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While the official documents for the new Aalto University were being signed at a prestigious ceremony at the centre of Helsinki on Wednesday June 25th, another kind of groundwork for Finland’s future innovations was laid a few hundred meters away at Katajanokka’s Wanha Satama. A three day seminar, organized by Sitra and Tapio Wirkkala Rut Bryk Foundation, that brought together almost a hundred design thinkers around the world came to an end.

A closed seminar, with very open working methods, was trying to tackle the new paradigm of design and what it means for education, industry, governments and of course the design profession. The new thinking stresses design as a method and a process that can be applied to a lot of things, instead of seeing it just as a way of giving a form to an object or a service. According to this new school of thought, design and designers can help to solve wicked (enormous) problems like health care, global warming or national competitiveness in addition to their old role. Design can be seen as working method that brings together a wide range of experts to tackle specific problems and challenges.

What the seminar accomplished is yet to be seen. We can for example expect a Helsinki Design Manifesto to stem from the work done during the Lab. What is clear and welcome is that the role and nature of design is being rethought, as Finland gets ready to apply it’s new national innovation strategies and to launch the Aalto school that will combine the existing tech, business and design universities in the Helsinki area.

The new paradigm – that design is everywhere and can be applied to just about anything – reminds me of the shift in the role of marketing a while back. For long marketing meant marketing communications, then all of a sudden everything that the customers needed and therefore a company should provide was called marketing. It made sense but was also a struggle for hegemony, the fun people from the marketing department wanted to invade the corner offices, or at least be invited in for a chat.

Now designers want to do the same, and not only designers, there are other powerful forces – like Sitra, some of our industry and some behind the Aalto school – that are pushing for design nation Finland to take its design more seriously. It is difficult to expect anything but good to come out of that.

“A fundamentalist is a person who considers whether a fact is acceptable to their faith before they explore it”, says author and blogger Seth Godin in a great little video shot by Nic Askew. “…a curious person explores first and then considers whether they want to accept the ramifications.”

For anyone wondering about creativity and quality of work on personal, on organizational or on national level, the five minutes it takes to watch this video are well spent: “Curiosity”

It is not often that an official report creates a rush in your head, makes you see into the future and treates you with elegant and accessible language and with great quotes. The OECD report “Understanding the Brain: The Birth of a Learning Science” does that – and more. The project leader Bruno della Chiesa, a senior analyst at OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, and some of the brainiest people in brain research gathered in Helsinki yesterday for a seminar to mark the publication of the report and to discuss how it may change the way we approach teaching and learning.

It is no coincidence that this happened in Helsinki, Finland being the honor student of OECD’s PISA studies, and a major supporter of the project. Finns are also the first to discuss how the report’s findings will change life in the classrooms. To stay ahead you must think ahead.

The report, which, with a slight edit, could be a popular science bestseller, paves the way for an emerging field of study that combines educational studies, cognitive science and neuroscience. There is lot there that makes intuitive sense and is welcome like scientific support for lifelong learning and for the interdependence of body and mind and the emotional and the cognitive. There is also an interesting chapter on neuromyths. For example there is no scientific support for the claim that a person uses only 10% of his or her brain, or that there would be “left-brain” or “right-brain” persons.

There is also stuff that is quite wild and potentially frightening like brain meets machine research and performance enhancing drugs. One of the most thought-provoking exchanges at the seminar concerned the ethics of neuroscience. Mr della Chiesa told the audience that in their original version of the report they had taken a much stronger stand on ethical issues but had been kindly asked to dampen their views. One of the interesting question he raised was: “What happens when someone invents a pill that will make you smarter? Is it going to be available to millions for a few euros or to only a few for a million euros?” Who exactly asked the team not to discuss ethics, especially of drugs, too much, he would not say.

Later in the day, a new ethical and philosophical twist was introduced by Dr Hideaki Koizumi – who drives around Japan in a pink research truck that has the text “Exciting Brain Science” printed on it in screaming letters – when he turned the thinking around and talked about the neuroscience of ethics. In his closing remarks Mr della Chiesa admitted that occasionally he wakes up in the middle of the night asking himself: “What happens when we find out whether we are born equal when it comes to ethics. If we are, then there is a huge responsibility on the school system. If not, our philosophical fundamentals are going to change.”