For three days in June of 2008, a group of 108 people from around the world, each a leader in their respective field, converged on Helsinki to discuss the potential of design in the 21st century. In a world plagued by complex problems that defy single-discipline solutions, HDL2008 sought to develop a manifesto which may empower design as a strategic endeavor - a synthetic, holistic, and human centric way of approaching "big picture" problems.