Adam Zeiner

By mapping the components of individual services (or portfolios of services) against these two axes, perhaps we can explore their relationship to systems change. To what extent are we tweaking around the edges of the existing system, versus changing the behaviour of the system itself — and how ambitious is the effort?

I think of these hierarchical layers as levels of leverage that different people, or teams have with their work.

This matters because services designed and optimised for the current system can have the effect of further entrenching it — by introducing additional forces and interests to ‘keep things the way that they are’. This isn’t to dismiss their value — systems change is slow and uncertain, and in the meantime it’s essential we deliver the most effective... See more

At Design Council, we work across the design economy, and — even though we have specialisms in architecture & the built environment, social innovation & business innovation — we have Experts whose design work goes well beyond that and our research and frameworks should be something all designers can use.

The principles we use to build systems maps haven’t changed much since the 1980s.