Shaping desirable futures
PhD research by Britt Smulders shows how to design actionable perspectives and solutions for system transformation in multi-stakeholder environments, which are important for addressing grand societal challenges like climate change and digital inclusion.
PhD researcher Britt Smulders from the Innovation Technology Entrepreneurship & Marketing (ITEM) group defended her thesis on November 20, 2025, titled 鈥淪haping Desirable Futures: Designing actionable perspectives for system-level transformation in multi-stakeholder environments.鈥�
Her research addresses how design can support transformation in response to grand societal challenges such as climate change, digital inclusion, and resource scarcity. These challenges are complex, ill-structured, and constantly evolving. Addressing them requires system-level transformation 鈥� deep changes toward fundamentally different futures.
Designing for transformation in multi-stakeholder environments
System-level transformation unfolds in multi-stakeholder environments, where businesses, governments, and societal organizations collaborate. While the need for system transformation is widely acknowledged, what it entails and how it can be achieved often remains unclear.
Smulders鈥� dissertation explores how design practices can be used to create actionable perspectives and solutions that support these transformations. These enable stakeholders to view situations differently and identify feasible paths toward desirable futures.
Actionable perspectives and solutions for system-level transformation
Across five studies, this dissertation develops actionable perspectives and solutions for system-level transformation in different multi-stakeholder environments. These studies explore how to: intentionally break away from seemingly stuck systems, foster strategic imagination to creatively leverage uncertainty, identify leverage points for transformation in ecosystems that resemble taken-for-granted routines, use future images as design tools to broaden the opportunity space for transformation, and reimagine ecosystem models.
Through extensive engagement with theory and practice, this dissertation provides insights into what system-level transformation entails and requires. By uncovering the systematic design process behind actionable perspectives and solutions, it invites academics and practitioners to embrace ambiguity, enabling the creation of solution artifacts and the generation of instrumental knowledge that can help tackle grand challenges.
Britt Smulders defended her thesis on November 20, 2025. Title of the thesis: .鈥�. Supervisors: Sjoerd Romme, Arjan Markus, .