2024 Research Speaker Series

Beth Kolko

Professor, HCDE

OCTOBER 17, 2024

Capitalism for Humans

Tl;dr: What happens when designers are the people who start companies?

This talk introduces a new research area that has been under development for the past several years, best characterized as “Human Centered Entrepreneurship.” It’s motivated by a wellspring of optimism that if we narrow the gaps between researchers of technology (such as academics) and implementers of technology (such as the people who start the companies that develop the technologies that govern most of our lives), we have an opportunity to build better technologies and better structures to support those technologies. 

Capitalism for Humans seeks to ease the chasm between cultural critiques of technology done in HCDE and similar academic disciplines and the companies that build technologies with the goal of creating a middle path – a way to leverage human centered design mindsets, theories, and methodological approaches to refashion for-profit enterprises. The litany of all that is broken in late-stage capitalism is long. However, what might we accomplish by imaging what is possible rather than simply despairing at what is?  

Beth Kolko is a professor in the University of Washington's Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering. Dr. Kolko began her career as a professor in the humanities, studying how diverse communities used a then text-based internet to organize and enact change. Her current work focuses on the potential of non-experts to create disruptive solutions, and she builds programs that help people become functional engineers so they can solve problems in their communities. Kolko is the co-founder and former CEO of Shift Labs, a for-profit company building low-cost medical devices for emerging markets leveraging global innovation networks. She has been the Director of Innovation at the Makerbot Foundation (2013), a Fulbright professor at the University of World Economy and Diplomacy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan (2000), a Visiting Faculty Researcher at Microsoft Research (2007), and a Fellow (2007-2009) and Faculty Associate (2009-2019) at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. She has lectured around the world and consulted for a variety of NGOs, including extensive fieldwork in Cambodia, India, Kyrgyzstan, Indonesia, and Kenya.