Tim Brown, head of IDEO, who will be speaking and moderating at the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF), thinks it is precisely the power and ability of design that made the organisers decide to make design central to the conference:

“The WEF is at an interesting intersection between the issues facing business (growth, competitiveness) and the issues facing the world in general (health, education, hunger, political vision). I think this perspective makes WEF particularly interested in innovation and design because they offer some chance of progress in both spheres and they are a fresh way of thinking about apparently intractable problems.”

“Design and innovation encourage us to take a human centered empathic approach to business problems as well as social problems and so we start to see more examples of congruence between otherwise distant spheres. The natural optimism of a design approach is also refreshing and relevant when tackling global social problems as well as business.”

(from a post by Bruce Nussbaum)