Dr. Mariana Amatullo is an Associate Professor of Strategic Design and Management at Parsons School of Design, and serves as Vice Provost for Global Executive Education & Online Strategic Initiatives, at The New School in New York. Mariana is the President of Cumulus, the global association of art and design education and research.
In addition to teaching at Parsons, Mariana currently spearheads new curricular initiatives and global partnerships in the innovation space of executive education, and online degrees and non-degree certificates.
Mariana has an esteemed international educational background in design, management, and creative arts and is a recognized thought leader in Design For Social Innovation. She is one of the editors of the upcoming Design for Social Innovation: Case studies from around the World (Routledge, November 2021) and shares with us here her perspective on creativity.
Creativity Without Frontiers is available at all relevant book retailers
Stay in touch with Unknown Origins
Music by Iain Mutch
Dr. Mariana Amatullo is an Associate Professor of Strategic Design and Management at Parsons School of Design, and serves as Vice Provost for Global Executive Education & Online Strategic Initiatives, at The New School in New York. Mariana is the President of Cumulus, the global association of art and design education and research.
In addition to teaching at Parsons, Mariana currently spearheads new curricular initiatives and global partnerships in the innovation space of executive education, and online degrees and non-degree certificates.
Mariana has an esteemed international educational background in design, management, and creative arts and is a recognized thought leader in Design For Social Innovation. She is one of the editors of the upcoming Design for Social Innovation: Case studies from around the World (Routledge, November 2021) and shares with us here her perspective on creativity.
Creativity Without Frontiers is available at all relevant book retailers
Stay in touch with Unknown Origins
Music by Iain Mutch
Hello, I'm Roy Sharples, and welcome to the unknown origins podcast. Why are you listening to this podcast? Are you an industry expert? Looking for insights? are you growing your career? Or are you a dear friend helping to spur your pal on? I created the unknown origins podcast to have the most inspiring conversations with creative industry personalities and experts about entrepreneurship, pop culture, art, music and film and fashion. Mariana Amatullo is the Vice Provost for global executive education and online strategic initiatives at the new school, New York, and Associate Professor of strategic design and management at Parsons School of Design. Marianna has an esteemed educational background in design and creative arts, and is a recognized thought leader in design for social innovation. She is currently spearheading new curricular initiatives on partnerships to bring executive education and large scale bespoke programs for corporate and enterprise partners and online degree and certificate programs at the university. Hello, and welcome Mariana, what inspired and attracted you to the design for innovation space in the first place?
Mariana Amatullo:We start developing a narrative about our lives after the fact. Yeah, and start answering these questions in a way that make a lot of sense. But the truth is, you know, if I want to be super honest, when I go back in time, as I got very interested in, in the space of design for social innovation and design education, that I mean, I think I sort of landed in it without the intentionality that, of course, I built over the years, you know, brought up as a kid of diplomats around the world, and that instilled a lot of curiosity. in me, as, as, as a thinker, and as a human being, I was coming from an informal education. Growing up, the UN, holds both in New York and Geneva where my dad was posted. And always a very aware of, you know, diversity, different, different cultural experiences around the world and the work of United Nations. So I was always very attracted by questions of the social, you know, what do we do to make people's life better. And I think that I naturally started gravitating in those very early days, to work I was seeing in my institution at the time, but Center College of Design, where, where designers were coming up with incredible products and communications, and, you know, initiatives that had a social purpose. So I think it was at the beginning, a little bit intuitive, quite, quite frankly,
Roy Sharples:You can detect a sophisticated transatlantic dialect, in your accent, European, South American, and obviously, North American
Mariana Amatullo:learning languages in a very privileged manner, you know, as a kid, with without the effort, again, that one has to put when you're an adult, or you were often just, you know, landing in places and put in the local public school and had to figure out that's how I learned French in Switzerland. I sort of had no choice.
