Systemic Design in Times of Crisis: Fostering a Collaborative Culture Under Conditions of Energy Vulnerability in Northeastern Iran

ABSTRACT The actualization of innovation in social systems requires interventions within small systems, communities and organizations. At this scale, practitioners can engage directly with the interactions, communication and dialogue among key actors, including those with conflicting interests. This paper presents a refined iteration of the Design‐Driven Conflict (DDC) method, which integrates principles of critical systems thinking with design‐led practice to support collective action. Whereas the first two iterations of DDC primarily generated theoretical insights, this revised formulation operationalizes the method as a communicative and participatory approach through which conflicting actors can articulate divergent interests, identify shared concerns and co‐construct strategies that strengthen their collective capacity for action. The method was evaluated through five co‐creative workshops involving key actors from an organization in northeastern Iran whose routine operations had been significantly disrupted by recurring electricity outages. Through resource mapping, power‐relations analysis, the actors' journey and a process of problematization, participants identified an Obligatory Passage Point (OPP) around which they negotiated competing interests. Supported by an ecology of boundary objects, this process enabled stakeholders to co‐create a new organizational narrative that reflected the interests of a diverse range of actors, including less powerful voices. The findings demonstrate the value of DDC as a systemic design approach for fostering organizational readiness, strengthening internal coordination and enabling timely responses to recurring crises. Methodologically, the study contributes to the emerging field of systemic design by providing an action‐oriented set of design instruments that support innovation in complex and uncertain contexts. Future research should further test and refine these instruments while exploring creative approaches to disseminating and scaling their outcomes.