We have the knowledge and methodologies to design our future and activism is the hope within everyone's reach

When working together, designers, life, human and social behavioral scientists can add value, which promotes behavioral changes to the advantage of sustainable models in all fields. In the book Sustainable Innovation. Thinking as Behavioral Scientists, Acting as Designers, Michele Visciola explains how to set up sustainable innovation programs, as well as ideas on how to integrate multidisciplinary teams into innovation projects. Interview of the author.

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Hi Michele Visciola, so why did you write this book… now?

Thanks for your questions. I wanted to systematize the knowledge and the observations developed over almost 20 years of precious work done with my company (Experientia, an independent international research and design agency based here in Europe) on innovation.

And, in that respect, I think there are at least two reasons worth mentioning.

The first is that it seems to me that the narratives on innovation have been heavily compromised by the excessive uniformity of views on which levers can be used to generate social, cultural and behavioral changes. Usually, such narratives focus on technology and policies. It is sometimes argued that these levers can produce changes in behavior and in our society up to modifying values and therefore cultures. Which is largely true. However, in these narratives, the dynamics of innovation are flattened on aspects such as the creative force of the innovative idea, the acceptance of innovation by those who adopt the innovative idea, the ability to disseminate the idea, the disruptive technology, the financial consistency to support it, the ability of policies to favor technological diffusion and to justify it with adequate laws. Everyone would agree on that. Those dynamics exist. However, if you are inside innovation processes, you realize how these aspects, even in their general relevance, take on different meanings if you focus on the intentionality driving the decision-making processes that may lead to the success of innovations. According to my professional experience, this variable is the least treated overtly … and therefore the one that allows the most organized realities to derive the greatest profits from innovation. These translate into protected interests often in favor of a few beneficiaries and often also to the detriment of many who are excluded from the innovation paradigms.

If we take full account of the intentionality that we want to pursue via innovation, we understand how the intention to innovate can make the common good evolve or create inequality. In other words, the improvement of society, full respect for the founding values that bring human beings together cannot develop autonomously, i.e., without revealing the value elements of the innovative idea with respect to the final beneficiaries. My thesis on innovation is that the only way to reveal the value of innovation is to combine in-depth analysis of human and collective behavior as well as of how to facilitate their evolution by generating a significant distribution of the intangible benefits, i.e., positive consequences also called externalities. These will obviously be proportional to the levels of maturity that express individual and community behaviors. But by focusing on intentionality, the scale of benefits can be the real object of innovation narratives and of acceleration strategies. If we focus on it, we can guide the transformation of societies and cultures by reducing inequalities and opportunistic appetites that would otherwise be difficult to influence. To answer the objection that intentionality can be imprecise and manipulated or open to unexpected consequences, I argue that the vernacular culture of design and engineering must be supported by the experimental and observational methodologies of the human and social sciences. Their combination becomes a powerful means of measuring and controlling the intentionality of innovation.

Therefore, and here I come to the second reason worth mentioning and I hope you may understand better why now it’s high time for such reasoning, i.e. the narratives about sustainability. These dwell on the environmental and economic aspects with great concreteness... to the point that in a reasonable time they bring together different technical and scientific approaches, as it has been the case of metrics and intervention strategies on climate change.

These therefore constitute a credible platform for anyone who wants to discuss seriously the issue and adopt innovation policies and models. The social and behavioral aspects of sustainability, on the other hand, are treated in a hazy way and unfortunately offer space to anyone who wants to shield themselves with topics such as those that go under the label of green washing and investments in sustainability and social impact. My thesis is that the sustainability of behaviors for the safeguarding of the common values of societies must be the object of explicit design. In the book I start from the description of our perceptive and decision-making mechanisms which are based on automatisms, governed by the limbic system, therefore by emotions, impressions, sensations. These are useful in everyday life but at the same time they are imperfect, create biases, make us make many mistakes and make bad decisions. My thesis on sustainability is therefore that innovation is sustainable if it allows us to prevent and correct the consequences of our limited rationality. It is clearly a call to contrasting the possibility of exploiting the vulnerability of cooperation and the limitations of human rationality.

The pandemic has forced the automatisms of the global economy to pause, adding to the problems of climate change, inequalities, war, energy poverty, the exponential growth of chronic diseases. We are faced with sometimes extreme evidence, which indicates that it is time to rethink our innovation models. Those who invest big resources on innovation are directly responsible for those who directly or indirectly use the technological and creative artefacts of innovation. I mean there are elements of discontinuity between taking on the responsibility of innovation, favoring the growth of self-determination and cooperation, safeguarding resources and the common good, and refusing or neglecting to take on such a responsibility.

The authoritativeness of those who are clear about their aims with innovation strategies must be acknowledged. I discuss in my book why new methods to assess the impact of innovation are needed. I maintain that it is vital to focus on strategies for behavior change and sustainable innovation. I show how and finally I discuss extensively that innovation should be aimed to test systemic change programs.

An extract from your book that best represents yourself?

Michele Visciola: Here we are: “Methods used to accelerate innovation and change experimental programs must support personalized change, understand and implement the diverse nature of contexts (heterogeneity) to safeguard diversity and favor harmony. Anyone relinquishing control over their behavior even for a short time, trusting the product or the innovative service is not merely trusting the brand of the innovation. They are implicitly also counting on a mediation able to ensure stability and the ability to improve uncertainty and complexity management. It is a very delicate task which,.….., requires a toolbox for design science and behavior and culture change. We can count on policy making based on the principles of law but also increasingly on experimental programs for synergic aims. The results of these experiments can offer important suggestions for innovation policies and incentives. Above all they are the nourishment that will help shape design strategies to facilitate systemic (system) change in individual behavior and cooperation”.

The trends that are just emerging and that you believe in the most?

Michele Visciola: In one sentence, the trend I see most promising is that activism has entered a phase of better organization. Activists such as designers and behavioral scientists, but all communities of interest are organizing to have an impact and offer examples and direction to address and manage the complex problems that affect us. I am referring, for example, to the energy communities which, by making themselves autonomous in the production of energy, offer solutions to get out of energy poverty and significantly improve the ecological footprint. I am referring to the patient communities that are leaving the typical phase of advocacy, which made them subordinate to decisions taken elsewhere, to enter a new phase of active guidance of patients in accessing care. These communities, if well organized, can influence decisions on the profiles to be included in clinical trials. In some cases, they struggle to find expensive funding to carry out new trials; they struggle to move the value chain from finding the new molecule to creating services for the patient ecosystem. They are important players in shifting healthcare costs from cure to prevention. In all of this, behavioral scientists, social workers and designers have a fundamental role of guidance and support.

If you had to give one piece of advice to a reader of this article, what would it be?

Michele Visciola: We live in an era of transition, and it depends only upon us to know which side to take to shape a sustainable future. We have the knowledge and methodologies to design our future and activism is the hope within everyone's reach.

In a nutshell, what are the next topics that you will be passionate about?

Michele Visciola: I hope that hundreds of initiatives for sustainable innovation experiments and large-scale intervention programs will start everywhere with the aim of demonstrating that it is possible to design, evaluate and accelerate new models of individual life and scalable communities for the sustainable evolution of our society. You will find me there actively involved.

Thank you Michele Visciola

Thank you Bertrand Jouvenot

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The book: ?Sustainable Innovation. Thinking as Behavioral Scientists, Acting as Designers , Michele Visciola, Springer Nature. 2022.?