Leveraging socio-technical systems to tackle grand challenges: Reflections on human-robot teams, hybrid workplaces, med-tech, and digital transformation

The world is increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous with global challenges such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals presenting new design issues. In this paper, we argue that socio-technical systems principles and tools can be applied to address these wicked problems. We illustrate this and consider challenges of applying these ideas using four examples: designing human-robot teams, designing future hybrid workplaces, integration of surgical technologies (med-tech) in public healthcare systems, and digital transformation within policing. We call for socio-technical systems thinking to be applied to grand challenges to foster collaboration, develop shared language, and enable multi-disciplinary solutions. We suggest that this can be effectively supported through adopting the role of expert facilitators. We discuss the extension of socio-technical systems thinking to enable identification of outcomes and impacts relating to SDGs; to broaden the conceptualisation of stakeholders and system boundaries; to utilise project management tools and to integrate socio-digital skills.