Highlights from the conversation:
My concern is not the big brands, it's the numbered companies. It's the invisible number of companies that are dumping chemicals into our water because we've never heard of them, we can't control them
What you say is inconsequential. The real story you're telling your people and the world is your action.
But today, everything is transparent. We've gone from an opaque world to a transparent world, that transparency means that everything you're doing is part of your story.
Often the cumulative impact is so staggering that people are shocked by what they're actually doing. Because We're so focused on quarterly reports and monthly and daily results. We don't ever take a step back to say, what happens if we succeed.
We have a right to exist, if we're contributing. And I think that's a mind expanding way of thinking about business to say, you know, you have a responsibility in your existence
It's what I call life-centred design, which really puts life at the centre and we start to think about how we sustain our living ecologies, how do we design them for perpetuity? How do we design ways of living, that aren't exhausting the ecologies that support us?
More about Bruce
“The wrong answer is the right answer looking for a different question.”
Bruce Mau is a dazzlingly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to imagine a new methodology for whole-system transformation. He’s a brilliant amalgam of designer, philosopher, curator, author, educator and visionary. It’s not nouns, though, that best explain what he does. It’s verbs. And what Bruce does best is provoke, invite, incite, lead, and dare us to think differently about the world of design—and the design of the world.
A serial entrepreneur since the age of 9, he became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas. Mau founded the Institute without Boundaries, a purpose-driven postgraduate design program at George Brown College in Toronto, and it’s there that he and his students co-created the groundbreaking exhibition and best-selling book, Massive Change. His “Incomplete Manifesto for Growth,” a 43-point declaration on sustaining a creative life, has been translated into 15 languages. He is the author of MC24, and co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in Chicago. He is also the Chief Design Officer for Freeman, the pioneers in live brand experience.
Across 30 years of design innovation, he’s collaborated with leading organizations, heads of state, entrepreneurs, renowned artists, and fellow optimists. He focuses on life-centered design, helping companies curate their truest work, and teaches both students and businesses how to articulate a positive and practical future. He’s designed social movements, brands, businesses, institutions and projects from sustainable carpets to a 1,000-year plan for the future of Mecca.
He’s served as a Visiting Professor at institutions worldwide including the Getty Research Institute in California and the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, as the Cullinan Chair at Rice University, and was conferred a Distinguished Fellowship at Northwestern University. Mau is the recipient of The Design Mind Award from the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, AIGA gold Medal, and six honorary degrees. He was named an Honorary Royal Designer for Industry by the RSA, London. He travels the globe to lecture and consider architecture, art and film, conceptual philosophy, and “work as a beautiful experiment.” And always, his designs challenge us to imagine a more just and sustainable world.
It is truly in person that the breadth of Bruce’s work reveals the core truth about him: he dives into everything with gleeful intent and a wildly contagious laugh. It’s this zest for connecting the world that brings out the best in people and projects, and resonates at home, too, in the life he shares with his wife Bisi Williams and three daughters in Winnetka, Illinois.
Find Bruce here:
LinkedIn
Website
Book
Show Notes
People:
Companies and organisations:
- Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
- RSA (Royal Society of Arts)
- McEwen School of Architecture at Laurentian University
Miscellaneous:
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One More Question is a podcast by Nicework, a purpose-driven company helping people who want to make a dent in the world by building brands people give a shit about.
One of the things we do best is ask our clients the right questions. This podcast came about because we want to share some of the best answers we have heard over the last 13 years. We talk to significant creators, experts and communicators we encounter and share useful insights, inspiration, and facts that make us stop and take note as we go about our work.
Hosted by our founder Ross Drakes.
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