Bearing Witness Design: Innovation Through Lived Experience

Dr. Bernie Glassman was a brilliant aeronautical engineer who worked on some of the most complicated challenges for NASA including early approaches to landing on Mars. Bernie had an incredible mind for science and innovation along with a deep commitment towards social impact. What distressed Bernie most was the growing homeless population that he encountered daily in his town of Yonkers, New York. Housing insecurity is an extremely complex problem and Bernie came to believe that it needed “Bearing Witness” to enable innovation from lived empathy. In 1993, Bernie (pictured with brown vest) embarked on his first street retreat and the first of many weeks spent on the street in an effort to design solutions from empathy.  According to Bernie, “When we bear witness, when we become the situation—homelessness, poverty, illness, violence, death—the right action arises by itself.” 

Bernie’s experience led to a number of social impact enterprises, including his most famous, Greyston Bakery. Greyston Bakery has created job opportunities for more than 3,500 individuals and has supported more than 19,000 families. Greyston Bakery generates more than $20 million in annual revenue and their signature fudge brownies can be found in Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, on Delta Airlines flights, and in Whole Foods stores around the country. Their brownie making has brought $65 million in salaries to a workforce that most people considered “unemployable” -- ex-convicts, disabled, homeless, illiterate, and addicts. 

Inspired by pioneering innovators like Bernie and informed by Japanese Zen principles, our team has developed a new form of empathy-driven human-centered design that we call Bearing Witness Design. Intended for purpose-driven executives and organizations seeking to drive social impact through disruptive innovation, Bearing Witness Design is an experiential ideation process aimed at informing new products, services, and organizational cultures. Together with Amy Heymans, an internationally respected design thinker, and Paul Agostinelli, a Zen Master and tech entrepreneur, we will be introducing Bearing Witness Design workshops in early 2024 with select executive teams and companies.