Summary of the video

So one question is what are your thoughts on decolonizing design in relation to strategic foresight?

How can we envision diverse and decolonized futures of success?

Wow. Thank you to whoever wrote this. That's a key issue close to my heart. Obviously the way we think about the future is often perceived from the perspective of white straight dudes like me in the global north.

If we ask indigenous people, In the global south about the future. They laugh at us when we talk about dystopian, you know, collapse in negative futures because they say that's our present for the last five months.

I think there's a strong sense of humility here for us in privileged global north context of practicing design. The most important aspect is how do we bring in the voice of people who are usually left out from the conversation.

Now, decolonizing doesn't necessarily require to go to Brazil, South Africa to do that. You have a lot of communities around you who are below the radar.

So for example, I participate in a lot of innovation programs around business schools in academia, and they always suggest that students work for a big company and do innovation for free for them in the hope that they get money, job, or some sort of visibility.

If you take a decolonial lens, you'll say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's no way that big corporations should leverage the ideas of, of people in school for free.

What about we use design to solve problems that are below the radar. So there might be a business around the corner running by a family from Pakistan.

And the first thing would be not like show up and say, we wanna solve a problem. Engage in a conversation with them, understand what's important for them, bring them in the process and design with them.

We tend to overthink.

How do we respond to the market? How do we please shareholders? How do we make ourselves look good to businesses? Because we want work? Cause we know we are on a job market. We know it's a capitalist, you know, scheme.

But as designers, we have the ability to shift our priorities a little bit and invite stakeholders to say, Hey, you know, a lot of people struggling just around us.

Can we rebalance the way we approach? Just teaching innovation. Why should big corporation get all this free? Shouldn't this go somewhere else? Shouldn't we have a small NGO? Shouldn't we help a small business owned by, I don't know, the Albanian community? And that is really close to my heart.

It doesn't have to be a revolutionary activist, you know, in your face, we know the kind of reaction it triggered. But start to pivot a little bit and show that design is able to apprehend situations differently and that you wanna do social innovation. Let's do it.

Then on your free time go to, what we call the global south. Really go, I left home when I was 17. I went to South Africa in, and I changed my life.

What is fundamental here, from a future study perspective, is to engage with people who have a fundamentally different perspective of the future.

In Africa, the future is very different. It's not that it doesn't exist, but it's shaped by a completely different paradigms. So in Asia it will be different and then you will learn more about how your perception of the future is shaped.

There's a lot of unpacking to do there. If you travel, if you go really outside of the west, it will shape your perspective of the future in many ways.

And you really have to be humble.

Basically two things. Start home, go out.

Yeah.​