This quote by famous scientist E.O.Wilson speaks so much about the design process, and why it is so important in the Information Age. As Alan Bloom asked, “With all the information in the world where can wisdom be found”. To design is to take existing information and weave it together in new and relevant ways.
When we at Kultur Design work with clients, we use information as a means for finding the right ideas that will create the solution. Often, groups will sit down in the same way with the same ideas expecting a new solution. This will never happen. You need to have diverse information that people are then brought into to wrestle with. The solutions occur when syntheses emerge among ideas and information that seem divergent. And that’s the main challenge that Wilson, as a biologist, sees: that with all the information in the world, we mostly see difference rather than connectivity. Wisdom is then the ability to see everything being connected and able to act with that knowledge in mind in a way that is responsible and intentional. This requires groups of people to see differently, which the design process creates the condition for.
Kultur Design Blog 