Roberto Iñiguez Flores
Introductory remarks
The challenges Mexico faces, such as moving from a manufacturing economy to Industry 4.0, the Industry Internet of Things, and building resilience models that work with huge concentrations of population, are issues that are moving to the forefront for many cities and regions. Roberto speaks to efforts to create a new model of design leadership that moves away from the tradition of the design disciplines and emphasises other kinds of practices and competencies. It is also leadership-oriented—that is, design leadership that uses design knowledge to create change. This kind of transformative leadership, which brings something new, is also called on to be authentic, relying on the coexistence based on mixing and co-participation of cultural forms. In a recent article with Ruth León Morán and David Sánchez Ruano, the authors propose organic Mexi-futurism as a pathway to connect rich cultural traditions and design-led innovation, creating the conditions and platform for cross-cultural dialogues, an evolving design culture, and design practices in academia and regional innovators and institutions to participate. (Iñiguez Flores et al., 2019)
Roberto Iñiguez Flores is the Dean, School of Architecture, Art and Design, Tecnológico de Monterrey. Through the creation of strategies on a national and local scale, Roberto has led the development of projects for the transformation of cities to tackle the challenges and improve people’s quality of life and motivate companies to innovate. He is a designer with 20 years of experience in product innovation, working as a consultant for design strategies and innovation methods for global companies. Roberto’s research focuses on advanced design cultures, with a particular interest in anticipation processes, the relation between systems and design, and how individuals and organisations develop “advanced” design competencies. He is part of the C+Lab—Cities Laboratory, which aims to link research and education with a positive impact on communities in Mexico.
Iñiguez Flores, R., Morán, R. M. L. & Ruano, D. S. (2019). Mexi-futurism: The transitorial path between tradition and innovation. Strategic Design Research Journal, 12 (02), 222-234. DOI:10.4013/sdrj.2019.122.08
