Anne-Laure Fayard is Chaired Professor in Social Innovation at NOVA School of Business and Economics. She coordinates the Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability (DESIS) Lab @ NOVA SBE. Anne-Laure is an ethnographer of work, whose interests involve collaboration, technology, innovation and design. She is passionate about human-centered design that she teaches, researches, and practices. She is also the author with Anca Metiu of The Power of Writing in Organizations and has co-edited with Raza Mir The Routledge Companion to Anthropology and Business. 

In this session, which took place in June 2024, Anne-Laure building presented some current shortcomings of design thinking as well as proposed potential alternatives. At a time when critical thinking is under attack, it’s crucial that design disavows the promise of the silver bullet. Design thinking has shown that it isn’t one, but no single other alternative can be either. Rather than an attachment to a set of methods, Anne-Laure suggests we invite designers to be committed to a critical stance, which is relational, reflective and politically committed.