"Knowledge drives action as it does clarity, focus, purpose and passion"_ Pilar Saura
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| Buckminster Fuller and Chuck Byrne, Building Construction/Geodesic Dome |
Where is the value in a corporation?
How can an organization unlock its potential if it doesn't understand the potential value of its resources?. If you don't understand your resources, you cannot strategize your actions.
Organizations are systems of collaborating individuals who share a purpose, standardized processes and a common culture: That is the actual and potential value of the system. What if an organization needs to evolve or adapt its system to a new context? What resources do you have and need within your organization to to tackle the disruption?. The answer is common sense: Those who know how the system works in relation with the actual and potential value of its resources, would be the ones with the right answers.
The rearrangement of resources is a strategic action
Bucky Fuller, one of the preeminent design scientists and philosophers of the last century, defined design as "the intentional rearrangement of resources".
I totally relate to this definition.
Before summarizing what knowledge and actions are involved in the rearrangement of resources, let's redefine what a resource is for an strategic designer.
Design Thinking involved in the rearrangement of resourcesA resource is everything. For a designer, a resource is a tool to accomplish a challenge and it is also a mean to understand the problem and the context, because any rearrangement implies recognizing resources, create resources, activate resources and make sense of their value as a single source and as a part of a bigger picture.
Previous to a "rearrangement", a designer analyzes the situation and makes sense of the challenge in relation to reality/context/resources/ before going any further. These questions wrap it up:
- What is going on here?
- Why this challenge? Any other hidden challenges?
- What do you have? (Resources as tools)
- What do you need? What do you have to create/redesign to accomplish the goal?
- Is it viable, scalable. Is it possible?
- Who are my partners in this challenge? Can I trust them?
Design Actions involved in the rearrangement of resources
Knowledge drives action, as it does clarity, focus, purpose and passion:
- Redefine resources in relation to the context and the challenge: This action means that you have to be also an expert in defining contexts and also an expert in defining problems.
- Resources are tools to accomplish a challenge, therefore:
- Allocate and summarize what you've got
- Summarize what you need and assign it a value
- Understand its actual use of each resource in relation to the rest of the context/resources and envision and designing its potential use of each resource as a unit and as a network. Connect it all.
- Redesign functions of the resources so that they deliver the results you need.
While itinerating, you may envision a new potential value/opportunity and need to reconfigure the whole to obtain and alternative result.
(I'll further my thinking shortly)
