VISIONING THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL-SYSTEMS - EVOLUTIONARY AND DISCONTINUOUS LEAP APPROACHES

Designing a system begins with creating a vision of it to guide the ef forts that bring it to life. User-design of social systems involves th e stakeholders or users of an enterprise in the collaborative visionin g of their enterprise as a purposeful system. Such a process is called idealized systems design when user-designers are guided by deeply mea ningful and inspiring shared values to create the most attractive and ideal vision of which they are capable. Two approaches to visioning wi ll be compared and contrasted: evolutionary and discontinuous-leap app roaches. In evolutionary approaches, such as appreciative inquiry, use rs explore 'the best of what is' in order to vision 'what could be'. B y contrast, discontinuous-leap approaches ask users to suspend or tran scend existing reality to free their creative imaginations from the co nstraints of 'what is' in order to dream of 'what could be'. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.