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Writer's pictureDorenda Britten

We Need More Dreamers At the Table

Updated: Oct 23



My apparent jump from design to neurodiversity has been a mystery for many people, and the story may take some explaining.


In the early 2000’s I engaged a non-designer to help me unpick how design might be applicable in the 21st century.


It's easier to look backwards and see how successful developments of the past met the needs of the time. But what would be the components of successful products, services or systems in the future? There were sign posts that seem to be missed by the mainstream. Figuring out what the criteria for success in the future might be.


My lawyer colleague was essential for this. Being of the mind that could separate, investigate, and catalogue. My design mind connects everything and cataloguing is impossible.


What emerged was a set of design principles. Principles don’t dictate they guide and like law, must be interpreted to be successfully applied.

In my case, the client is the future and my task, helping organisations now, to meet that future.


This is where the gap began to become evident. The first step of design is always bringing together a team. Unlike law, there may or may not be a brief, but an aim to develop value.


Design thinking does not focus on team development any more than a cursory nod to diversity. This is troubling, because humans are a diverse lot, far beyond the obvious. I was witnessing the marginalization of “ideas people” by business pragmatists. Favouring instead the flogging and squeezing of an idea to extract more value, when in fact totally fresh thinking was required.


This is how our system works. Someone once said, a problem is not solved by throwing more time and money doing the same thing. But this is where we have become stuck.


At Unlock Innovation we have taken another look at diversity-diversity of mind. In particular the dyslexic mind. What we have discovered through action and desktop research is that dyslexia is so prevalent within humanity that it must be acknowledged. Dyslexics must be given equal participation rights if we are going to move forward. Dyslexia is a brain preference not a affliction.


Dyslexics can be annoying. They make “unreasonable” demands of our understanding of our thought processes. They absorb time that we may think we haven’t got getting to the bottom of an issue. They tend to connect things and see therefore see opportunities and consequences that we may not always see. They are intellectual risk-takers because they are not bound by convention.


If New Zealand truly wants to be the place it dreams of being, then we need more dreamers and schemers at the table with the pragmatic ones. It is that push and pull, the tension, we must invest in, and we have the capacity.


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