. One of them Kristian mentioned is The Land Use Movement. We have women's health AI for good. I'm not gonna say too much about it 'cause a good colleague of mine, Lisbeth, at the next morning booster, she's gonna dive all into this subject and tell everything about us.

[00:45:05–00:45:32]
So a little teaser for that, if you wanna sign up to know more about it. And the last one that we are looking at the moment is inclusion in education. So please join us and come talk to us. It's an open invitation to, I really apologize for that silly sound outside, I really wish I could just turn it down.

[00:45:33–00:45:58]
Yeah, that was a lot of information. If you can only remember three things today, we would like it to be not all challenges are systemic, thus system thinking is not a universally better alternative to design thinking. But I hope you all understand how we can actually unify those two approaches in the framework we just presented. Systemic problems are complex and can't be owned by a single actor's interest or agendas.

[00:45:58–00:46:29]
That is also why what Louise is saying, you are invited to join us is not just a cheeky way of let's sit in a circle and play on a guitar. It is actually to cement the fact that we are not owners of this movement. We are not owners of these complex issue, no one can be, but we are taken that upon ourselves to facilitate the transition they require us to fix. So by facilitating systems, transition journeys, we can anchor existing and new initiatives to a narrative as interventions towards a shared future vision.

[00:46:31–00:46:58]
And that is a true meaning of this transition design, at least from our perspective. Cool. Thank you so much. Alright. We have 10 minutes and if you are signed up for a breakout session, please meet us over here I think.

[00:46:58–00:47:24]
Yeah. Alright, So any questions that you might have? Yes, Thank you. It was very nice presentation. I just have a question regarding the first project, like case study that you mentioned. how often you analyze a project regarding the sustainability of it. For example, You mentioned the what? The sustainability. Sustainability, yes.

[00:47:24–00:47:44]
Like you mentioned that the menopause project was a part of a bigger challenge. So how, how that could be a part and how, how a sustainability could be to define in such a small project, which could be a bigger, you know, perspective for that, challenge.

[00:47:47–00:48:10]
Did you ask how often or how, How often and how whatever is easier? Perfect answer to, yes, if actually feel clients to start in a, in a different way. Because what we also always asking clients when they approach us, they often have some kind of idea to a solution or initiative. So we ask them if, this is a solution, then what is the problem?

[00:48:10–00:48:39]
And that is basically what kicks off the whole design thinking, insights driven and hypothesis, process. So basically it's, it's kind of the same question here. So if this is a solution, what is the problem? And is that problem either symptomatic or is it a result of a more deeper complex structure and does it make sense to consider this as an intervention or does it make sense to consider to be, this is the solution to whatever we are interpreting the problem as.

[00:48:40–00:49:00]
So it's not much different in terms of the way we would ask these questions. we are just zooming out and doing these exercises with the, with the pillars that, Luisa showed us. Does it make sense to actually approach this in a systemic way? You would also say, is this a solution or is this an intervention?

[00:49:01–00:49:33]
Yes. Yeah. You mentioned, with your like really nice mapping of the, the problem or the whole ecosystem that there might be sort of power disagreements. Are any of the interventions taking into account power or does that There is no share. Thank you. I was low-key hoping on that question because that is, one of the things I'm also hinting to when I saying, when you're doing this mapping exercise and you're building your theory of change,

[00:49:33–00:49:56]
it is also a, scoping exercise because if it was a different room with a different collaborator, we might go much more into the political aspects of things. In particular, the, the, the subsidies, would probably be a very, impactful leverage point that it was difficult to see in that room if we actually had any power, over it.

[00:49:56–00:50:17]
That's not to say that we should give up on it then, but, in the beginning you kind of want to look for Shortcuts, so to speak. Think about, okay, so what we have leveraged over, can we actually use that to create ripple effects? Because where does the power, dynamics come from? They also come from public opinion, public awareness, and and things like that.

[00:50:17–00:50:46]
So that is kind of the, the strength about, connecting all of these variables that you can look for, these kind of shortcuts. But definitely having done that prioritization exercise, moving back into the, the machine room, you could open that up again and it probably will as we are bringing on more partners as a movement moving forward. And so the theory of change is also something that is, kind of dynamic, so to speak. So thank you Luis.

[00:50:47–00:51:12]
Amazing presentations. Thank you so much. It's really inspiring. I, I keep thinking, so like with the land and the menopause, so the menopause, they were approaching you, I'm assuming we want to do an app, and then you looked at it in a systemic way or you looked at the system and said, okay, where do we have influence? Then we'll do, now I'm just calling an app not to minimize the, the actual product, but in the LAN case, so it's like this huge system that you're mapping, right?

[00:51:13–00:51:35]
And you're selecting sort of instances where you can go in and sort of change something or not manipulate or influence or something, but everyone has a lever, like you said, right? So do you map out the size of the lever that you have to overcome or challenge or meet or influence?

[00:51:35–00:52:03]
Does that make sense? So like I, I have my system here and there's all these other sort of nodes over here and I know that if I step in here, this is sort of the, the biggest starter for creating the ripple effect and changing the system. Is that something that you consider and, and I know it's a huge question, but how would you consider that? I think I wanna say that we wouldn't be as certain about if we do this, this happens.

