5 Ways Design Thinking Can Raise the Collective IQ of Your Business

Original Article HERE at Fast Company

BY Michael Cannell

Business executives love stability and the cold imperatives of logic. Ambiguity gives them fits. Designers, by contrast, can’t abide the status quo. “That tension never goes away between inventing the new and preserving the old,” Sam Lucente, vice president of design for Hewlett-Packard, said yesterday at a panel discussion conducted by the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum during its National Design Week. “It’s like navigating no man’s land,” he said.

The panel, entitled “The Business of Design,” addressed ways to integrate designers, and design thinking, into organizations that usually resist change. Here are some of their observations:

The most effective designers know instinctually how to navigate bureaucracies. They handle matters “often in subversive ways,” Lucente said. “They quietly figure out how to end run the system and get things done. They know how to work it.”

It helps for a designer to have multiple interests. “The people who are going to flourish are the schizophrenic ones,” said Bill Moggridge (shown at left in the photo above), co-founder of IDEO. “A lot of people at IDEO have degrees in different areas than they work in. You have to be great at one thing, but interested in working with people in different areas.” His term for this personality type: “cross-dressers.” Example: Raymond Loewy and Henry Dreyfus both designed theatrical sets before turning to industrial design.

Design thinking works best when integrated. Engineers start with technology. MBAs start with funding. Designer start with people. The trick is to get interdisciplinary teams to raise their collective I.Q. by working in the overlap of those three areas. “That’s where innovation flourishes,” said Moggridge.

PowerPoint is the enemy. The kind of discourse associated with Power Point presentations, with bulleted observations marshaled in support of an argument, tends to be team divider, not a unifier. “What organizations are good at is debating,” said Jeanne Liedtka, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business. “Debating very rarely leads to real solutions.” That’s because debates tend to revolve around data and examples drawn from the past. Design thinking should be about future possibilities.

Be stupid often, but early. Executives often harbor the unrealistic ambition of being right 100% of the time. A few stupid mistakes can actually make you smarter, in the same way that physical exertion rounds you into shape. For obvious reasons, mistakes are less costly if they’re committed early in the process.

Thinking through Design Thinking

IDEO /Tim Brown, Bruce Nussbaum and Stanford d.school call it Design Thinking.

Michael Speaks, Michael Shamiyeh, Bruce Mau talk about Design Intelligence,

Nigel Cross writes about Designerly ways of knowing (one of the best books i’ve read so far on design thinking).

All these ideas deal with design as process rather than object. They all articulate and confirm the idea that there is a ’specific way of thinking that is unique to design’ and ‘that this way of thinking is applicable on any problem’ It is a way of seeing, understanding and making the world, and the ‘design way’ is a universal way, there is no problem that can not be solved, … or so it seems (this is one of the claims of Bruce Mau’s Massive change exhibit and book anyway).

Although one has to acknowledge a certain naivety behind this idea, it is non the less very appealing, especially for a designer, or well … an architect like myself.

Thinking about design as a universal problem solving method radically enlarges the arena for design and provides the design discipline with a sense of authority. It provides a credibility to the discipline that is instrumental in getting designer involved in projects at a point where the fundamental decisions are made, instead of calling designers in to only deal with the cosmetics of a project. One has to read the efforts of IDEO and Bruce Nussbaum in this light, as advocating for a design discipline that is more involved at the moments and places where it matters and where it can make a significant impact.

Beside propagating design thinking to businesses, selling the design way of thinking as universally applicable, provides design with a legitimization for engaging with fields that are normally well beyond their reach, beyond the confines of the design discipline. This is something also propagated in the Volume’s opening issue (#1) under the term ‘Architectural Intelligence’ and there is also some of this attitude present in the “Office for Unsolicited Architecture” issue (#14). I think these ideas bear fruit, but suffer from overestimation, but that’s what usally happens when one advocates something, it quickly turns into a one dimensional argument.

I would like to point out a few problems I have with the current discourse around design thinking:

Design as problem-solving
The underlying paradigm of what “design” actually is in the “Design Thinking” school, is that it is synonymous with problem-solving. This is a limited view of design, and a problematic one. First of all what does it mean to solve a problem? In design there is not one possible answer to a certain question, there are a lot, see the architectural competition as example.