Roy Sharples:Being brought up and exposed to that environment. at such a young age must have made you very adaptive as a human because travel is a catalyst for inspiring innovation and creativity because you experience different cultures and diverse societies, and learning to appreciate and respect these differences in lifestyle, and behavior unites us. Traveling forces us to depart from the familiar and take on a world of new experiences, cultures, languages, architectures, foods, and lifestyles that influence our minds, bodies and souls by shaping us into better more well rounded people with a more integrative worldview. And we get exposed to and understand people's dynamics, life cultures, subcultures, customs, religions, languages, governments, economics and arts, and, of course, idiosyncrasies exist, the fundamentally people are the same everywhere and that we are All born, live and die of loves, hates and passions, the same biotic structure of brain nerves organs and skin, we breathe, drink and eat, to stay alive. However, what makes us unique is how we self identify by interpreting the world around us discovering our own strengths, and expressing our personalities, talents, and triumphs.
Mariana Amatullo:I think so, I think, you know, there is a lot of research out there now, these days, about, you know, the importance, the importance of, you know, cognitive flexibility, I would say, and exposing children early on to, you know, different experiences, different contexts, certainly, very important conversation around diversity and inclusion and the importance of it, to create, you know, to, to, to really challenge ourselves to understand other experiences, other trajectories, we know how important that is, and how stronger our institutions, companies, organizations are as a result, and I think that when you are uprooted, and are, you know, living in different parts of the world from from early on, you just soak that up in a way again, that is, you know, very natural,
Roy Sharples:What is your creative process, in terms of how do you dream up new ideas, develop those ideas into concepts, and then turn those concepts into actualization.
Mariana Amatullo:I'm more on the side of someone who is a little bit of a creative strategist, creative director in some process, and really educator and facilitator in many of these design for social innovation projects that I've been part of. And that process of making the invisible visible. In terms of my personal contribution, a lot of what I do is mediate, articulate, narrate, you know, craft the value proposition, and craft the conditions for others to make that happen by for faculty, design teams that I work with, and students of mine, I've been very, you know, again, fortunate to, to be part of many, many projects, and study many projects, and be hanging out with, with amazing designers and makers around the world who are making this happen. But I want to be super, super modest here to say, my contribution is much more on the strategy facilitation side, and how do I make that happen? You know, it goes a little bit back to what you were asking earlier about adaptability and honing, I think, a craft in In my case, for breaching, translating, you know, knowledge processes and processes that I have witnessed, and, and really studied of design, to be able to bridge that to non designers, and, and really lift them up and advocate for their importance. So, you know, as a researcher, I've had the opportunity to spend a lot of time trying to answer a question that was, you know, that continues to be the research question I pursue in my writing, and in my research and publishing, which is, how do we demonstrate the value that designers bring through their creative process to questions, you know, to the big issues of our time, to the big social issues of our time. So I've done a lot of research in mixed methods, both in you know, qualitative, qualitative methods, but also quantitative using you're using statistics and surveys, to really try to get to how to identify how do we identify what makes design as a discipline, such an important you know, body of knowledge, but also a mindset to be able to create and to innovate with a purpose that yields better results and making the the invisible visible for me as a researcher, for example, has been being able to develop research with other colleagues But show that actually you can measure you can isolate something called design aptitude, right? This talk a lot about design thinking. But this other concept that that others and myself have been working on designer to chip is really this idea that there is a mindset or cognitive way of processing challenges that that creative and design people bring, that allows us to, you know, be creative, be empathic, connect the dots, navigate ambiguity, all of these sort of, you know, ways of approaching a challenge, but then yield very exciting, creative solutions, trying to document and ride articulate and translate this in ways that others who are not in the design and creative communities can start understanding it. What do you believe
Roy Sharples:The key skills are for designing for social innovation?
