Antifragile Futures by Design

I help leaders navigate complexity and create strategic advantage amid emerging change.

Why This

After years of working in large design and consulting firms, my goal here is to make something better. That better serves and advises clients. Better matches approach to impact. Better adapts to change. And stands a better chance of making a difference. All up, a better model for professional services—lean, agile, and networked—designed to enable new futures at scale.

About Me

Portrait of John Rousseau

An Expert Generalist

I am a strategic design expert who guides forward-looking research, sense-making, and innovation.
Now—amid multiple, interrelated global crises and extraordinary uncertainty—it’s time to rethink the status quo and create the new from the unknown.
We need new futures.
But first, how did we get here? What risks and opportunities are emerging? What assumptions shape our thinking about the future, and where are our blind spots?
What is our grand strategy and theory of change?
And what do we do next?
This work requires creative breadth and analytical depth—both theory and practice. 
The future needs design.
I have worked at leading firms and with world-class clients like Hyundai, Mozilla, Nike, and Target to create what’s next. I earned a BFA in design from the University of Michigan, a MFA in design from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and a MS in strategic foresight from the University of Houston.
I would love to help you create something new.

My Approach

Strategic design is a holistic approach to innovation that builds on systems thinking, strategic foresight, and design thinking to create new forms of business value and preferable outcomes for people and the planet. Inclusive by nature, the approach engages stakeholders in co-creation and aims to develop sustainable capacity for innovation, learning, and adaptation.

This helps you:

  • -> Envision transformative futures and steward proactive change
  • -> Create new solutions in complex problem spaces
  • -> Build a more resilient and antifragile business or brand

My Toolkit

Systems Thinking

Understand the system and its disposition—so you can operate from a shared map of reality

Outcomes

  • Diagnosis of system typology and strategic/tactical implications
  • Nuanced understanding of actants, constraints, and interactions at relevant degrees of scale and granularity
  • Coherent theories of change that can be evaluated through experimentation
  • Identification of prospective interventions and measures

Strategic Foresight

Explore emerging and prospective futures—so you can identify better strategic choices

Outcomes

  • Collaborative synthesis of emerging signals, discourses, patterns, and drivers of change
  • Credible and divergent images of the future that contextualize risk and create transformative possibilities
  • Alignment on a shared understanding or vision, implications, and strategic choices
  • New narratives, artifacts, and communications that externalize emerging knowledge

Design Thinking

Create solutions to complex problems—so you can act and catalyze change in the present

Outcomes

  • New or evolved business models, services, structures, constraints, or other interventions
  • Stakeholder alignment via co-design of solutions and transformation narratives
  • Visual sense-making, concept design, and prototypes
  • Documented learnings, communication design, and tactical planning for next-stage actions
Image of a strategic foresight workshop
New futures begin with you and your team. I guide learning through engaged discourse and co-creation with stakeholders, catalyzing change from within.

Services

Focused learning and consulting for organizations
Labs
Learning labs allow you to integrate strategic design in the work you are already doing—quickly and with minimal preparation. Subject matter is tailored to your unique context, so you can apply what you learn to immediate priorities. These sessions are best delivered in-person with up to 25 participants. Remote and/or large group options are available.

Applied Foresight

Map the future of your business or industry
Two Days

Who should attend

Teams that want to build sustainable strategic foresight capacity, explore alternative futures, and apply scenario thinking to build resilience and create new opportunities

What you will learn

  • The key mindsets, concepts, and methods of strategic foresight
  • A coherent and actionable foresight framework, from sensing to scenarios to strategic choices
  • Hands-on exposure to scenario planning and strategic reframing, aligned to a specific issue
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Transformation in Three Horizons

Align your long-term vision with near-term action
One Day

Who should attend

Teams that want to generate a shared vision of the future, contextualize present and emerging dynamics, and foster stakeholder alignment on a theory of change

What you will learn

  • Hands-on analysis and mapping of a specific issue using the Three Horizons framework
  • Alignment on shared vision of the future, critical assumptions, and contextual factors influencing vectors of change
  • Development of a theory of change and strategic/tactical implications for transformation 
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Innovation in Complexity