Also one can always question whether any problem is permanently solvable, especially when its problems have a socio-economical dimension, these are known as wicked problems. (see Rittel, Webber – “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning”) The term problem solving sounds too absolutist. How many solutions from 50 years ago are regarded as the root of today’s problems?

The more design becomes technical and a from engineering in which the criteria are technical as well, where the margins of error are so small that solutions can be measured in absolute dimensions, in this sense there is a relation between problem and solution that becomes traceable. Design has a huge cultural component, often the problem is artificial, or invented by the designer themselves and is connected more to a cultural zeitgeist than anything else. In what way can we talk about the brief for a project in terms of a problem?

A problem is something undesired that needs to be resolved, but the brief is defined as a wish-list not a problem definition. The brief inspires a projection of the future, and over the course of a design process there surely is problem-solving going on, but it’s mainly a problem-solving cycle that deals with ones own invented or perceived problems, which is legitimate, but one has to acknowledge that problems are not absolute.

Design is a discipline but not a scientific one!

Design as innovation
Another paradigm underlying “design” in design thinking is the one of progress, that design is instrumental in improving our lives, society and the whole world basically. The term “innovation” embodies the believe that the new is better, that technology will improve our lives, its propelled by the assumptions that science, rationality and efficiency will move the world to a better place. It’s a very technocratic conception of design, one that fits perfectly in our capitalist society. Innovation and problem-solving are two branches that grow from the same tree.

Design thinking doesn’t tell us much about thinking.
The “thinking” in design thinking, doesn’t really deal with explaining the thinking in design, it only scratches the surface of what design thinking is really about. Design thinking as propagated by IDEO and Nussbaum is mostly deals with methodology, process, ‘how-to,’ it doesn’t deal with how design thinking actually works. Usually cases are brought forward of how a typical design approach has been successful in tackling a problem, but from this we don’t learn how thoughts unfold in the design process, how thinking unfolds.

Thus design thinking currently deals with describing behavior, symptoms, the consequence of thoughts but not what design thinking consists of itself. It is much like how the Turning Test for testing if a machine is intelligent or not doesn’t tell us anything about what intelligence itself actually is, it only shows that a machine can behave as a human does! But this tells us nothing about the nature of intelligence itself (John Searle’s ‘Chinese Room‘ thought experiment effectively exposes this flaw of the Turing Test)

Especially this last part intrigues me, i’m interested in how designer have their own rationality, how a design can have its own rationality. Just like a mathematician can say this equation is false, an architects can say, this detail doesn’t make sense in the overall concept of the building. Apparently design choices can be more or less right or wrong, within the network of choices made during the design process, while at the same time all most of the choices are more or less arbitrary! intriguing isn’t it!? What is this kind of logic that is operative in design? What is this intelligence that seems irrational but gives enough foundation for making a choice? What mode of reasoning is at work here?

I researched these questions in my graduation work, which consisted of a comparative literature research of three perspective on “reasoning in architecture“, although the findings are relevant to all design disciplines> The three perspectives come from three authors, from three different fields:

Donald A. Schön (1930-1997) a design researcher, but trained as philosopher who succeeded in describing ‘how designers think’ in a way that designers actually recognize themselves. Shön’s work is interesting because of the categories he introduces. These are fundamental descriptions of how a designer engages in the design activity. His categories are open but still defined enough for designers to recognise the fundamental process they are involved in. It describes an iterative process, but does not specify tasks, design phases or steps from beginning to end. It’s not a method for how-to think, it’s provides insight in how thinking works in design. Schön theory is presented in his book The Reflective Practitioner (1983)

Jeff Hawkins (1957) is a computer architect turned neurologist. He is interested in making truly intelligent machines, but believes one can only do so when we understand how the brain produces intelligence. He states that in the cognitive sciences intelligence is judged by the wrong parameter: behaviour. According to Hawkins this is only a manifestation of what intelligence really is, behaviour is but the surface. Hawkins puts forward a theory that intelligence is determined by prediction. According to him the brain makes continuous predictions about the world it ’sees’ through its senses. It makes this predictions by analogy to the past, to what is already stored in our memory. Hawkins theory in presented in his book On Intelligence (2004) You can watch a lecture by Hawkins on TED and here if you want to get in a bit deeper.

