Quieting the Cleverness: Innovation's Counter-Intuitive Soul
Image and artwork courtesy of Geraldine Wharry
“Revolutions happen in 2 phases:
1. realisation something has gone wrong
2. everyone realised the other person has realised the same thing. People talk more about it.”
What do you do when you exist within a system you know is not working, yet you feel powerless to change it?
Looking back at the last 20 years, this is the question I set out to answer when my work in fashion design and fashion forecasting didn't feel right anymore. It was a ‘slow burn’ at first riddled with cognitive dissonance I didn’t have words for. I can remember the point I could no longer ignore my discomfort in 2007 when I took a break between design jobs and went to volunteer in Tanzania for several months. But it wasn’t until the early 2010’s I became much more vocal and clearer about the unsustainability of fashion.
The journey of pealing this onion has not stopped, evolving into questioning how we forecast the future to all too often serve a set of complex and interdependent systems that hinder our planet and people.
About five years ago I decided I needed more systems change training. I looked into Transition Design, a practice created by Terry Irwin, but the programme I applied for was sadly cancelled at the start of the pandemic. So I took a course in Biomimicry, whilst exploring a few things my father had shared with me when he was training to become an organic farmer, studying biodynamics. I was fascinated at how these solutions that were based on biology, natural cycles and ancient wisdoms could be applied to future foresight, frustrated by a future foresight field I think overserves an outdated set of systems.
Equipped with grand ideas and some knowledge of natural systems and flows, I introduced corresponding principles into foresight methodologies and curriculum with the Trend Atelier.
But these methods and principles were still somewhat surface level. I knew I had to dedicate time to intense studying with experts and mentors as well as a community to deepen these regenerative futures methods, in order for them to be an integral custodian of biomimicry and life’s principles.
I am not going to deliver you an overconfident report or a framework with fancy words and infographics.
I am a part time student at the moment, and sharing my own learning journey as I’ve embarked on becoming a Biomimicry Educator with Learn Biomimicry’s school and community endorsed by the Biomimicry Institute.
I'm integrating Biomimicry in my strategic foresight ecosystem to work in unity with nature's intelligence and life’s principles. Here’s some additional context in my theory of change as a regenerative futures architect.
This all stems from a belief that the creative and foresight industry, as a force for systems change and innovation, must reappraise their vision and role, to guide solutions in harmony with nature’s intelligence, not in service of systems that hinder our planet and people. To intervene in this insane system we’ve built, one solution is to radically slow down.
One of the first requirements in the Learn Biomimicry program
It is to quiet the cleverness. It’s telling the systems thinking and innovation training that requires me to work more closely with nature’s genius than ever before, requires me to do the most counterintuitive thing (in our current operating system):
Slow down, quiet my own cleverness and desire to rush to solutions.
Quieting the cleverness asks us to embody the mindset of nature’s intelligence, as we learn to emulate her genius, working (amongst other things) with Life’s principles and the 3 seeds of Biomimicry thinking – Ethos, (Re)Connect and Emulate.
This is about approaching systems change and innovation from your soul and natural flow, not an algorithmic approach to success.
There are quite a few intensive aspects to the training, including the most recent deep dive into both biological models, whilst simultaneously digging into learning theories. But today I want to zero in with you on quieting the cleverness because this process has been deeply liberating:
For how I nurture my gaze and understanding of foresight and systems thinking as a futurist and regenerative futures architect.
It’s changing my centre of gravity in a way that does not hinder my ‘efficiency’, it amplifies it because I am learning to work according and with nature’s intelligence, and how it’s all there for us to reconnect with the soul of innovation and systems change.
Your invitation
If you haven’t been able to tell yet, this Futuring dispatch is an invitation for us all to consider what quieting our cleverness means. Welcome to part two of my series on slowing time, (part 1 here) which inherently demands quietness.
I invite you to rethink the rushing and scarcity mindset we’ve been sold, so that collectively we can feel powerful again to create the change we want to see. By reconnecting with the flow and intelligence of nature, we can reignite our future-making mindset. This is the foundation of innovation and making visionary connections.
Here’s the breakdown of what I will share, starting with the context, the issues and then the solutions:
Quieting the cleverness
Radical Efficiency Rationalism
What is the philosophy behind quieting the cleverness?
If you choose the path of quieting the cleverness, here are inhibitors to look out for
Practical first steps to quiet the cleverness
Parting Thoughts
Quieting the cleverness
Perhaps a good place to start is the origin journey, not just for context, but to potentially perhaps illicit similar feelings/ experiences you might have had.
