Wicked Problems - Problems Worth Solving

Wicked Problems - Problems Worth Solving(wickedproblems.com)

101 points by jkolko 14 years ago | 11 comments

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.

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.

mdaniel 14 years ago |

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).

jkolko 14 years ago | |

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

mdaniel 14 years ago | | |

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.

robertskmiles 14 years ago |

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.

jimhefferon 14 years ago |

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

jkolko 14 years ago | |

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

com 14 years ago |

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?

jkolko 14 years ago | |

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.

adrianparsons 14 years ago |

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.

AznHisoka 14 years ago |

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.

henrikberggren 14 years ago |

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