Rowan Conway (LinkedIn, Twitter, UCL) is Visiting Professor of Strategic Design at UCL’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP). Between 2019-2022 she worked with Professor Mariana Mazzucato to lead the Mission Oriented Innovation Network (MOIN) at IIPP, convening global policy-making institutions in a range of exploratory design projects focused on mission-oriented innovation and public value creation.
Rowan was Director of Innovation at the Royal Society of Arts, and part of the Design Team for London 2012 Olympic Park. She is a doctoral candidate at IIPP.
A very rich conversation, and so goes to 44 minutes. There is some small swearing (one use of b*ll*cks). Apologies for both!
Two key quotes (of many):
-If the dominant mode of entrepreneurialism is the venture mode, then we are on the path to wealthy hell.
-Living life as inquiry has really helped in terms of personal groundedness. Doing micro-experiments, being able to sort of take my own experience, and, and observe it through a process of kind of trying something, seeing if it works or not.
Links
-Elinor Ostrom on wikipedia here.
-The RSA's Power to Create explained in 2014 here.
-Neoliberalism on wikipedia here.
-Experimental psychology on wikipedia here.
-Coloniality of power on wikipedia here and of power on wikipedia here.
-'Think like a system, act like an entrepreneur' Matthew Taylor (when head of the RSA) wrote about this in a blog here and a report (with Rowan) here.
-"Living Life As Inquiry" by Judi Marshall (mentioned at about 33 minutes) here.
-First person action inquiry: “skills and methods [that] address the ability of the researcher to foster an inquiring approach to his or her own life, to act awaredly and choicefully, and to assess effects in the outside world while acting.” As such, first-person research is research that we do by ourselves on ourselves."
Timings
0:52 - Q1 What are you doing now? And how did you get there
4:33 - BONUS QUESTION: What is inside the boundaries of design practice?
6:51 - Q2. What is the future you are trying to create, and why
26:40 - Q3. What are your priorities for the next few years, and why?
33:01 - Q4. If someone was inspired to follow those priorities, what should they do next?
38:51 - Q5. If your younger self was start
Twitter: Powerful_Times
Website hub: here.
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Thank you for listening! -- David