I used to be a fashion designer and design director managing collections for multimillion dollar international brands, experiencing first-hand how broken and wasteful the fashion system was for 12 years and left that career in 2010. You could say I’m a ‘recovering’ fashion designer (a term I’ve stolen from Amanda Johnston)
Very much still wanting to be in the fashion world I loved to my core (I banned my mother from dressing me at age 2 for some context) I started working for the biggest fashion foresight agency in the world. I learned a lot and worked with great people. But quite quickly, I saw that we were stuck regardless of the quality of our teams and our work. We were ticking boxes.
This many trends in the seasonal report - tick.
These many colours are needed in our forecast - tick.
This many images in the forecast – tick
These many silhouettes – tick
Regardless of whether we actually needed them. Regardless of how innovative these trends were. No questions asked. Only because this is how it was done and this is how the game was played. We worked in futures but forgot to do the one essential thing in the act of ‘futuring’: QUESTION and CHANGE THE RULES. It was a form of box ticking I had experienced on the fashion design side of things. Except in some ways worse - because we were supposed to be the future forward ones working in forecasting!
Since leaving the corporate world in 2013 I’ve advised some of the world’s leading consulting, media, creative, foresight and strategy agencies, as well as big brands and institutions. I’ve spoken on world leading stages and teach foresight methodologies at universities and in my own school Trend Atelier.
And I can tell you one thing for sure:
The soul of innovation is in crisis.
Creatives are suffering. Many forecasters and strategists are miserable. Leaders feel lost. Because we all know the system we serve is broken. There’s no shortage of amazing visionaries and pioneering ideas here to change our broken operating system. It’s not hopeless, things are changing, but much slower than they can or should.
What I've observed throughout my journey — from fashion design teams to forecasting agencies to teaching foresight methodologies to advising — is a consistent pattern that transcends individual organisations. It's a systemic philosophy that has infiltrated our entire approach to innovation, one that prioritises a particular type of cleverness over genuine wisdom. This is what I've come to call ‘Radical Efficiency Rationalism’.
You could say it’s because of the current socio-economic and technological climate and the complexity of the dynamic changes happening. But here’s one of the root causes of the problem and what has been plunging innovation and innovators into an existential crisis.
Radical Efficiency Rationalism
The Perils
We live in an era that glorifies speed and the relentless pursuit of the next big idea disguised as cleverness. How this manifests:
We need to be fast at publishing opinions, turning thought leadership into self-promotion not idea promotion, at a time when pundit culture prevails.
We now seem bent on proving humans are replaceable. We have AI. Tech will fix it all including us faulty humans. Radical Efficiency Rationalism.
We have all the frameworks. All the diagrams. All the data. All the mental models and productivity solutions. All the insights and reports. All the information we could ever dream of having access to - and a click away.
The possibilities are limitless right? We've never had so much technological innovation and media. We've never had so much access to collaborative tools as well.
We are so clever, aren’t we?
Radical Efficiency Rationalism, at any cost, is the name of the game. If we’re not able to “bend the will of the market toward your brand” as I recently read in a report on a new ‘architecture of belief’ by a leading brand strategist, this is a failure. The idea is that Brands (and people who see themselves as personal brands) can control everything and ‘decide how everything plays out’ in culture, in consumption, in technology, in innovation.
The issue is that in order for this ‘architecture of belief’ to work, scarcity is the root emotion because you, or the brand are being told that you need to be ‘cleverer’ and if you’re not ‘bending the market’ and the consumer and/ or audience’s cultural desires and perceptions, you’re a loser. That’s Radical Efficiency Rationalism for you.
My question to this is: you’re a loser at what exactly?
If Radical Efficiency Rationalism is the way, then why are we facing the biggest crisis of imagination we’ve seen in centuries?
It’s a crisis felt by the youth all the way to leadership and across many sectors. This crisis doesn’t discriminate, it’s generous.
Our idea of cleverness and efficiency, and the game to play and win, have become highly inefficient.
The losing game of Radical Efficiency Rationalism
In a rushing world where if you’re not constantly playing the game you’re a loser, we never switch off by fear of becoming the said loser, all while giving into a digital environment designed to distract us. This fragments our humanity and need for reflection. Ezra Klein calls our current state of fragmentation 'an acid bath for human cognition'.
The numbers are staggering:
42% of workers across major economies report burnout, according to Future Forum Pulse research.
Gen Z, despite being digital natives, displays particular fatigue – 58% report burnout while 93% express desire to improve their mental health.
I am just wondering how this can be good for strategy, futures and innovation? How is this efficient?
The operating system of Radical Efficiency Rationalism, from the technology, the economy all the way to the beliefs surrounding it, is severely due for an upgrade. Clearly, things aren't working. They're not working for our planet. They're not working for people. Our soul. They’re not working for innovators and the creation of meaningful futures.
Cultural theorist Mark Fisher identified our deep cultural impasse in his 2012 analysis for Film Quarterly:
“We’ve lost the capacity to conceive of a world radically different from the one in which we currently live, trapped in endless nostalgia loops. It’s as if we’ve surrendered to recycling aesthetics because we’ve lost faith in distinctly new futures, unable to imagine systemic alternatives.”
