Keynote at the Infrastructure & Innovation Summit

This keynote was performed at the Infrastructure & Innovation Summit and Showcase (iiSummit20) by the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) of Colorado.

It unfolds how business acceleration and societal wellbeing can be achieved through purposefully designed innovations that successfully blend technological advancements with behavioral science.

Many people, organizations, and societies are willing to change. While digital transformation is effectively helping to advance physical and virtual environments, way too often we tend to overlook the essential role that human nature is playing in the change processes.

Essentially, we already have knowledge and practice to built spaces and design experiences that empower people to transform their habits at scale.

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Keynote

What Transforms Us towards Wellbeing?

Do we think about our wellbeing at all? Yes, of course, we do. But when and how often do we really remember about its essential place in our lives? Do we keep wellbeing in our minds when we launch a car in the space, when we race for profit, or when we trade our cultures and values? What about our cities – the spaces many live in each day? Can urban forms augment human nature to help everyone transforming towards better lives?

This thought-provoking talk will expand beliefs about ways how emerging technologies can transform societies and businesses already today. It will provide sharper understanding on how the Theory of Transforming Wellbeing empowers us to create innovations that make our envisioned changes but also oftentimes inevitable changes last. The theory is applicable to multiple domains, including business, governance, health, sustainability, education, safety, security, equality, economy, and more.

Panel discussion

Creating Businesses as Part of Our Wellbeing

Masterclass

How to Succeed with Transforming Lives and Businesses?

Have you ever tried to change something in yourself or others? How many times you have had a New Year’s resolution that succeeds? Most of us strive for better lives and try our best to achieve changes. However, we rarely get to celebrate victories in really transforming our habits, behaviors, and thoughts, thus changing our lives and businesses for good. This masterclass blends science and practice to help participants gaining rich understanding on how transformation works, what are its essential components, how to design and apply influential strategies, what novel technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and advanced sensing) are effectively facilitating change process, and what to do first thing each morning. Most of us already want changes for better. What we oftentimes miss is to know how to make such transformations succeed. This masterclass will help you develop and internalize the necessary competences.

Mediterranean Conference on Embedded Computing (MECO 2018)

Stibe, A. (2018). Envisioning the Theory of Transforming Wellbeing: Influencing Technology and Sociotech Design. The 7th Mediterranean Conference on Embedded Computing (MECO). IEEE Conferences. Page 6. Keynote. June 10-14, 2018, Budva, Montenegro. [PDF]

Rapid technological evolution not only enables advanced innovations to emerge, but also requires to reconsider their effects on wellbeing. With novel technologies, such as artificial intelligence, smart sensing, blockchain, and autonomy, life changing transformations are inevitable. To succeed with these challenges, we have to be mindful about human nature playing its important role in every transformation. Research on human behavior provide principles that are applicable for creating novel technologies that go beyond solely improving their own performance, thus assisting with behavioral and attitudinal shifts in everyone involved. The Theory of Transforming Wellbeing (TTW) unifies knowledge about designing transforming technologies for wellbeing. It explains how technological innovations can go beyond limitations of traditional behavioral design and change management. 

The TTW embodies fundamental understanding of the essentials for designing successful transformations, known as Transforming Sociotech Design [1], Typology of Computer-Supported Influence [2], Persuasive Cities [3], Socially Influencing Systems [4], and Dark Patterns [5]. The theory empowers researchers and practitioners to create technologies that makes behavioral and attitudinal changes last. To achieve desired results in transforming lives, TTW envisions to help by guiding through all related emerging trends, such as behavioral economics, gamification, nudging, and persuasive technology.

1. Stibe, A., Kjær Christensen, A.K., & Nyström, T. (2018). Transforming Sociotech Design (TSD). In: Ham J., Karapanos E., Morita P., Burns C. (eds) Adjunct Proceedings of Persuasive Technology. PERSUASIVE 2018. [PDF]

2. Stibe, A. (2015). Advancing Typology of Computer-Supported Influence: Moderation Effects in Socially Influencing Systems. In Persuasive Technology (pp. 253–264). Springer International Publishing [PDF]

3. Stibe, A., & Larson, K. (2016). Persuasive Cities for Sustainable Wellbeing: Quantified Communities. In M. Younas et al. (eds.): Mobile Web and Intelligent Information Systems (MobiWIS 2016), LNCS 9847 (pp. 271–282) [PDF]

4. Stibe, A. (2015). Towards a Framework for Socially Influencing Systems: Meta-Analysis of Four PLS-SEM Based Studies. In Persuasive Technology (pp. 172–183). Springer International Publishing [PDF]

5. Stibe, A., & Cugelman, B. (2016). Persuasive Backfiring: When Behavior Change Interventions Trigger Unintended Negative Outcomes. In Persuasive Technology (pp. 65–77). Springer International Publishing [PDF]

What ensures sustainable urban living?

What is the invisible currency of our cities? What is the purpose of money? To improve your wellbeing, right? Today, novelties in urban design can easily blend technological advancements with human nature in cities to transform ways of directing invisible money flows towards our wellbeing.