Future Design Inquiries. April 2026
Hello from ENSO, a future design company. We’re sharing the things that make us think, bring us joy or shift our perspective.
What we’re reflecting on
What is resilience?
We love to think of resilience in terms of the dramatic hero. A regular someone just living their life is hit with unthinkable adversity, rises to the challenge, and comes out the other side stronger, better, wiser. That, our culture says, is resilience. But Eric Markowitz argues that definition is incomplete. Instead, he says, resilience is about the small, daily decisions we make to build a durable foundation to hold us when the adversity hits. And he would know – Markowitz studies companies that have lasted hundreds of years, like the Japanese construction company Kongō Gumi founded in 578 AD (!). Which means they’ve been in business for a cool 1,400 years. The key seems to be those things that are both the most obvious and the hardest to practice. Understanding that people and relationships are your biggest asset – and treating them as such. Growing only at the pace you can truly sustain. Performing maintenance not just when things are broken, but throughout every step of the process. We can learn from these companies, not just for our firms, but for ourselves. So many of us ask ourselves “Am I resilient person?” when it’s really about “Have I built a resilient system that I can be a part of?” Because whether you’re worried about geopolitics, or how AI will impact your job, or what the future will bring for democracy, resilience isn’t something that you either have or you don’t. It’s something that you build every day, through the people you surround yourself with, the work you engage with, the ways you fill your time. And it’s not something that you have to cultivate alone. “Resilience,” says Markowitz, “is not a solo sport. It’s a collective achievement.” (HS)
Art as applied optimism
During the covid era, I did a rodeo-within-a-rodeo: a year of cancer treatment. It was successful (amen), but existential fear is really draining. Towards the end of it, I knew I needed an energetic antidote. I found it by getting on my bike every day with a camera, going to the beach, and seeing what life I could see. Light. Joy. Hope. Resilience. Belonging. Shimmers of nature’s soul-expanding swagger. I continued that photographic quest from ranches in Montana to floodplains in Zimbabwe. What resulted is a series I call Find The Light — and it’s going to be shown at Big Red Sun in Venice Beach during May. The ultimate way of seeing it would be to join a Whispering Thorns dinner, which is hosted there. And, or ... if you can join us on Friday May 8th, we’ll have an opening from 6pm — 560 Rose Ave. I’d love to celebrate life and light with you. (SB)
The Grayening
It’s always interesting to see how our collective mood is reflected in our aesthetic choices. Remember when dopamine dressing was trending? But lately we’ve been going in a different direction. The map below shows the most popular house color in every state, and as you can see it looks a little dull. Cars have similarly faded in vibrancy – 88% of all new cars on the planet are either white, black, silver or gray. Frank Jacobs tracks the history of color seeping out of our lives, a phenomenon that’s been going on awhile (remember Apple’s early iMacs, available in Bondi Blue, Tangerine, Strawberry and Grape? Now, your choices are Space Gray, Silver, Gold and Midnight black). But we’ve gone even more colorless lately as minimalism has become aspirational and, possibly, as national sentiment has wavered between anxious fearfulness (black?) to resigned indifference (gray?). But, Jacobs says, color may be on its way back. People are branching out to green and red cars, and designers are apparently seeing more requests for multi-colored living. Maybe we’re all a little sick of the gray, black and white. Maybe we’re ready to live in a brighter future. (HS)
The hardest Venn diagram in business
Rolex’s core idea of perpetual refers to its enduring product, but also its ownership structure (a perpetual foundation) and its relationship with its home city of Geneva. It’s a one-word strategy. Hermès is run by the sixth generation of the same family, thinking in centuries. Novo Nordisk’s foundation ownership gave it the patience to fund decades of obesity research the market considered peripheral — patience made it Europe’s most valuable company. Meanwhile, many great American — particularly Californian — companies have mastered something different: radical dynamism. Huge ambition, magnetic talent attraction, rapid product iteration.
Enduring values and high-metabolic dynamism can look antithetical. But the ultimate company would combine them. Sebastian Mallaby’s wonderful new book, The Infinity Machine, is a vivid account of this tension in action, in what is arguably the most important company of this generation. Demis Hassabis in London guarding values; Google leaders in California enabling the dynamism — both in service of a societally important mission: AGI. DeepMind is unlikely to be perfect, but by designing the tension in, rather than optimizing it away, it gives itself a real chance at sustainable greatness.
Why aren’t there more examples like this? My hypothesis: the vast majority of companies plan incrementally, which is rational given traditional incentive structures, but it eliminates the most important question: what do we actually want? If you plan incrementally, values are likely decorative rather than truly tested. A 20-year destination compels a conversation that has to wrestle with the tension. Will more European companies find their way to a story of themselves that fosters greater dynamism? Will more American companies have the conversations necessary to align around enduring values? The answers will shape the next era of capitalism, and with it, geopolitics, living standards, and the climate. (SB)
Could AI be the antidote to social media's social decay?
We all know the story: social media exacerbated our differences in service of clicks. The more we used it, the more alienated we became — sensationalism swamps the reasonable. A new analysis by the FT’s John Burn-Murdoch suggests that AI, at least in its early innings, may do the opposite. Across thousands of simulated conversations on policy and social issues, every major AI chatbot — including Grok! — nudged users away from extreme positions towards more moderate, expert-aligned views. The dynamic is almost the inverse of social media: those platforms are incentivized to deliver outrage, AI companies are competing to deliver something else… accurate answers, reliable tools … and may be replaced if they fail that role. If this trend continues, it could be transformative. There’s a lot of fear around AI, understandably given the industry has struggled to articulate a positive vision of the future. But if the last information revolution gave us a post-truth dopamine economy, could this one give us something closer to the truth? (SB)
These nuggets are curated by ENSO partners Hanna Siegel (HS) and Sebastian Buck (SB).
8 things that made us think, gasp, share and laugh:
- Ideas vs. Concepts
- Former stand-up comedian and current psychologist Adam Mastroianni on strong-link and weak-link problems (his Substack, Experimental History, is truly excellent – both insightful and genuinely funny, such a rare combo)
- The design and engineering of the Panama Canal was based on an invention and sketch by Leonardo Da Vinci
- Josh Wolk, a design engineer, assigned an instrument to every branch of the NYC subway map and created new music, changing constantly as the trains run, that he calls train jazz
- We need more inspiring stories – they motivate us to engage with others and do good in the world, and they also reduce stress
- Savy King’s journey from death to life on Angel City’s pitch is moral beauty
- Merci, the fashion/ interior concept store in Paris is very cool, and donates 100% of profits
- This piece on the complicated relationship between Bob Dylan and John Lennon
What we’re working on
ENSO is a small, senior team so that we can work on just a few initiatives at a time. This allows us to go deep on some of the biggest challenges/ opportunities. Recently, we’ve been working on a few main missions with our partners:
- Reimagining the future of the seas, and exploring what a new frontier in maritime might mean for the world
- Changing the world of work: the labor market is the engine of prosperity, but ~80% of people are not engaged or thriving. We’re working to change the system.
- Helping artists sustain an artistic life over the long term, and designing the space and tools to help artists everywhere thrive.
Thank you for being part of the network that fuels our optimism and expands what’s possible. We’re grateful for you, and we’re committed to creating positive futures together.
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Reach us at news@enso.co
See you next time.
ENSO • 115 W California Blvd #9101 Pasadena, CA 91105
