001 — A New Direction
Design research series investigating the intersection of business design, craft and indigenous communities, supported by the British Council and Craft Council’s Crafting Futures Grant.
It feels like an eternity ago — and yet it was just a few days. We were driving back from Tonahuixtla to Mexico City, and finally got Internet after spending much time off-grid. Upon re-entering society and seeing the news, it felt as though our world had transformed from just a few weeks prior.
At the beginning of March, I set out to conduct research with Fernando Laposse, Mexican industrial designer and creator of Totomoxtle, a textile developed from heirloom corn husks. We made the five hour journey across dry mountains sprinkled in cacti and bumpy roads to Tonahuixtla, a little village in the middle of the State of Puebla and location of the project.
After attending a workshop with Fernando in Sicily as part of MADE Labs, I was captivated by the system he put in place to produce the innovative biomaterial — what seemed like a delicate dance between the indigenous community he works with and western markets. Coming from a business design background, Fernando’s approach felt unknowingly aligned to the work that I do.
A principal aim of business design is to ensure that desirable solutions are also viable from a market perspective. After all, if we want the things we design to go out and live their purpose (ie. create meaningful value for people), we must consider the wider context they exist in. So we design around the design, taking exterior factors into account to craft vessels around products and services to prepare them for their entry into our messy and unpredictable world.
Like many craft based businesses, Totomoxtle rarely if ever has access to this kind of support. And so this is how I found myself in Tonahuixtla. I wanted to investigate the following:
“How might business design be applied and redesigned to empathize with the unique challenges of craft based businesses in order to enable commercial sustainability?”
Of course, the research question came with many assumptions.
It assumed that business design is the answer and that existing tools are limited and inflexible to craft. It assumed that craft based businesses are fundamentally different from the status quo. It assumed that business design would be applied to (rather than reimagined from) Totomoxtle and that commercial sustainability was the end goal. The list goes on.
Many people told me that while I could prepare like crazy and go in with a clear and defined approach — that more often than not, plans changed and new things would emerge that would be altogether different. Of course, something along these lines happened…
We are now living through uncertain times that feel like a defining chapter for us as humans and society at large. A humbling moment that reminds us that we as individuals — leading our daily existence — making our plans for the future — dreaming and dreading — that we do not exist in isolation and that much larger forces than us are at play.
From a powerful nature to vulnerable global economies, the outlines and faultines of systems are suddenly becoming visible, unveiling themselves, casting their shadows upon us — a shifted perspective that reminds us of the limitations and vulnerabilities of ourselves and the structures we live in.
We can try to continue business as usual from the confines of our home like nothing is different. However, this may very well be one of our only opportunities to pause collectively — to see and challenge what we have been given, and design better alternatives.
As Milton Friedman said,
“Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”
And so we must be fast and diligent to expand the choices we have on the table because during these times of crisis, “seemingly impossible ideas might just become possible” (Naomi Klein, 2020).
Over the next months, I would like to share my research as it is being processed and synthesized. To paint the full picture, I will begin with sharing my on-the-ground insights from my time consulting Totomoxtle, case study of the collaboration and finally my first-go of tools that practitioners like me can use when consulting craft enterprises.
What I have discovered is that businesses are not closed systems, and that the actors that contribute to our supply chains — from humans to plants — do not exist in a hierarchy. In fact, they exist in a rich web of interdependencies and spillovers with no top or bottom (ie. holarchy), something I’m still trying to wrap my mind around.
If there is one takeaway I can offer now, it is that I firmly believe that we as business designers and professionals can no longer think that our sole purpose should be to achieve market aims built on the back of consumer desires and needs. Businesses do not exist in vacuums, far too many actors have been erased from our consideration and we have not tapped into our full innovation potential.
In these rare and hopefully temporary circumstances, I hope this research can help to spark dialogue exploring what approaches craft communities can harness in order to secure a firm seat at local and global marketplaces — and by doing so, help to ensure their participation and survival in the future.
I also hope we can look to Totomoxtle, the Mixtec indigenous community and nature itself for inspiration, to imagine — boldly — what a truly healthy and sustainable model of business, or system of value, might look like for us.
I have been humbled by the experience and am deeply grateful to have the time to work my way through these ideas, to travel through them, slowly. Thank you to Fernando Laposse for opening your world up to me, the British Council for making this all possible through the “Crafting Futures” grant and the many collaborators who have offered expertise along the way.
If you are interested in learning more about craft, indigenous communities, business design or the wild cards of where this may go — come wander with me and let’s use this time to collectively imagine new pathways forward.
*Feel free to contact me at giuliana.mazzetta@gmail.com or directly on LinkedIn.
