Strategic design and the future of work-and-wellness

AbstractBy 2015, 53.5% of U.S. workforce participants were Millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996); this majority will grow over the next decade as the generation influences economic development. Here we highlight Millennial workers’ prioritization of purposeful work, values-driven corporate citizenship, and work-life balance, arguing that start-up business entrepreneurship and strategic design, promise to play an important role in reimagining wellness in the workplace. We examine the role of strategic design innovation in the entrepreneurial context, presenting key insights about the design process derived from interviews with five start-up founders—graduates of Parsons’ Entrepreneur’s Lab (ELab) incubator—who deploy design methods and tools in a business context to re-imagine and innovate in ‘human capital’ wellness and work environments.