The Intergalactic Design Guide ― Harnessing the Creative Potential of Social Design

“As homo sapiens’ entry in any intergalactic design competition, industrial civilization would be tossed out at the qualifying round.”
— David Orr, Earth in Mind

Design has built global brands, disrupted industries, and transformed our lives with technology. It has also contributed to the complex challenges we face today. In The Intergalactic Design Guide, business strategist and designer Cheryl Heller shows how social design can help address our most pressing challenges, from poverty to climate change.

Social design offers a new approach to navigate uncertainty, increase creativity, strengthen relationships, and develop our capacity to collaborate. Innovative leaders like Paul Farmer, Oprah Winfrey, and Marshall Ganz have instinctively practiced social design for decades. Heller has worked with many of these pioneers, observing patterns in their methods and translating them into an approach that can bring new creative energy to any organization. From disrupting the notion of “expert” by seeking meaningful input from many voices to guiding progress through open-ended questions instead of five-year plans, social design changes how humans relate to each other, with powerful positive impacts.

The Intergalactic Design Guide explains eleven common principles, a step-by-step process, and the essential skills for successful social design. Nine in-depth examples—from the CEO of the largest carpet manufacturer in the world to a young entrepreneur with a passion for reducing food waste—illustrate the social design process in action.

Social design is a new kind of creative leadership that generates both traditional and social value, and can change the way we all view our work. Whether you are launching a start-up or managing a global NGO, The Intergalactic Design Guide provides both inspiration and practical steps for designing a more resilient and fulfilling future.

Cheryl Heller is the Founding Chair of the first MFA program in Design for Social Innovation at SVA and President of the design lab CommonWise. She was recently awarded a Rockefeller Bellagio Fellowship, and is a recipient of the prestigious AIGA Medal for her contribution to the field of design. Her clients have included Ford Motor Company, American Express, Pfizer, Mars Corporation, Discovery Networks International, Herman Miller, Gap, Bayer Corporation, Seventh Generation, L’Oreal, The World Wildlife Fund, Ford Foundation, and the Girl Scouts of America. Heller is the former Board Chair of PopTech, and a Senior Fellow at the Babson Social Innovation Lab. She created the Ideas that Matter program for Sappi in 1999, which has since given over $13 million to designers working for the public good.