"Huge changes are in front of us."
Looking Outside is a newsletter reflecting on conversations with influential and original thinkers from a wide range of fields, offering a fresh perspective on familiar topics.
"The future belongs to those who can imagine it, design and execute it." Words to live by. I firmly believe corporations have a large part to play in driving positive change in the world. In November of 2023, I had a chance to showcase the work of two such organizations changing how we think about designing for the future; 奥雅纳 and Airbus .
Looking Outside filmed two LIVE episodes at the Dubai Future Forum, the largest gathering of futurists in the world, brought to us by the DUBAI FUTURE FOUNDATION and held at the beautiful Museum of the Future.
In the first conversation we talk about sustainable design with Arup Director of Foresight, Josef Hargrave. Arup is focused on creating more sustainable built environments, and Josef speaks to how designing for the future needs to be anchored in decisions for the present, by understanding deeply the structural limitations and infrastructure of today.
Listen to Josef's episode here via Spotify:
Josef details several projects he's run for designing out to 2050 across geographies exploring building for cities, having worked in and with over 30 cities around the world. He boils success down to context: it's easy to identify what is changing in the world, but the effort should be in what it means to the project and stakeholders holding the brief. Contextualizing the environment you're designing for will influence how you design for the future and the future populations living in this infrastructure.
Josef also discusses how foresight done well should ultimately be about making yourself useful to the organization that you're a part of. As the company evolves over time, as Arup has in the 13 years Josef has been there, the application of foresight needs to evolve with it.
In the second conversation, we talk about disruptive technology and transformative blue sky innovation with Airbus Senior Vice President?and Head of Disruptive Research and Technology, Grzegorz (Greg) Ombach Ph.D .
Greg describes the mindset shift he experienced in leading innovative transformation across various industries, each with their own lifecycle - from Telecommunications with 1 to 2 year innovation cycles, then to Automotive where it moved out to 7-10 years and now in the Aerospace industry where he has 30-50 years in sight. As Greg considers future disruption, he is looking out to the next 50 years with a clear goal in mind. For Airbus, this takes the ambition of the company from accessible air travel, to sustainable air travel, and then to aerospace.
Greg describes how this focus on transformation through disruptive technology requires active monitoring and proactive imagining. At Airbus, this is enabled firstly by enlisting open and curious people called 'Scouts' whose role it is to spot new trends across varied regions. These people are inhouse engineers who have a finger on the pulse of the air travel and aerospace ecosystem in which they operate daily and are therefore in the best position to assess the viability of the trends for the business. Accompanying this is the center of research where the 'Blue Sky Thinkers' live. Their job is to come up with moonshot ideas that are turned into pilots.
Greg stresses the need to look more broadly, assessing a product based on its ecosystem - what keeps the structure standing on the outside as well as the components that keep it relevant on the inside. All of this led by imagination, after all, how can you come up with something truly disruptive if you can't imagine it?
Listen to Greg's episode here via Spotify:
Three questions to consider: