By Richard Hames, CEO, Centre for the Future

Humans shape and construct systems deliberately – but then those same systems shape us – sometimes in ways that are least expected. All systems are designed to deliver what we need. Where the outputs are not what we want (or had intended) then we really only have two options.

1. If it is at all feasible we can redesign the system so that it does produce what we want.

2. Where that is too difficult, for whatever reasons, we can scrap the current system and start again – reinventing it from first principles in ways that fulfil more relevant design criteria.