The Most Important Product of the 20th Century

Today was the first meeting of Dick Buchanan's Design, Management, and Organizational Change seminar. He opened the class with an unusual claim: that organizations are the most important design product of the 20th century. We may not see them or feel their presence, but organizations are everywhere and influence our lives. And they are all designed: some well, some not. The world is a web of organizations; you can't ignore them. Every product comes out of some sort of organization. And, not incidentally, they tend to crush people.

Something special is happening in the world of organizations and Design is at the center of it. Designers are being invited to design organizations themselves. If we can use design thinking and find the right ways to apply it to organizations, we can make a real difference in what they are. And they need the help: organizations are becoming less and less efficient and less and less effective. No one is sure why this is, if it is caused by the size and complexity of the world. But the stresses are becoming significant and governments especially are becoming a tangled mess.

The 20th century is filled with ways of studying organizations: philosophy, sociology, business, etc. But a design perspective on organizations is new. Design takes the tack that organizations are environments created by human beings. And wherever things are being made by people, Design is there.

The class is going to explore how design works in organizations and how organizations work in general. This is to "give some armor for going out in the world" to designers. We'll also be examining this new area of design practice that is oriented consciously and deliberately at changing organizations. The things we think of as Design within an organization are really ways that organizations have of adapting to their environment, by producing products that have to go into the world.

Originally posted on Tuesday, January 11, 2005