#25 Digital Society School & Transformation design with Marco Van Hout

“Digital is the context and then it is about ethics, capability, transformation and sustainability.” 

In this week’s episode of let’s talk Marco and I discuss how to create a digital and inclusive society in today’s complex world. The digitalisation of our world is a great opportunity to bring together design thinking, IT skills, technology, entrepreneurship and ethics, while asking: how can society benefit from developments in digital technology? How can companies effectively adapt to the digital society? We must teach integration, provide education and create solutions. Companies must create a culture that fosters ongoing learning, that builds and experiments with capabilities, that designs for true transformation and that invests in and implements creative solutions to avoid design knowledge waste.

Listen to us exploring how to create a culture of experimentation & inclusion and scaling the leadership skills for life long learning across organisations. Spreading impact and scaling change sustainability is important to deliberately design for sustainable transformation whether this be in society or in organisations. We all need to be part of ‘team human’. 

Marco shares his thoughts, insights and wealth of experience from working with individuals, communities and organisations across the globe. 

The main insights you will get from this episode are :

• DSS hosts global goals jams in conjunction with the UN Development Programme to prevent design and process waste and work towards sustainable goals for the good of humanity - by incorporating collective intelligence, integrating technology, and pairing digital with planetary transformation, and design methodology with sustainable development 
• The digitalisation of our world is a great opportunity to bring together design thinking, IT skills, technology, entrepreneurship and ethics, while asking: how can society benefit from developments in digital technology? How can companies effectively adapt to the digital society? We must teach integration, provide education and create solutions
• Human-centred design considers the digital context around humans; digital transformation affects everyone and buy-in is essential for its success – it is disruptive but positive lessons can be learned, e.g. how the ethics of technology can serve the digital talent gap and societal advancement
• We must all learn to relearn, evolve and adapt as a truly global, inclusive and diverse society and tackle big issues like inequality, wellbeing and safety; as individual societies become more closed, migration decreases and there is less diffusion of both specialist knowledge and skills on the ground
• Companies must create a culture that fosters ongoing learning, that builds and experiments with capabilities, that designs for true transformation and that invests in and implements creative solutions to avoid design knowledge waste
• Design thinking demystifies complex topics to produce tangible outcomes more quickly by interconnecting creative forces to focus on transforming the future as opposed to trying to change the past – embracing the risks of ‘what if?’ and daring to ‘think big’ 
• The complexity of global challenges, such as migration and climate change, require multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural and multi-generational teams with a vision focused on the emotional human experience to transform global issues for the long term
• It is vital to expand the learning community, retain talent, spread impact, scale change and authentically embrace diversity and inclusion; we are limited by what we think, how we act and what we do, but most particularly by how we interact
• Sustainability requires a workforce with agency to make decisions, bringing with it representation and the essential feeling of belonging - connections and experiences matter more than tools; our overarching goal should be to create a safe and just space for humanity within planetary boundaries