Design for Social Innovation—Moving Past the Assembly Line

The most pressing challenge businesses face isn’t finding new opportunities for growth and market share; it’s changing the way they approach their challenges in the first place. And there’s no better way to change that approach than through design for social innovation.

The industrial age taught us to solve problems by breaking things down into manageable parts, assigning specialists to work on them, then reassembling them into a workable whole. This seemed like a great step forward (Thanks, Henry Ford.), but it’s now an entrenched habit that limits us in both business and life. Compartmentalization might speed things up on an assembly line, but it forces us into silos. And silos destroy creativity, context, and perspective—all things we need to thrive in an increasingly complex and interconnected world.

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Cheryl Heller works with business leaders to transform organizations and industries – eliminating complexity, developing strategies and campaigns that energize communities and shift behavior. She has helped grow businesses from small regional enterprises to multi-billion global market leaders, launched category-redefining divisions and products, reinvigorated moribund cultures, and designed strategies for dozens of successful entrepreneurs. She has founded two companies, worked for some of the most discriminating clients in the world, and is now, along with her private practice, Founding Chair of a pioneering educational program that will produce the world’s next design leaders: MFA Design for Social Innovation at SVA in New York. She is blissfully married and loves to kick box.