Can design change the world (and should it try)?

While it is good that designers have ambition and want to change the world, are any of these ideas big enough? Or is the influence of design rather a coincidental symptom of society’s acceptance of limits, where few leaders (or anyone else for that matter) openly argue for innovation, risk-taking and progress? Instead the prevailing trend seems to be about making do, reusing what we already have, cutting back and shunning experimentation. So any such design-led innovation appears to be less about radical change, and more about helping cutback and scale down solutions.