Abstract
Redirecting human progress needs more than superior ethics and good will. Effective forms of management and governance are required (Metzner-Szigeth 2011). Realizing sustainable development takes place under conditions of targeting-conflicts about priorities, utilization competences about resources as well as divergent interests and contrasting visions. Facing great challenges of humankind therefore means tailoring well-designed interventions: in communicative culture as well as in material culture, in the organizational sphere as well as in the technological sphere. But how to do so? Three well-known strategies are “efficiency”, “sufficiency” and “consistency”. They are driven by contrasting rationalities, respond to different groundings and favour distinct instruments. They are supported by different arguments and seem to exclude each other. As strategies, they are competing for attention for being accepted and converted into practice. But how to combine them with productive principles of design such as to enable far reaching transformations in material culture and social life?