Create novel solutions in complex problem spaces
Two Days

Who should attend

Teams that want to apply systems thinking to a complex problem, where conventional approaches to innovation or transformation are not fit for purpose

What you will learn

  • The core concepts comprising systems taxonomy and applied complexity 
  • Complex System Mapping: Hands-on mapping and sense-making, aligned to a specific problem space
  • Identification of change vectors and design of prospective interventions
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Programs
Consulting programs help you realize your innovation and transformation goals when deeper engagement is needed to generate new thinking, align stakeholders, identify actions, and catalyze change. These programs build organizational capacity and have lasting impact well beyond the initial scope of work.

Strategic Design Workshops

Discovery, design, and delivery of custom workshops to meet unique goals or requirements, including original content and activities
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Strategic Foresight

Futures research, scenario development, and visioning in a domain of strategic importance (e.g., "The Future of XYZ")
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Design-Led Innovation

Design research, complex systems analysis, sense-making, and co-creation in a complex problem space (e.g., "Innovation in XYZ System")
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You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
– Buckminster Fuller

Client Stories

Archetypal client programs in sustainability, mobility, and energy

Mass Retailer

Creating a Sustainable Future for Retail

Context

The business had set a new sustainability agenda, and the innovation team wanted to identify transformational growth opportunities that would align with the vision. A cross-functional scenario planning and co-creation initiative was used to challenge assumptions and orthodoxies, spark new solutions, and contextualize strategic choices within possible and preferable futures.

Approach

  • Co-created detailed future scenarios based on uncertainties regarding sustainability and social change; scenarios were used to inspire innovation and stress-test resilience of specific opportunities
  • Co-created over 100 new business model concepts, which were narrowed to ten finalists. Selected concepts were visualized and tested with consumers, and further refined for internal socialization, evaluation, and development
  • Designed an immersive lab experience for the leadership team to engage with scenario thinking, concepts, and implications for the business

Impact

  • Increase in futures fluency and alignment on a shared vision across program team and cross-functional leadership team
  • Identification and prioritization of innovation initiatives based on agreed-upon business case criteria
  • Selected pilot programs brought to market for evaluation and development

Automotive OEM

Mapping the Transition to an Electric Future

Context

The business had set a goal to become an all-electric brand by 2030, and was preparing to deliver its first EV to market. There was a need to codify transformation priorities, identify gaps, and develop a tactical plan for near-term execution and long-term coherence. Generative workshops and discovery sessions across functions and levels were used to drive stakeholder alignment and development of a comprehensive change roadmap.

Approach

  • Conducted multiple workshops and individual meetings with executive team to understand perspectives and drive alignment across functions
  • Created a detailed tactical plan and multi-year transformation roadmap
  • Acted on immediate priority to improve customer experience for first generation EV deliveries

Impact

  • Clarity on critical aspects of transformation priorities and plan across executive leadership team
  • Implementation of tactical plan
  • Immediate action and positive feedback related to delivery intervention

Global Energy Company

Catalyzing a New Clean Energy Ecosystem

Context

The widespread adoption of clean energy solutions is constrained by complexity across the value chain and external environment, requiring a systems-level approach to change that is inclusive of multiple stakeholders and partners across industries and roles. There was a need to convene a representative group of stakeholders in a unique generative lab to share perspectives, identify shared interests, and co-create pathways for transformation.

Approach

  • Conducted advance interviews with all participants to identify shared interests, challenges, and perspectives
  • Conducted secondary research and applied systems thinking across the value chain to analyze current and desired future state of play, along with prospective intervention points
  • Utilized strategic design frameworks to structure lab activities, drive engaging and productive discourse, identify new systems interventions, and align on actionable outcomes

Impact

  • Facilitation and meeting exceeded expectations for both client and stakeholder participants
  • Alignment on shared vision and agreement to pursue next steps a first-of-kind pilot program
New futures await.