We are living in a time of global conversation about change. Companies and individuals are pondering their impact in the world. How can we maintain profitable businesses while affirming and enriching life? Given that familiar ways of industrial and consumer life must change, what is it that we will now create together?

How does our experience as product and design professionals prepare us to address the profound issues humanity is facing? What does it take to be effective as a person, as a team, as a company? What is it like to actually achieve a meaningful, sustainable, positive difference in life? It is time for product and design professionals to take their place as leaders and contributors to resolving the great human problems we are all facing together.

In this talk, Marc Rettig offers insights into these questions, drawing lessons from a number of serious attempts to affect positive change. The work we have all done in recent decades has prepared us to take on much bigger challenges. The foundations of design remain powerfully effective.That said, there are ways in which "designing for change" requires additions to our inventory of methods, and transformations in the way we plan and conduct our work.

These new ways of working can also benefit the design projects most of us tackle every day - challenges less grand in scale than shifting to sustainable transportation or raising the quality of a nation's schools. The grand projects force us to consider the social situation we work within, the social systems we affect, the ripple effects of our actions, the nested web of parts and wholes, and the personal journey of our team. Attention to these things can improve the effectiveness of any effort to accomplish meaningful change.