Highlighting Doctoral Candidate Svein Kjøde

I think everyday people are ready for change, but it’s not like we have given them many good, sustainable choices yet. Choices that also take seriously the intricate workings of behavior– as a dynamic play between motivation, real opportunities and capabilities.

Svein Kjøde is 8 months into his PhD with the Sustainability Lab at the University of Oslo. His research investigates how we can achieve more sustainable business models in the context of globalization and digitalization.

What is the topic you are researching?

My study is focused on the role of design — especially in the early, strategic stages — in creating more sustainable services and products. There is an increasing expectancy towards the private sector to develop business models that can play an active role in addressing issues of environmental and social long-term sustainability. The full impact of any products or services is largely decided in the design-phase, so I find it highly important to better understand how design practitioners make, or contribute to decision making at that stage.

What has motivated you to study the climate?

I have always been incredibly fond of nature and all its mechanics and beauty. The aesthetics of it all is probably what drove me to the design field in the first place- but as I practiced in the profession, I found many of our man-made solutions to be quite inelegant. This is especially true when thinking from the ecological perspective and longer timelines.

However I still believe that many of the tools and the approaches of design can and should be a great contribution to the large, system-scale transitions that we need in our global societies.

What is your main takeaway thus far?

From my early studies of the cutting-edge literature in business innovation and design, I am quite surprised to see that we still carry a lot of ideas and thought-paradigms that stem from thinkers working with a very different view of the world. That could be anything from a simplistic view of competition to a lesser understanding of ecological complexity– some of it seems fairly outdated now. I am curious to see to what extent this research has made its way to inform design-practices of today, as design and business innovation have historically been closely linked.

What is your opinion on what it will take for humans to finally adopt large scale work on climate change? How might everyday people help?

I believe some of the ideas from the Transition Design and Futuring theories are interesting because they are talking more about what kind of futures we would want to build rather than projecting a prescribed idea of how value is being created by current regimes. They also call for a change in our mental posture in how we approach this as practitioners and how we engage with the public at large.

Illustration by Zhi Wang

I think everyday people are ready for change, but it’s not like we have given them many good, sustainable choices yet. Choices that also take seriously the intricate workings of behavior– as a dynamic play between motivation, real opportunities and capabilities.

How do you feel about the future?

My former boss Øystein Hagen always said, “Design is a profession for optimists” and I really subscribe to that. Feelings are important to stay engaged and involved, but there is tons of good old-fashioned work that needs to happen, and that is the best part of design!

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Svein Kjøde can be found at the Sustainability and Design research group at UiO and LinkedIn.

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This article was first published on the Hive Initiative Medium account.