The current pace is sucking the soul out of innovation
We’ve built a shrinking world for ourselves with our Radical Efficiency Rationalism. In this paradigm, the world is the consumer and/or audience. The brand is the company, but it’s also every single human who sees themselves as a personal brand. We are all stagnating and at an impasse, like one big happy family.
Ironically this is happening when tech, trends, news, and our lives have never been based so much on speed.
None of the following makes any sense:
Why don't we have and/or make time to question the inefficiencies of a system that only innovates to feed consumption and attention, or ‘bending the will’ (as you can probably tell I cannot stand that wording)?
The fashion industry and to a big extent the creative industry suffer from an extreme lack of whole systems thinking and ignore long-term consequences, while expecting the unreasonable: to make more goods, campaigns and services as fast as possible, at any human and planetary cost.
The information and digital space plays a key supporting role in this ‘innovation theatre’, with a top premium on constantly publishing, storing and digesting the NOW.
We know the system is obsolete and broken in our gut and core, but we fear how seismic facing the truth, and a new paradigm would be for us as businesses, brands and personal brands. So, what, we do nothing?
Who cares?
Radical Efficiency Rationalism is the worship of more and faster, the mirage of golden immediate solutions.
But honestly seriously like ….
Who cares about having more coats, more jackets, more tops, more trends, more stuff?
Who cares about having another campaign, another logo, another ‘It’ girl or core trend or vibe?
Another trend report to add to the commentary mill pretending something is new when it isn’t.
Another great exercise in shoehorning and playing the game. Who cares?
Internet critic Cory Doctorow coined the term "enshitification" – the inevitable decline of platforms as they prioritize extracting maximum value while delivering minimum benefits.
This has become a masterful exercise in the art of boring and minimum benefits.
This is not clever.
We can do better.
We can be more ambitious as businesses, innovators and creative leaders.
Innovation is not innovative anymore if this is the name of the game. I’d also add, unless something is innovating and producing ecosystem services (if we prioritise on the global environmental and wellbeing data) who cares?
What is the philosophy behind quieting the cleverness?
First, paradigm shifts in systems theory
The biggest innovations and systemic changes have always been philosophical.
In terms of systems interventions, a paradigm shift as defined by Donella Meadows is the biggest intervention. This is where ideologies are born or die. A paradigm shift is about power structures and dynamics, our deepest set of beliefs, culture. It is at times intangible and harder to quantify but often tied to tipping point cultural events. Our entire societies are based on beliefs and philosophies and change dramatically around paradigm shifts.
Paradigm shifts in systems theory are the hardest to achieve. They require to transcend so we need to know this when feeling powerless about systems change. But make no mistake, this change is brewing, even as it coexists with its complete opposite.
People, organisations and innovators are searching for new ideals.
On an individual and community level we're witnessing a slowness revolution taking place. Many individuals from Gen Z all the way to cultural theorists and cultural critics are saying, I don't want this system anymore. I'm not an algorithm. I'm not a machine. I discuss this in an upcoming piece for Spur ‘The Rebel Romantics’ and in The Time Rebels: Reclaiming the Future by Slowing Time.
The slowest to adopt this revolution are the corporations, brands, agencies because they are the most risk adverse and built upon our consumption and speed driven society. Our entire economic and technological system is against this change.
For individuals the difficulty is implementation in organisations and society, and the feeling of powerlessness, because we see the system as too big to change, too big to fail and so we feel obliged to fit into it.
The most innovative organisations and individuals will recognise these tensions and adopt a more natural pace, assessing that quieting the cleverness, which demands slowing down, can be our first greatest competitive advantage in creating solutions.
Biomimicry Focus
While the complete reimagination of our innovation systems is still emerging, we can look to Biomimicry practitioners as pioneers in this space. The Biomimicry Institute, for instance, has documented how solutions developed by nature's 3.8 billion years of R&D inherently require a different temporal approach.
When Sharklet Technologies studied how the Galapagos shark's skin prevented bacterial growth—leading to an innovation that helps hospitals reduce infections without chemicals—the breakthrough required researchers to slow down, observe nature's patterns, and quiet their preconceived solutions.
Similarly, Solum created the world’s first regenerative outsole using the principles of biomimicry, harnessing the same biological nutrients that give trees and plants their strength and resiliency to create Solum’s Bio-Tread™ material. As it wears down over time, it redeposits these positive nutrients into the ground for plants to absorb, regenerating the surrounding ecosystem and beginning the cycle again. To explore the interconnection between footwear, consumer, and environment by rethinking the design and function of the outsole, the Solum team went back to the essentials of listening and a form of ‘quieting the cleverness’ to get to the roots of fixing unsustainable features of footwear manufacturing.
