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Over the course of 2024, we have looked at Connections, Conviction and Convergence in our cascading examination of critical thinking among the design professions in Q1, Q2, and Q3. In Q4 we focus on Consequential Questions, the voices they enable and the decisions they invite. This issue serves as prologue to our annual conference in La Jolla on the same theme, to be held in January 2025. At the root of these essays and interviews is a consistent idea: seeking diverse perspectives and connecting the uncommon yields unconventional thought – the kind we need these days. The kind built into the name of our organization: DesignIntelligence. As we seek to ask and answer the right questions in times of planetary significance, intelligence seems more important than ever.  

It struck me that Steve Jobs - widely heralded as one of the most radical – and influential – thinkers of our time - might know something about this subject. He was beyond passionate about design and held a top-tier intelligence. In a recent Inc. Magazine piece,¹ Jeff Haden wrote:

When Steve Jobs was building Apple, luck mattered. Right place. Right time. Right person, idea, market, or audience. Ask any extremely successful person, and they’ll say luck played a role in their success. Unfortunately, though, while you can put yourself in position to be luckier, you can’t control luck.

But you can, to a surprising degree, control how smart you are. You can improve your ability to learn more quickly. You can improve your judgment. You can improve your decision-making skills. And you can learn to identify smart people, which is a benefit because it’s hard to surround yourself with smart people if you can’t spot smart people. So, what did Jobs feel was the best indication of high intelligence?

According to Jobs: 

‘A lot of it is memory. But a lot of it is the ability to zoom out, like you’re in a city and you could look at the whole thing from the 80th floor down at the city. And while other people are trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B, reading these stupid little maps, you can just see it in front of you. You can see the whole thing.’

And you can make connections that seem obvious to you, because you can see the whole thing.

That’s the thing about intelligence. No matter how much information you can retain -- no matter what degree of crystallized intelligence you possess -- having a great memory won’t necessarily help you make better decisions; we all know smart people who at times struggle to make a simple decision.

What Jobs describes is fluid intelligence, the ability to learn and retain new information --and to use that knowledge to solve a problem. To learn a new skill. To recall existing memories and modify them with new knowledge. To be not just book smart (not that there’s anything wrong with that) but also smart smart. For Jobs, that’s step one on the road to high intelligence. He felt the smartest people excel at making connections. But you can’t make connections unless you collect a variety of experiences you can then connect.

As Jobs said:

‘One of the funny things about being bright is everyone puts you on this path. To go to high school, go to college. [But] the key thing that comes through is they had a variety of experiences which they could draw upon in order to try to solve a problem, or attack a particular dilemma, in a unique way. One of the things you’ll get a lot of pressure to do is go in one direction. What you have to do is get different experiences. To make connections which are innovative? To connect two experiences together? You have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else. Or you’ll make the same connections.’

As we conclude our year’s worth of editorials and essays in this Q4 compilation, it seems only fitting to consider making different connections and let those to guide us as we seek to properly ask and frame the right questions: Consequential Questions.  

Here’s what you’ll find within to shape the inquiry:

• Dave Gilmore frames our January 2025 La Jolla conference with a set of compelling questions in, For Consideration.
• In his essay, Questions and Consequences, Scott Simpson reminds us of the value of inquiry and its outcomes.
• In her written examination, To Speed or Not to Speed? DeeDee Birch poses a single consequential question: What is the case for slowing down?
• In his view from the U.K., Paul Hyett reflects on the world, the U.S. presidential election and the architect’s duties in Consequential Questions (The Need for Truth).
• Bob Hughes steps outside his comfort zone to ask what is the proper role for government in society and the economy? - and pose larger, more provocative and harder-to-quantify questions in his introspective piece, Measuring Governance.
• Form4’s John Jennifer Marx asks Has Modernism Failed Us in a reflective analysis of modernism’s impact, current state and the possibilities inherent in Modernism 2.0.
• Enarche President Dez Joslin shares marketing and business development expertise in The Mark of True Transformation: Key questions to help you leverage a unified brand that reaches strategic goals.
• From CO Architects, Fabian Kremkus delivers a case study on the potential of large-scale healthcare projects to deliver carbon neutral or carbon positive results in his contribution entitled: Can Energy-Intensive 24/7 Buildings Be Carbon-Neutral?
• My reflections in I Think We Can: Thoughts on seeking questions, decisions and their consequences, look into decision making and critical thinking best practices by recognized leaders. 
• In an interview that preceded her presentation at DI’s Fall New York conference, Adrian Parr Zaretsky, dean of the University of Oregon’s College of Design, shares her thoughts on Making Design Relevant and considers four global issues and trans-environmental thinking.
• In Overcoming Perceptions, Arup’s Lynn Simon’s interview offers insights on perceptions and persuasion and overcoming resistance in the pursuit of systemic solutions around the responsibilities related to environmental stewardship.
• From global giant Mott Macdonald, Clare Wildfire and Lissadell Karalus-Breinholt update a white paper recently published in Smart Cities World.

After reading the contributions of such an experienced set of voices, we hope you’ll be just a little bit better at Connections, Conviction, Convergence and Consequential Questions. 

Enjoy!

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Footnotes:

¹ 42 Years Ago, Steve Jobs Only Needed 13 Words to describe the Number 1 Sign of Intelligence, Jeff Haden; Inc. Magazine, June 6, 2024