Systemic Beauty: The How of Building Desire

In A Future To Look Forward To, we explored three experiential benefits of circular futures: Calm Permanence, Mainstreaming Couture, and Playfulness & Exploration. This week, I want to sharpen the lens: what makes certain systems—like LEGO, Apple, or EPCOT—so memorable, and how does that help us build desire for circular systems?

This week I enjoyed an enlightening conversation with a leading practitioner of circularity. One of the topics that came up was LEGO, and the source of its ineffable appeal.

What makes LEGO instantly recognizable, Apple's product lines iconic, or EPCOT's Future World unforgettable?

We concluded that this kind of knowledge is an important thing for us to have. Since the shift to circularity is a step change, we are heading into a period of necessary mass innovation. The best way to ensure mass adoption of the new paradigm is to make it delightful.

That, and because delightfulness is worth pursuing for its own sake.

The CEO of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation would seem to agree. In a speech this summer, she listed five bits of advice to companies pursuing circular initiatives. Number four on the list: “make it cool.” In other words, make it desirable.

Never one to shirk a challenging task, in this Letter I tackle the subject of desire. Specifically, I aim to deconstruct the desirability of LEGO among others, and how that maps to charting successful circular transformation strategies.

The LEGO Example

Watch a seven-year-old building with LEGO. Their hands move with confidence, combining bricks from different sets, different years, different themes. A spaceship wheel becomes a car tire. A castle wall becomes a skyscraper facade. Nothing requires adaptation or force—everything just works.

The instructions are not ancillary. They are integral, teaching spatial reasoning and planning while reinforcing the brand’s promise. Soon, the child isn't following steps anymore. They've absorbed the logic. Any brick connects to any other brick. The system has taught itself through play. What began as assembly has become creation.

This is systemic beauty in action.

The Two Dimensions of Systemic Beauty

Systemic beauty operates through two interconnected dimensions. Together, they form the DNA of desire.

1. Compositional Logic: The Symphony of Parts

Harmony emerges when elements reinforce rather than compete. LEGO achieved this by standardizing connections while liberating creativity. Every brick since 1958 connects to every other brick. A child’s creation from the 1970s integrates with a set released last month. Finite rules create infinite possibility.

Most product strategies don’t work this way. Families are held together by styling, but underlying systems remain incompatible. Each purchase starts from zero. Compositional logic changes that. Standalone products are eclipsed by ecosystems where each element compounds the value of previous purchases. Customers who invest in coherent systems become more valuable to brands over time, not less. And vice versa.

2. Instructional Design Elegance: Systems That Teach Themselves

Instructional elegance is when systems teach themselves without explanation. LEGO instructions reveal their compositional logic through play. Apple does something like this by making complex technology feel seamless. The iPhone’s interface trains users through consistent hierarchies and responsive interactions. EPCOT’s original pavilions did the same at civilizational scale, turning complex topics like energy and agriculture into lived experiences.

When systems teach themselves, adoption accelerates, support costs fall, and user competence deepens loyalty. Customers become confident, creative participants rather than passive buyers.

When Dimensions Combine: The Alchemy of Cool

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation CEO recently challenged companies to make circular solutions “cool.” But what does that mean?

Cool fills cultural gaps. It answers mythic longings people didn’t know they had. That is the what of desire. But mythology alone isn’t enough. It must be orchestrated through systemic beauty. Compositional logic plus instructional elegance transform functionality into resonance. Systemic beauty is the how of cool.

Systemic Beauty as Circudynamics Multiplier

Systemic beauty gains its greatest power when it operates across all five Circudynamics domains:

Horizons → Strategies become memorable when they reinforce each other, like Apple’s 2×2 product matrix that everyone could understand at a glance.

Living Futures → Worldbuilding gains coherence when every element supports the same circular narrative, as EPCOT’s unified vision once did.

Catalysts → Technology portfolios compound value when innovations strengthen each other rather than fragment resources.

Connection → Cultural initiatives spread when product systems feel like natural expressions of deeper values—people know how to join and participate intuitively.

Craft → Organizations embody circularity when every touchpoint reinforces coherence and values, making desired behaviors obvious and rewarding.

When systemic beauty spans all five domains, it creates what we might call transformation coherence. Vision, prototypes, technologies, culture, and organizations all reinforce the same circular story.

From Novelty Treadmill to Ensemble Orchestration

Fashion-as-novelty makes for insatiable strategy. New models, new features, new SKUs—all designed to push previous products into premature obsolescence. But novelty at scale exhausts both resources and attention while creating no lasting value.

Systemic beauty enables a distinctive business model: ensemble orchestration rather than isolated product development. Brands that master this approach curate expanding systems where customer investments compound over time.

Patagonia, Interface, and Apple succeed because they orchestrate relationships, not lifecycles. They use every interaction to strengthen the ensemble rather than complete a transaction.

The rest of this essay explores advanced techniques for building systemic beauty into circular business models, why coherence creates competitive advantages that novelty cannot match, and practical frameworks for transitioning from product thinking to ensemble thinking.

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