Inspiring Execs to Think More Provocatively
The word fiction isn’t a word most organizations like to use. In business, success is all about KPIs and facts that align with business objectives and iterative product roadmaps for the next 1 to 3 years. Fiction doesn’t fit. Or does it?
Actually, there is a methodology that resembles science fiction but has more near-term applicability. It is called design fiction and you can think of it as a prototyping exercise that anyone can use to think more provocatively about the future.
Executives and employees alike can delve into design fiction as an alternate approach to strategy. So, what is design fiction? In 2005, science fiction writer Bruce Sterling coined the term in a book he wrote called Shaping Things. A fascinating read, Bruce describes it as a hands-on and practical form of science fiction.
That’s something business teams can embrace. In fact, the Harvard Business Review published a fantastic article on using design fiction for innovation, Using Fiction to Find Your Strategy.
“Rooted in the future but helping to act in the present, design fiction results in concrete actions taken to adjust companies’ visions, strategies, and activities to create a better future.”
Well-written design fiction focuses on artifacts that exist in the present, but with elements of the story that seem unsettling or unusual for the present-day. In other words, design fiction stories take familiar objects and spin them with just enough unfamiliar words or objects to make the story feel like it’s in a near-term probable future. These stories help readers think about what a near-term future might be like when technologies converge or work together in society in new ways. Readers are left to ponder the challenges and solutions posed by the author.
If you want a taste of design fiction, Bruce Sterling contributed a short story to an amazing design fiction anthology published by the Institute of the Future in 2013. Bruce’s story weaves identifiable brands into the fabric of the story but with just enough fantasy to make it provocative. The anthology, An Aura of Familiarity, is a Creative Commons-licensed work, so you can download it for free. It also contains short stories by several other noted science fiction writers.
Design fiction definitely has a commercial application, and it doesn’t have to be in the form of a written story. In fact, design fiction can take many different forms. A splendid example is the Near Future Laboratories IKEA catalog of the near future. The artifact is a familiar IKEA catalog containing items that look like current products. But upon closer inspection, the catalog contains fantastic futuristic home goods that don’t exist yet. It’s an artifact (brought back from the future) that provides a familiar way for people to consider future products and features.
How design fiction differs from other forms of foresight
Strategic foresight is a process-driven approach for thinking about the future using various frameworks and tools such as trend tracking, STEEP analysis, scenario scripting and more.
Design fiction, on the other hand, is an exercise that teams can do as part of strategic foresight. The author of the Harvard Business Review article on design fiction outlines how they conducted interviews with extreme users and stakeholders, performed trend tracking and scenario planning, watched science fiction films and then ran immersive workshops from which design fiction narratives emerged. Then, it was time to create artifacts that looked like they were created in the future. Anything can become an artifact. Popular formats range from product catalogs and newspapers to posters, brochures, podcasts and even physical prototypes. In other words, anything that represents a product from the company’s future can be a piece of design fiction.
Design fiction should be part of any strategic foresight adventure. It helps people internalize or make sense of a future more viscerally. Once you can imagine it, you can build it.
There is a great Harvard Business Review article called Using Fiction to Find Your Strategy. In this article, the author shares how a team started off using some popular strategic foresight methods but incorporated design fiction to help everyone imagine beyond day-to-day iterative innovation. It ended up shifting a company’s innovation strategy.
Design fiction does more than help think more expansively about the future. It is a powerful undertaking that can open the strategy process to more imaginative thinking. It shifts thinking away from evolutionary or reactive product roadmaps and reorients toward provocative ideas that literally invent the desired future. Now that’s real thought leadership!
Want to get started with design fiction? Thought Front Advisory will customize a program that works for your organization, facilitating a session that fits your needs. With a powerful network of partners, we bring decades of expertise from a broad array of industries and functions to guide an entire end-to-end experience.
