“You’ll find here a classification of the main activities we organise on the requests of our clients and partners. For sure, no project resembles to another and each of SDS work plan is customized to the context and the stakeholders. But this list may give you an idea of the main building block we combine and what you can finally expect from us…”


 

You would like to envision future options…
SCENARIO BUILDING

…scenarios, as we intend them, are visions of the future together with concrete solutions definition that may lead from the current situation to this future vision…
…scenario building is, first of all, a creative exercise: beyond exploring what seems to be possible or defining what may be desirable, most of what future will be is not written somewhere and has to be invented…

…scenarios are delivered as a set of contrasted short narratives presented in a highly visual format that describe different way a focused activity, place, institution… may evolve. These visual scenarios are then used to trigger social/strategic conversation between stakeholders…

 


You need to stimulate debate between stakeholders…
SOCIAL/STRATEGIC CONVERSATION

…envisioning exercises as scenario building are not only intended as predictive activities but also as ways to stimulate dialogues about the future: anticipating how things might evolve, simulating possible changes in the strategic position of players and triggering public discussions about desirable futures…

…SDS organises forms of participative debates and deliberations at the same time stimulated by and generating new solution definition all along the project.

…social/strategic conversation processes build convergence within heterogeneous contexts and stimulates stakeholder engagement to take action together in the same direction…

 


You would like to involve players in a project…
STAKEHOLDERS ENGAGEMENT

…the very projection process works as knowledge brokering facilitating mutual understanding: scenarios building allows stakeholders to look beyond their current interactions and direct interests, to share a common view of the situation and from that, build convergences, synergies and partnerships…

…SDS organises such projection processes inducing stakeholders to imagine a sustainable future; to foresee new solutions; what could be their role and how they could contribute from their current position to facilitate implementation of a promising scenario: so doing they begin to experience and acknowledge alternatives that they wouldn’t have considered spontaneously…

 


You are searching for breakthrough innovations…
NEW SOLUTION DEFINITION

…beyond classical new product definition, new ‘solution’ definition is a larger process envisioning complete new systems including products, services, policies and their related communication…

…scenario building and new solution definition are activities we run in parallel: scenarios depicts different design directions and orient the generation of new solutions and reciprocally, scenarios are materialised and concretely described by choosing emblematic solutions that characterise them. So that in practice, they both are developed together in an iterative process…

 


You would like to change the approach…
NEW TOOL DEVELOPMENT 

…approaching discontinuities through scenarios building and definition of new solutions requires very often to revisit the toolbox we use: we therefore tends to design new tools ad’hoc for each and new specific local transformation process…

 


You intend to shift daily practices…
TRAINING FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

…focusing new and more sustainable ways of living, the final output beyond new solutions definition is the effective change of the material culture in the daily living resulting in shifts in people daily practices toward more sustainable living…

…we also interfere with co-design of new products or services in the material and organisational culture of entities to support exploration of new business models in companies or engage social change in the culture of the institution…

 


You need to support territorial transition…
LOCAL TRANSFORMATION PROCESS

…different local projects are designed in system so that they support and reinforce each other, generate synergies and allow to reach the momentum to change or start change at the level of a neighbourhood, a city or a region…

…SDS investigates possible co-evolution processes between social innovation, public innovation and innovation generated by private bodies towards a form of planning by micro-projects…

 


You would like to bring innovation in the public sector…
POLICY DESIGN

…the success of policies depends also from the way they are designed: how they interact with the material culture of products; if they contradict or complement themselves; how they are communicated and therefore respond or not to social trends…

…within an ever larger collaborative approach, we tend to include the dialogue with policy-makers when building new scenarios in order to propose coherent sustainable solutions based on joint products, services and policies innovation…

 


You would like to engage local interaction…
VISUAL EVENT DESIGN

…long term visions, outstanding scenarios, breakthrough solutions… may generate teasing visual material useful to activate social/strategic conversation or stimulate social change and for this purpose SDS organises light shows, forums or exhibitions…

…but the process works also backward and we also organise public events and stakeholders workshops to kick-off a local transformation process or prompt stakeholders engagement…

 


You would like to have a rapid exchange of ideas …
OPEN CONVERSATION

…tackling with discontinuities and emerging issues, our activity tends to develop more upstream, from ‘problem solving’ to ‘problem setting’ or even better to ‘opportunity setting’…

…in that context, ideas need time and dialogues to emerge and clarify: before starting a complete scenario building or new solution definition process our interlocutors often need a couple of hours to exchange views: the open conversation service propose to organise a short workshop to tease a topic or a simple meeting where both part bring their ideas and experiences for an open exchange…