Overview of this Post: This is a quick look at the concept of Design Thinking in a business environment.

Thoughts on this Post: I like the graphic representation of this process and thoughts offered.

When design principles are applied to strategy and innovation the success rate for innovation dramatically improves.

Engineering, medicine, business, architecture, and painting are concerned not with the necessary but with the contingent—not how things are but how they might be—in short, with design. (Simon, 1996, p. xii.)

A design mind-set is not problem-focused, it’s solution focused, and action oriented. It involves both analysis and imagination in problem-solving. Design thinking is at the core of effective strategy development and organizational change.

The profession of management needs a re-design.

Henry Mintzberg, in the Globe and Mail, (03-16-2009) asserts the excessive focus on analysis, targets and number crunching, along with the absence of introspection and imagination has resulted in a crisis in management which is partly to blame for our current financial crisis.

Leaders and managers need to think like designers. “Design and leadership are fundamentally about actively creating the future rather than reacting to the present.” (Leadership Lab, Banff Centre)

The design way of thinking can be applied to systems, situations, procedures, protocols, and innovation. You can design the way you lead, manage, create and innovate. The purpose of design, ultimately, is to improve quality of life.

Design-thinking outcomes include: Finding order out of chaos, elegance, people-centered solutions, emotional appeal, memorable experiences, storytelling, surfacing unseen opportunities, visualizing information, envisioning future possibilities, crystallizing ideas, decision-making, prototyping solutions, efficiency, and producing products and services desired by the customer.

Design as a Business Strategy

Companies who extend design thinking across the value chain include Apple, Starbucks, LEGO, Sony, Virgin, Whirlpool and Xerox.