Mariana Amatullo:Humility! I think the age of right t e genius designer, creative so o person who comes up with a fantastic product r communication artifact is h s been long over right design h s become a team sport, we know f r quite some time. And th s applies to corporate project, of course, and the priva e sector areas, but it also f r sure applies in, in the soci l and public sector, right. f you're working in governmen, with policymakers, if we' e working in NGOs, a d international organ multilater l organizations, that are tryi g to address issues like you kno, climate change, the pandemi, etc, you really are working a, as one of a number of folk, both in teams of designers, a d multidisciplinary designers, b t also in teams with n n designers. So the ability to e humble, to be collaborative, o be also I think, qui e articulate and self aware abo t the process and the value you' e bringing is very importan, because what we see in the n the social and public secto, because we're working wi h colleagues and Policy a d Management in many oth r disciplines that have traditio s that have a bias towards o e define towards surveys towar s you know quants data, you ha e to be able to really stand n your on your feet and defe d ideas with the other process s we have in design, which, y u know, are don't look the sam, right? We might be prototypi g iterating visualizing a concep, and that is super important. e might be working in a non line r manner that sometimes puts y u know, other other disciplines a little bit out of their comfo t zone. Yes. So I think havi g having the the toolkits and t e confidence to do that takes a serious, hard work is real y important as a skill set th t articulation power, I would sa
Roy Sharples:Many innovations are classic examples of outsiders, who disrupted invented and change the faces of industry, often by accident. disruption can have a domino effect outside the intentional target an area of expertise. For example, Apple's iTunes, became a multimedia content and hardware synchronization management system, an e commerce platform when it was originally envisioned as a music player. It ended up disrupting the music industry by providing consumers with the ability to legally buy only the songs they wanted to hear at a significantly lower cost than other platforms. Another example is Coca Cola, which was first invented by pharmacist john Steve Pemberton to cure headaches before becoming a household name. This is like outsider art, where the actual art is produced by self taught artists with no formal training, who can often have a naive quality because they have not been trained as artists or worked within the conventional art production structures. They do not follow a conventional path, structure or formula. They follow their instinct and define their own structure and style. Therefore, sometimes, the farther you are from a problem, the more likely you find a solution. Because you can see the solution from a fresh perspective, and often applying novel solutions to a disparate field, hence your point around the importance of cross discipline, collaboration, and problem solving.
Mariana Amatullo:Yes, and, you know, building on what you're saying about the fresh eyes. We did. A few years ago, a beautiful project in Cuba in Havana with the design school is the in Urbana, just the only design school in Cuba, and Art Center College of Design and a publication we would put together of that student project that brought students from from, you know, international students based in the US at art center with with students from from Cuba was called fresh eyes, Cuba, and it really was a project that was looking at multicultural collaboration sense making, taking the lead from our colleagues and Cuba, and having this other international team of students really be there to learn and only really be catalyst and fresh eyes to to that, you know, immersive experience that they were sharing together and learning from each other. And sort of creating the conditions for fresh eyes to happen, you know, both on both sides, both on the experts who were our colleagues in Cuba, in our project, and in the in the faculty and those of us coming, the students and facilitators like myself coming from outside, you know, I've done a lot a lot of projects, very passionate about projects that bring students to the field and get to be immersed in other contexts with local, local community organizations and locals really leading the way. And not parachuting in, you know, from the global north as the experts, but really facilitating these, especially in higher ed and moments where you're trying to really nurture many possibilities for students to, you know, go beyond the theory beyond the textbooks and the case studies and the studio and the privilege of many of our universities here in the United States, and get them really working in situ, in the field. Many of these projects I've done over the years and others that I've studied, often the sort of the challenge is to, to not try to come in with a solution, but to really listen, and only maybe amplify or identify something that is already there that a local community may have already been, you know, creating and designing as a solution, and helping helping lift it up. So sometimes it's really, you know, we work with students to say it's really not about, you know, designing a new shiny object. That might be very cool, in your mind. But it's it's, it's, it's a contrary,
Roy Sharples:What are your lessons learned, in terms of the pitfalls to avoid, and the keys to success in designing for social innovation?
