Strategic Choice-Making in Complex Spaces of Innovation

Abstract

Institutions today stand at a critical juncture, facing macro forces such as digitization, shifting political climates, sustainability imperatives, and equity demands—all of which unveil deep imbalances in how resources flow. Against this backdrop, existing design practices cannot address the scale and scope of today’s complex challenges. This dissertation reframes design as a practice of strategic choice-making, emphasizing the capacity of redirecting resource flows to drive value and growth through large-scale transformations. It centers on the phenomenon of infrastructure-platform mashups—as a complex space of innovation—where platforms increasingly exhibit infrastructural characteristics and infrastructures adopt platform logics, revealing intersections where localized interventions reverberate system-wide. Through a multi-exploratory approach, the research demonstrates how carefully orchestrated design choices, implemented as strategic features, can mediate flows of resources while bridging institutional intent with broader societal goals. The main finding is a Model for Strategic Choice-Making, advancing design from a form-function-context paradigm to a form-function-flow perspective. By treating data as a designable medium, acknowledging both the disruptive and generative potentials of macro forces, recognizing how resources flow across overlapping institutional contexts, and elevating features to drivers of systemic impact, the model provides a scaffold for aligning local design choices with broader agendas in complex spaces of innovation. This dissertation reframes design as a capability for large-scale transformation, bridging disciplinary boundaries and responding to the urgent complexities of our interconnected world.