The future doesn't belong to the fastest or the ‘cleverest’
Don’t let today’s ‘cleverness rush’ fool you. Our collective futures belong to those who can see most clearly, think most deeply, moving for and with nature rather than, for example, speed to market and brand domination.
There’s a huge opportunity gap waiting to be filled because deep down this is what people want and feel. They are part of the 89%. The chance of failure is equally as huge.
The barrier for those who want to change our current systems may likely mean battling our own collective cultural dogma:
God forbid we should slow down…
We’ll stop being relevant …
We’ll disappear into oblivion ….
We’re supposed to play the game …
This is the system I am too small to change it
But THIS here below is actually the system in numbers, and our might as a creative industry and humans who operate within it:
The Creative industries add £124bn of value to UK alone.
As far as economics and GDP are concerned, statistics show the fashion industry is the 7th biggest economy in the world.
A wilder potential
What’s the space you want to exist in? Radical Efficiency Rationalism or quieting the cleverness?
Organisations, brands and individual humans who deliberately create space for answering this question will be the leaders of tomorrow’s most meaningful systems change and innovations across design, technology, strategy, built environments all the way to workplace culture. To quote Rick Rubin when interviewed by Malcom Gladwell about his book ‘The Creative Act’:
“You need to walk out of the ordinary to see a wilder potential. What is possible? What’s possible is radical.”
The soul of innovation
If we can redefine the soul of innovation not as a measure of speed and playing the game, but as a reconnection with nature’s genius and humanity’s natural flow, as wild as this may sound, who is to say what the financial gains could be, let alone the philosophical rebirth?
Nature demands to be in the here and now. The innovator’s natural state is to be open, filter out the noise and frankly abandon the tired and played out BS of Radical Efficiency Rationalism.
Individuals, organisations and innovators who reconnect with the flow and intelligence of nature will reignite their future-making mindset, which is the foundation of innovation and making visionary connections. This is why I have embarked on my Biomimicry journey which means so much more than embracing one particular set of methods and principles, it’s existential.
If you choose the path of quieting the cleverness, here are inhibitors to look out for
Shallow thinking over contemplation: Innovation requires deep, focused thought - precisely what's compromised by constant interruptions and pressure to produce. Groundbreaking ideas rarely emerge during fragmented attention spans between for example email and social media checks.
Risk aversion under pressure: When we feel perpetually behind due to communication and information overload or FOMO, we’re less likely to pursue risky, innovative approaches that might fail.
Incremental over transformational: Digital work patterns and efficiency mandates favour immediate, measurable progress over the uncertain exploration that leads to breakthroughs.
Organizational pressures and client expectations: Even when we commit to quieting cleverness, we face bosses and clients who request innovation while demanding rushed deliverables that fit existing frameworks and engaging with the commissioned insights on a very surface level. This creates a challenging dynamic—whether as an in-house creative, strategist, forecaster or consultant—requiring strategic choices about when to compromise and when to push boundaries. This might seem daunting but is more manageable than you think. As I explore in my article, navigating the spectrum from futures advocacy to futures activism is crucial for bringing meaningful systems change into our work.
Please do suggest anything you think I have missed this is not an exhaustive list.
Practical first steps to quiet the cleverness
Create deliberate pauses: Schedule 30-minute blocks in your calendar where you don't produce — just observe, reflect, or connect with nature. Label them ‘thinking time’ if you need to justify them to others.
Observe the natural world with a naturalist’s lens: This is a direct call to action from one of Learn Biomimicry’s activity given to our cohort. We were asked to engage our senses so that we could think more creatively and expansively before creating our biomimicry solution. For this we completed the iSites journalling book by Biomimicry 3.8 “a hands-on journal with prompts for observing the natural world, asking the right questions, and building your own collection of inspiring biological forms, processes, and systems” designed for designers and creative problem solvers interested in bringing their fascination with nature into their work styles.
Practice presence in one daily activity: Commit to experiencing it fully, without multitasking or planning what's next.
Redefine a success metric: Identify one area where you're measuring success purely by speed or output, or how you’ll be perceived by others, including on social media. Experiment with a new metric that values depth, connection, or regenerative impact instead.
Conduct a ‘rushing audit’: For one week, note every time you feel rushed or anxious about being efficient or relevant in the society that pushes us to always be the ‘cleverest’. Ask: "Is this urgency serving innovation or merely feeding the system I'm questioning?”
Parting thoughts
What does the soul of innovation embody to you?
What does quieting the cleverness mean to you?
What does success or even efficiency mean to you?
For me this is a story of reclaiming agency and our soul modality as humans and as creatives, respecting nature as the key to the answers.
We can change our current failing operating system faster than we probably think. The question is who's to take the risk to be first, doing and saying out loud what everyone else is already thinking and wanting?
By Geraldine Wharry
