

Wicked Problems - Problems Worth Solving - jkolko
http://www.wickedproblems.com
Austin Center for Design today published a new book focused on the role of design in social entrepreneurship. Titled Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving, the book is presented as a handbook for teaching, learning, and doing meaningful disruptive design work. The book includes an introduction to wicked problems, describing some of the challenges and opportunities of design-led entrepreneurial activities. The text describes the skills necessary for successful entrepreneurship, and offers both methods and curricula for learning how to engage with large scale humanitarian problems.<p>The book is available for free in its entirety online, at http://www.wickedproblems.com, and is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which allows anyone to use the contents for their own non-commercial purposes.
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mdaniel
Am I the only one who finds the intermixture of video and text distracting [in
the "read online" version, I haven't tried the .epub]?

Maybe I'm too old school, but I find the context switch jarring when I am
reading and click for the next segment, and am met with more A/V. I have
different mechanisms for ingesting content, almost in a "introspective" versus
"extraspective" distinction (study time versus lectures highlight this
distinction).

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jkolko
Hi -

I turned autoplay off; that may make it less jarring. I also have an old-
school approach to reading, but "the kids these days" seem to like the
videos..

Thanks for the input. Jon

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mdaniel
Thank you for the fix, thank you for the quick response, and thank you for
putting your content online.

I hope it proves to be a catalyst for the next great idea.

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robertskmiles
I really like the idea of applying things learnt in entrepreneurship to
dealing with social problems.

I often think that many charities and other altruistic organisations are stuck
in various anti-patterns, some left over from as long ago as the Victorian
era.

We've learnt a lot about getting big things done in the modern world; there's
no reason that that expertise should only be applied to profit-seeking.

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jimhefferon
Odd that the page does not describe at all what the book is about, but rather
focuses on the delivery approach.

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jkolko
The first chapter jumps right into the contents -
<https://wickedproblems.com/read.php> \- thanks :)

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com
I think it's an interesting read on social entrepreneurship, although I was
expecting something more nitty-gritty on workable approaches to define and
resolve wicked problems in general (not all wicked problems require social
entrepreneurship to address)...

Does anyone have any good links to analysis and solutions strategies for
wicked problems in general?

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jkolko
Hi -

Arguably, all wicked problems ARE social and systemic problems, at least as
defined by most respected literature on the topic. The terms have been a bit
overused in popular business culture, applied to problems that, while complex,
aren't part of interconnected and systemic humanitarian problems.

<https://wickedproblems.com/1_wicked_problems.php> has more on this; Rittel is
perhaps the most significant source for this topic.

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adrianparsons
Wow, Looking forward to reading this. A primer on 'Wicked Problems':

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem>

It's a really powerful concept that describes many extremely complex systems
like, say, health care in the U.S.

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AznHisoka
Aside from political/economic issues, there are also more typical wicked
problems around us. The problem is that when someone comes up with a solution,
people are wary and immediately skeptical.

Examples include weight loss, get rich quick ebooks, and viagra. All deal with
wicked problems.

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henrikberggren
Have you tried my app readmill to read books and share notes?
<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/readmill/id438032664?mt=8>