[00:52:03–00:52:25]
That's the whole point of working with an unpredictable system. That's why the hypothesis part of things are so important because we can imagine any desirable outcome as a, as a leverage point, as part of our theory of change, but we don't know really the power we have in terms of creating these ripple effects unless we start, experimenting with these interventions.

[00:52:26–00:52:46]
And that's coming back to also the, the limitations of where does the movement start and where does it need to go and, and who needs to be part of that to actually have that effect. So back to the metaphor of the, the power of the hand. There's not, there's not only one lever, but there's also not only one hand. And that's, that's kind of also the, part of the complexity of things.

[00:52:49–00:53:18]
Yes. On the Like, Little louder please. Oh, You guys mentioned like different, many leverage points and they're all hypotheses that can be tested. How do you know if you're successful in you, do you know one is successful and when is the time to try another one?

[00:53:19–00:53:40]
That's a good question. And again, it's kind of the discipline of being able to zoom in and out because the way, the reason I reference the, the way we've worked with design thinking and hypothesis for, for many years is that we always very insistent on what do we need to see to know if this particular action actually, is produced by the solutions we have.

[00:53:40–00:54:04]
So that's why you need to work with these two different perspectives, like the short term influence, maybe even shorter term influence based on the specific action. But you need to keep thinking about these different ripple effects. You, you probably wouldn't be able to see from one single intervention either the, the, the short term influence of the leverage point and definitely not the, the, the long term one. So this is also a way of leaning into playing the long game.

[00:54:04–00:54:30]
And the, the comfort in that is that each intervention will still, create meaningful impact probably for people in very dire situations as they move along. But we need this framework to actually understand, but where do we want it to move towards to? And it's, there's not really a clear answer to win to begin to see that change. That's part of the unpredictability of things, especially if a transition journey takes 30 years or even more in, in the, in, in the biting case.

[00:54:31–00:55:03]
so it's, it's a very important discipline. definitely not, not an easy one, but I think the most important part is that you go into this, and leaning into the long game as well because you can't just tick off boxes, similar to when you test a product for instance. Okay. So I have one question in the back and then one here. Yeah, please. Thank you. I'm just wondering how you go about the, the actual future of mapping, like how, like the process of establishing

[00:55:03–00:55:29]
that future vision, right? 'cause depending on, like even after the systems mapping at the status quo, depending on actor and your, and so on, like that future could look very different, right? so yeah, I would just like to hear about that process. Definitely. And the, the easy answer is again, that it's, probably also a dynamic size.

[00:55:29–00:55:50]
So the example we used here, it's a very tightly boiled down vision of the future that is easy to understand how that is a counterpart to the status quo. So when we are mobilizing all of the, that we know are already working within this frame, but perhaps, without being aware of it, this is the language we can use because we need someone to bend, under that.

[00:55:50–00:56:21]
But you could also say that each single leverage point, or perhaps each single intervention is considering some kind of, what is the situation today? What is the situation tomorrow? So there are plenty of future states, it's just different to short term and long term, arenas. But, yeah, but I, but I also want to be clear that, I believe that the, the, the future vision in terms of the end goal transition journey is way more abstract than the, the status quo we have because the status quo consists of very specific things,

[00:56:21–00:56:50]
very specific variables that we can actually use and measure and and connect to each other. So it's, it is a completely different beast. It is not just something that we flip on its head. Cool. is there an average timeframe where you play just can be 30, but like is there somewhat Timeframe? Yeah, sometimes we work with the notion of a, a near star and a future vision.

[00:56:50–00:57:10]
So something we need to be able to see within the next, let's say five or 10 years. So it also becomes part of the validation of the theory of change, that if we don't believe that we will see this change within a shorter term, maybe that is, a signal to, to why, maybe we've misunderstood, the issue or we have tried to pull the, the wrong levels.

[00:57:10–00:57:33]
So yes, there is also different perspectives on that, but I think beyond 10 years so to speak, things will always get so, unpredictable that, Yeah, that was kind of my follow up question. How do you deal with like big uncertainties that are still very impactful where it's like hard to predict or kind of impossible, how we deal with it?

[00:57:33–00:57:57]
I think that the whole question about is this a deep structural issue Is also due to the fact that things are so deeply rooted that they are not likely to change tomorrow. So maybe you're not dealing with a complex systemic challenge. If you believe that well in five years everything can be a turned on its head. so there needs to be some kind of history in terms of why things are the way they are.

[00:57:58–00:58:21]
So when we're looking into the land use movement and why do we even have subsidies, why is our land distributed the way it is? That is a result of a long, long history. And of course I can't predict the future, but we consider that to be a system very much stuck in its place. and that's why we, we believe that the way to change it and transition it is very deliberate, interventions.

[00:58:22–00:58:45]
Alright, thank you everyone. Thanks for those good questions and thanks for coming and have a nice day and, cycling out in the beautiful Copenhagen. Thanks. Thank you. Oh, the.