Abstract

This paper provides experience feedback from a French consortium gathering academic and industrial partners, to produce quantified scenarios for 2060 that will serve to redirect companies within the frame of planetary boundaries. This setup constitutes a field for action research in design, together with strategic foresight, sustainability, and human and social sciences. Our paper presents the epistemological and methodological choices made, reports on the first year of the project (qualitative scenario-building), and the issues met. We propose in particular to discuss the tension between global societal evolutions driven by macro trends, and the situated processes of transformation initiated by the participants. Discrepancy between those scales challenge our cross-disciplinary reading grids, but also the role of design for systemic change in our approach. This paper analyzes the challenges met, and the initiatives taken to bridge design, engineering, and strategic foresight approaches.

Keywords

scenario building; transition design; strategic redirection; planetary boundaries

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Conference Track

Research Paper

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Jun 23rd, 9:00 AM Jun 28th, 5:00 PM

Framing Transitions: Scenarios and Design for the Strategic Redirection of Companies within Planetary Boundaries

This paper provides experience feedback from a French consortium gathering academic and industrial partners, to produce quantified scenarios for 2060 that will serve to redirect companies within the frame of planetary boundaries. This setup constitutes a field for action research in design, together with strategic foresight, sustainability, and human and social sciences. Our paper presents the epistemological and methodological choices made, reports on the first year of the project (qualitative scenario-building), and the issues met. We propose in particular to discuss the tension between global societal evolutions driven by macro trends, and the situated processes of transformation initiated by the participants. Discrepancy between those scales challenge our cross-disciplinary reading grids, but also the role of design for systemic change in our approach. This paper analyzes the challenges met, and the initiatives taken to bridge design, engineering, and strategic foresight approaches.

 

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