Christian Bason - Expand: Stretching the Future by Design

PRAISE FOR EXPAND

As global challenges are accelerating, public servants and policy makers need more than new tools; they need a new way of thinking. Expand offers just that: a fresh, ambitious perspective on how to innovate in the service of society and the planet. The authors provide a compelling account of how we must build on the foundations of design thinking to embrace a new class of problem-solvingto the benefit of public institutions and the cities, nations, and people they serve.

Lisa Witter, Cofounder and CEO, Apolitical

The last century saw the role of design in society grow from enabler of industrialization and mass production to drivers of digital services and systems design. In this book, Jens Martin Skibsted and Christian Bason contend that now is the time to widen the design discourse to take on the grand, complex challenges of tomorrow. With a uniquely Danish perspective, they examine the universal power of design for shaping a society and call on designers, businesses, and leaders alike to broaden their ideas about design thinking and adopt new ways to use design to create wider value for generations to come.

Mariana Mazzucato, Professor, Economics of Innovation and Public Value, University College London

Expand lays out an ambitious path to unleashing the full power of design thinking as a key approach to innovation and sustainable growth. If we are to effectively address the urgent challenge of climate change, we must design more circular value chains and business models. This book provides the vision, the thinking, and the cases we need to get started. A must-read for anyone seeking to positively impact our common future.

Jim Hagemann Snabe, Chairman, Siemens and AP Moeller-Maersk, and former Co-CEO, SAP

All too few methods, theories, insights, and approaches make themselves truly available to collective problem-solving at scale. All too often that kind of inspiration stays evasive. Heres a bold attempt to fully engage with the biggest challenges we face. Its highly ambitious, clearly arguedand profoundly thought-provoking.

Bjarne Corydon, CEO and Editor-in-Chief,Borsen Daily, and former Minister of Finance of Denmark

Expand is an important eye-opener that stretches our thinking about innovation. This timely book shows us how we meet global challenges in an increasingly complex world. Its a must-read for entrepreneurs, business managers, and public servantsleaders at all levelswho are working to create a better world.

Alan Webber, Mayor of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and founder ofFast Company

This book is a major contribution to the field of innovation in the 21st century. It cements that technology is not an exogenous force over which we have no control. Technological change should lead us to reflect about who we are and how we see the world. The insight that new solutions can emerge from anywhereacross geographies, technologies, and cultureschallenges long-held assumptions that innovation stems from a specific linear and incremental engineering tradition, often too absorbed by immediate concerns. Expand is a must-read for leaders and decision-makers wishing to embrace the promise of new technology and improve the state of the world.

Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum and the Davos Agenda

Jens Martin Skibsted and Christian Bason in their new book speak to a land that I have been in search for my entire design life. A land that was first discovered by Lou Kahn, the great architect. A land called Zero. A land of beginnings, of a parallel universe in which everything is designed. The design of your life, the design of a chair, the design of humor, the design of music. Its not the business of design but the design of business. They strike out a clear path that, in its simplicity of expanding our mindset about design, is remarkable.

Richard Saul Wurman, Cofounder of the TED conference

In Expand, youll learn a revolutionary approach to design that works for any situation. By offering a new way to think about innovation and design, it gives all of usnot just designersthe blueprints to solve problems and take advantage of opportunities.

Mark Frauenfelder, Research Director, Institute for the Future, and former Editor-in-Chief ofMakemagazine

ALSO BY CHRISTIAN BASON & JENS MARTIN SKIBSTED

By Christian Bason

Leading Public Sector Innovation: Co-creating for a Better Society (2nd ed.). Policy Press (2018)

Leading Public Design: Discovering Human-Centred Governance. Policy Press (2017)

Design for Policy (ed.) Routledge (2014)

By Jens Martin Skibsted

Tilbage til virkeligheden: Sdan skabes vrdi i en verden, hvor alle ved alt. With Rasmus Bech Hansen. Gyldendal (2013)

Instant icon: Om produkter der skaber exceptionel vrdi og hvordan de bliver til. Gyldendal (2008)

Expand copyright 2022 by Jens Martin Skibsted and Christian Bason

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Matt Holt is an imprint of BenBella Books, Inc.

10440 N. Central Expressway

Suite 800

Dallas, TX 75231

benbellabooks.com

Send feedback to .

BenBella and Matt Holt are federally registered trademarks.

First E-Book Edition: May 2022

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021057359

ISBN 9781637740736 (trade cloth)

ISBN 9781637740743 (ebook)

Editing by Katie Dickman

Copyediting by Ginny Glass

Proofreading by Marissa Wold Uhrina and Ashley Casteel

Indexing by WordCo Indexing Services, Inc.

Text design and composition by Aaron Edmiston

Cover design by Brigid Pearson

Cover image Shutterstock / Stilesta

Special discounts for bulk sales are available.
Please contact.

For our next generation, to whom the future belongs:

Olga, Mads Ludvig, Kai & Ella

Lillian, Julia & Christopher

The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make, and could just as easily make differently.

David Graeber,The Utopia of Rules

A dream will always triumph over reality, once it is given the chance.

Stanislaw Lem,The Futurological Congress

W eve all been there. Stuck on hold for what feels like forever while the customer service department looks into your case for the umpteenth time. And the bigger the beast, the more byzantine the bureaucracy. Which is what makes recent events at the US Department of Veterans Affairs so interesting.

Few government departments generate as much goodwill as the VA. The largest civilian agency in the United States, it serves the needs of millions of military veterans and their families by providing lifelong health care, disability compensation, and other benefits and services. Its motto comes from President Lincolns second inaugural address, written in the final days of the Civil War: To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan.