The Stanford Center for Design Research and the David Rumsey Map Center partnered to host the Innovation Ecosystem and Design Thinking - Visualization Research Meeting on September 16, 2019.  Adegboyega "Ade" Mabogunje, Senior Research Engineer at the Center for Design Research and G. Salim Mohammed, Head and Curator of the Rumsey Map Center worked together to organize the meeting.

The concept for the meeting was a synergy of five realizations. First, from research done by Malte Jung et al. we know that the creative design process depends on two critical actions - perceiving and acting, and two critical objects - a context, and a purpose. Second, to paraphrase the research of Barbara Tversky, spatial thinking is the foundation of thought and, from moving in the world, humans construct spatial maps in the brain which supports maps of time, of social relations, of ideas, and of values.  Third, technology innovations require the confluence of these same constructs viz place, time, design teams, scientific ideas, and human values expressed in terms of proxies such as needs and problems, rewards and risks, credits and debits. Fourth, the David Rumsey Map Center has the facility to prototype and test a variety of ways in which a set of researchers and practitioners can be convened and supported while nurturing the growth of mission focused start-up ventures and organizations in an ecosystem. Fifth, given the coming challenges of global climate change, there will be a strong need to design, develop, deploy, and test the effectiveness of many such prototypes in the near future. This meeting provided us the opportunity to create and test an early prototype.

All of the presentations from the meeting except from two scholars who could not give permission are below. The introductory video, while not filmed at the Map Center, provides a layered and dynamic view of ecosystems design. The videos are also available in a Youtube playlist.

References: Jung, M., Sonalkar, N., Mabogunje, A., Banerjee, B., Lande, M., Han, C., & Leifer, L.J. (2010), Designing Perception-Action Theories: Theory Building for Design Practice. In Proceedings of Design Thinking Research Symposium 8: Interpreting Design Thinking, Sydney, Australia.

Tversky, B. (2019), Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought, Basic Books, New York.