Emile Mazerant and Kees Dorst
While reframing is vital for designing novel futures, embedding these new perspectives in pre-existing organisational practices remains a persistent challenge. Traditional transactional methods—such as roadshows and showcases—often fail to overcome deeply embedded professional rationalities in existing, institutionalised practices that need to be let go of for the new futures to be realised. This paper argues for inhabiting the ‘in-between space’, the transitional terrain where an old frame no longer suffices and a new frame has yet to stabilise, and where frame acceptance and frame engagement co-evolve. We distinguish our approach from solution-focused forms of participatory and co-design by focusing on what needs to happen beyond the frame-creation process for subsequent futures to be realised. Drawing on in-depth interviews with eleven leading improvisers in jazz, dance, and theatre, we identify three relational dispositions—generosity, reciprocity, and the license to disrupt—that enable collective letting-go and shared sense-making in the face of uncertainty. These dispositions are rooted in individual orientations of curiosity, inspiration, and adventurousness. We discuss implications for systemic design practice, including the critical tension between intentional direction and relational openness, and the risk of manipulation when openness is feigned rather than genuine. We conclude that cultivating relational qualities is as important as developing analytical tools for sustainable organisational change and innovation. This aligns with the theme of pluralism, providing a framework for epistemic justice where diverse actors can navigate uncertainty together, not as a gap to bridge, but as a terrain to inhabit.
Keywords: systemic design, frame acceptance, frame engagement, relational qualities, organisational innovation, improvisation