“Design Thinking is not Enough” – Design thinking has taught a generation of innovators to empathize, ideate, prototype, and test. It has reshaped classrooms, organizations, and how we talk about change. And yet despite decades of user-centered design, we are still failing to meaningfully shift many of the systems we care most about. In this provocative presentation, Agnes Kwek shares the reasons why “great ideas” fail to scale and pilots don’t stick. Drawing on her own experiences of large-scale systems transformation in the public sector, she reframes design thinking as a powerful but incomplete tool. Complex challenges are not user problems; they are system problems. Agnes will share how to design with systems rather than against them. This talk challenges participants to expand their role from problem-solvers to system-shapers. Design thinking set the direction. Systems thinking shows us how to get there. Agnes has over 20 years of career in the Singapore Administrative Service, with a focus on large-scale system transformation. As CEO and founder of MindTheSystem, she has trained over 800 senior executives in managing complex systems. She is based in Paris.
“Design Thinking is not Enough” – Design thinking has taught a generation of innovators to empathize, ideate, prototype, and test. It has reshaped classrooms, organizations, and how we talk about change. And yet despite decades of user-centered design, we are still failing to meaningfully shift many of the systems we care most about. In this provocative presentation, Agnes Kwek shares the reasons why “great ideas” fail to scale and pilots don’t stick. Drawing on her own experiences of large-scale systems transformation in the public sector, she reframes design thinking as a powerful but incomplete tool. Complex challenges are not user problems; they are system problems. Agnes will share how to design with systems rather than against them. This talk challenges participants to expand their role from problem-solvers to system-shapers. Design thinking set the direction. Systems thinking shows us how to get there. Agnes has over 20 years of career in the Singapore Administrative Service, with a focus on large-scale system transformation. As CEO and founder of MindTheSystem, she has trained over 800 senior executives in managing complex systems. She is based in Paris.