The Designful Company

Introduction

BEAUTY EMERGES FROM ANY DESIGN THAT IS WORKING.

—BUCKMINSTER FULLER

The Age of Wicked Problems

Industrial Age thinking has delivered some dazzling capabilities, including the power to churn out high-quality products at affordable prices. Yet it has also trapped us in a tangle of what social planner Horst Rittel labeled “wicked problems”—problems so persistent, pervasive, or slippery that they seem insoluble. Unlike the relatively tame problems found in math, chess, or cost accounting, wicked problems tend to shift disconcertingly with every attempt to solve them. Moreover, the solutions are never right or wrong, just better or worse.

The world’s wicked problems crowd us like piranha. You know the list: pollution, overpopulation, ...