Mariana Amatullo:I think we'r seeing a very important oment in design, education. And globally, I am the presid nt of a special network ca led the formulas Associatio, which bring some 360 univer ities from around the world come together through to annual con erences, that different niversities, host every year activities, conversati ns, communities of practices, publications, etc. And what I m seeing from a global per pective, even outside the higher ed, design education part I hav in a fantastic, you know, inst tution like Parsons, where I'm professor, what we're seei g is a very important conversati n around the shifts that are o curring in terms of we're call ng in this book, they that I co dited with colleagues geographies of power, rig t. It used to be that a lot of t e celebrated methods like desig thinking right for creativity this, you know, even term creat ve confidence that the Kelly rothers from my deal have been ery successful at putting fo th what we're saying is that a ot of these methods bring with them very Western Cartesian ays of problem solving th t, that, you know, have a lot of merits. And we have the r search to show that in product innovation, for example, t e toolkits and the, the, you k ow, the five step processes f design thinking, can, in fa t, you know, with other with other work, be very effective ight at moving production innovations forward. But we're eeing the limits, and I think wh t's an exciting moment in ime right now that I would say, you know, for the next gener tion of practitioners and design rs and creatives, you have to pa attention to is that there's a eal recognition that there are eally limits to that, and that t ere are many plural ways of, o designing that are coming fro many other communitie and many other schools of thought, you know, from the g obal south. And that is enrichi g, frankly, the conversati n. And it's really helping us see that, we have to really wat h out for our own sort of me tal models. And when you walk i to these spaces, be again, you know, confident and proud of w at you can bring and contribute to, and really be open to be challenged and to listen, an to explore, you know, othe ways of problem solving, t at are very connected to perhaps a different cultural and social context. And, and, again, be umble.
Roy Sharples:What's your vision for the future of design for social innovation,
Mariana Amatullo:We have moved from dealing with complicated challenges and post industrial design context, you know, to complex world, right to a world of wicked problems, problems that are really interdependent and pandemic has shown that interdependency, and the fragile state of our planet, as we are, you know, processing, the IPCC report that has come out in in, you know, a few weeks ago, in August of this year, for grounding the climate change. Meeting in Glasgow in November, we're seeing the limitations of our you know, what we call the Anthropocene world, right this world where it's all been about the human beings driving, driving the agenda. And so the vision for for design, education and for design for social innovation going forward, really needs to be about having a much more systems kinds of, you know, system approach to these issues, understanding that we have to design thinking about infrastructures that have been designed again, in the 20th century, you know, organizations and companies where we have a lot of legacies that were that were put in place, when we knew that there were, you know, correlations and linear, really linear manners of predicting what might happen next, and managing managing that. Now, we know that, you know, change has accelerated, the rate of change has accelerated, the complexity is so large, that it is no longer possible to try to design without the awareness of that system, without the awareness that, you know, one, you know, one intervention in one part of the system can have, you know, catastrophic effects in another if you're not, if you're not connecting those dots. So I think we have to have a much stronger emphasis in, in programs that look at systems that look at, as we were saying earlier, multi disciplinary opportunities for for designers, to really come, you know, to be confronted with with the logics of these other disciplines and be enriched and also contribute to them.
Roy Sharples:Design influences how people feel, think and behave. It is a design and an expression that inspires a culture of creativity, and allows people to interact in meaningful ways. Setting the right conditions, atmosphere and environment inspires creativity, art and beauty that people adopt and react to and reflect and their life and work. It affects how they view and interpret the world around them, their capacity to become self out. realized under ability to live fulfilled and happy lives. Creativity expands the mind broadens our perspectives, and helps us eradicate prejudices. Our creative society is one where we feel autonomous, and free to express ourselves. uniqueness, diversity and self expression are all acknowledged and celebrated through constructive support and developing our ideas. Society shapes who we are just as our personal and collective identities, shape society and future generations, people in teams and communities have a sense of belonging, which shapes our self image by influencing how we see ourselves, how we interact with others, and how we respond to situations by trying out new ideas, experimenting with new ways of thinking and problem solving. But if you're wondering how this all fits in with business, as a logical progression, as the purpose of organizational development, is to provide leading edge thinking, practice and programs. You cannot curate a culture of creativity by subscribing to it or buying it from a shelf, because it is a social system about values, skills, craftsmanship and a way of doing that needs to be embraced and practiced throughout an organization to nurture people to create without fear. You have been listening to the unknown origins podcast. Please follow, subscribe, rate and review us. For more information go to unknown origins.com Thank you for listening!