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Stretching the Future By Design

Published by Matt Holt Books
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

About The Book

Today, it can seem as if the world has nothing but problems.



And more than ever the boundaries of those problems are expanding in terms of the speed, scale, and impact by which they can alter business conditions, public governance, entire societies, the health of our planet, and the quality of our lives.

Meeting these growing challenges requires ambitious new ways of designing solutions.

With Expand: Stretching the Future By Design, authors Jens Martin Skibsted, a multiple-award winning designer, entrepreneur, and design philosopher, and Christian Bason, political scientist and CEO of the Danish Design Centre, take readers beyond “design thinking” to challenge current habits and carve out new space for more sustainable innovation.

From transforming the ways we do business and reimagining health care, to creating planet-restoring housing and humanizing our digital lives in an age of AI, Expand explores how expansive thinking across six key areas—time, proximity, value, life, dimensions, and sectors—can provide radical, useful solutions to a whole host of current problems around the globe.

With powerful real-world examples, the book challenges our freewheeling belief in technological determinism and its insensitivity toward ethics, humanity, and the environment.

Expand is the first book to not just critique design thinking, but welcome it as a starting point for an ambitious, wide-ranging tale of how to expand and think beyond it.

The best way to predict the future is to design it. Expand is the book that shows us how.

About The Authors

Christian Bason, PhD, is the CEO of the Danish Design Centre, a not-for-profit institution funded by the Danish government working to advance the value of design for business and society. He is former Director of MindLab, the Danish government’s innovation team and former Business Manager at Ramboll, a global consultancy. He is the author of seven books on innovation, design and leadership, including Design for Policy and Leading Public Design. He has written for among others Harvard Business Review, Stanford Social Innovation Review and the Danish weekly Monday Morning. Christian is a Board Member of the Royal Academy of Architecture, Design and Conservation in Copenhagen, a Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Agile Governance, and former Chairman of the European Commission’s Expert Group on Public Sector Innovation. He is an external lecturer in executive training at Oxford Saïd Business School, Copenhagen Business School and the EU School of Administration. Christian holds an MSc in political science and a PhD in design leadership.

Jens Martin Skibsted, Global Partner at Manyone, is a multiple award-winning designer, entrepreneur, and design philosopher. Best known for his urban mobility designs for Biomega, and collaborations with design superstars such as Marc Newson and Bjarke Ingels. He is the founder of Biomega and has helped found several design consultancies including Skibsted Ideation, KiBiSi, and Manyone. His designs live in the collections at the MoMA, Le Cnap, Designmuseum Danmark, SFMOMA, etc. He is on the board of the Danfoss Foundation, Biomega and Manyone and a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Mobility Transitions; He is formerly the Chairman of the Danish Design Council, the Vice Chair of World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Design Innovation and Co-Chair of World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Entrepreneurship and on the advisory board of the INDEX prize and MindLab. Jens Martin is also a Young Global Leader alumnus who has spoken at Davos, DLD, TED, and more. His writing has appeared in the Huffington Post, Harvard Business Review, Børsen, Washington Post and Fast Company.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Matt Holt Books (May 24, 2022)
  • Length: 208 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781637740736

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Raves and Reviews

"""Expand is an important eye-opener that stretches our thinking about innovation . . . It's a must-read for entrepreneurs, business managers, and public servants—leaders at all levels—who are working to create a better world.""
Alan Webber, Founder of Fast Company and Mayor of Santa Fe, New Mexico

""In this book, Jens Martin Skibsted and Christian Bason contend that now is the time to widen the design discourse to take on the grand, complex challenges of tomorrow.""
Mariana Mazzucato, Professor, Economics of Innovation and Public Value, University College London

""This book is a major contribution to the field of innovation in the 21st century. It cements that technology is not an exogenous force over which we have no control . . . Expand is a must-read for leaders and decision-makers wishing to embrace the promise of new technology and improve the state of the world.""
Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum and the Davos Agenda

""It's not the business of design but the design of business. They strike out a clear path that, in its simplicity of expanding our mindset about design, is remarkable.""
—Richard Saul Wurman, Architect and Founder of the TED conference

""Expand lays out an ambitious path to unleashing the full power of design thinking as a key approach to innovation and sustainable growth.""
Jim Hagemann Snabe, Chairman, Siemens and AP Moeller-Maersk; and former Co-CEO, SAP

""As global challenges are accelerating, public servants and policy makers need more than new tools; they need a new way of thinking. Expand offers just that: a fresh, ambitious perspective on how to innovate in the service of society and the planet.""
Lisa Witter, Cofounder and CEO, Apolitical

""In Expand, you'll learn a revolutionary approach to design that works for any situation. By offering a new way to think about innovation and design, it gives all of us—not just designers—the blueprints to solve problems and take advantage of opportunities.""
Mark Frauenfelder, Research Director, Institute for the Future, and former Editor-in-Chief, Make magazine

""Expand lays out an ambitious path to unleashing the full power of design thinking as a key approach to innovation and sustainable growth . . . A must-read for anyone seeking to positively impact our common future.""
Jim Hagemann Snabe, Chairman, Siemens and AP Moeller-Maersk, and former Co-CEO, SAP

""All too few methods, theories, insights, and approaches make themselves truly available to collective problem-solving at scale . . . Here's a bold attempt to fully engage with the biggest challenges we face. It's highly ambitious, clearly argued—and profoundly thought-provoking.""
Bjarne Corydon, CEO and Editor-in-Chief,

""The 249-page masterpiece is meant for individuals, policy makers, governments and corporations that care about the future of human existence, champion the prosperity of all communities[,] and preach against the abuse of technology.""
—Faustine Ngila, Nation Media Group"

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