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) was a philosopher, logician and mathematician. Peirce was interested in where new ideas came from, how the mind was able to put forward fruitful ideas, and in that way it was instrumental in the development of knowledge. Peirce believed that deductive and inductive reasoning were not adequate in describing how this worked, thus Peirce developed a third mode of reasoning, abduction, with which he tried to clarify processes of invention and discovery. Another theory of Peirce is also of importance more specifically for the work of architects, that of diagrammatic reasoning.

He developed the concept of diagrammatic reasoning in the context of explaining creativity in mathematics, but it also gives us a deeper insight in how architects reason through making drawings and models. Because like mathematics also architectural design is mediated activity. Peirce’s theories were developed over his entire career, publishing many papers and articles. For this research the explanation of Peirce’s theories is based on the readings of Michael H. G. Hoffmann and Sami Paavola.

Besides these main protagonists, Aristotle’s Rhetoric plays a significant role in describing the nature of reasoning in architectural design.

What all these authors have in common is that they deal with developing a framework for the fundamental elements and processes of creative thought, by naming them, formalizing and theorizing these they open up a possibility of discourse on these ideas. I’ll elaborate the theories these men have put forward later, for now I’ll leave you with a quote:

“. . . in speaking of logic, we do not need to be concerned with processes of inference at all. While it is true that a great deal of what is generally understood to be logic is concerned with deduction, logic in the widest sense, refers to something far more general. It is concerned with the form of abstract structures, and is involved the moment we make pictures of reality and then seek to manipulate these pictures so that we may look further into the reality itself. It is the business of logic to invent purely artificial structures of elements and relations.” (Christopher Alexander, Notes on the Synthesis of Form, 1964)”

Thoughts on this Post: I like this style of looking at the problem.  Right now, there is a huge amount of ambiguity as Design Thinking gets more press, and the lines between design and Design Thinking are not understood.

Original Post HERE at dmi.org

What the Hell Have We Done to Design?

(Really Thinking about Design Thinking)

By Brian Matt, Founder & CEO, Altitude, Inc.

Hey, design-types, picture this…

I stroll into the neighborhood party with a swell bottle of wine in one hand and my lovely wife’s arm in the other. Three steps into the house, she peels off to greet her friends and I head for the kitchen to drop off the vino. I am immediately cut off by a doughy-faced but pleasant sort of fellow wearing black pants and a black mock turtleneck in June.

John Public: “Hi. I’ve been waiting for you to arrive. Jill said that you’re a designer.”
Me: “Yes, that’s right. I am a designer.”
John Public: “Were you ever on Project Runway? My wife loves that show.”
Me (resisting the urge to be painfully creative with my bottle): “Sorry, no. That would be fashion. I design products.”
John Public: “Oh, you’re in finance then. My brother-in-law sells financial products too. He designs them to be loaded on the front end.”
Me: “Are you in the mood to fund my son’s iShare 529 Plan?”

And so it goes.

If I let the conversation drag on, we might discuss hair, interiors, software, signage, cookies, automobiles, t-shirts, the web, or Design Within Reach. Design is the planning that lays the basis for the making of every object or system. It can be used both as a noun and as a verb. In its broadest sense, no limitations exist and may include anything from clothing to computers, or user interfaces to annual reports. We may design products, processes, events, environments, and services.

At that moment, I was formulating a design theory to modify my party position.

John Public: “Sorry?”
Me: “I own a product innovation firm that conceives of products like illuminated dog leashes and talking power tools. We use creative thinking to solve business problems for clients that manufacture stuff.”
John Public: “Cool. Have you designed anything I have ever heard of?”
Me: “I don’t know. What have you heard of?”

How many of you are nodding your heads in the affirmative, realizing that you too have been misunderstood too many times?

Who wants to yell, “Design Thinking solves all?”

The word, design, has been abused, misconstrued, and overused. I am not sure the there is even consensus about a true definition among insiders; supposedly those people in-the-know. I am sure that I cannot give an all-encompassing, perfect elevator pitch either. So, if there is no accord on the designation of design, then how do we describe and defend the notion of Design Thinking?

I am always in a quandary when this comes up even though I have been in the design profession for 25 years. If all of us are using a term based on flawed underpinnings of design, then how is anyone to grasp the bigger concept attached to thinking?

When we cram them together, as in Design Thinking, do we have a house of cards, a seemingly familiar structure with no clear intent and lots of room for interpretation? Is that all right? Should we be comfortable with this notion? Is there cause to modify the phrase to “Creative Thinking,” ‘Hybrid Thinking,” or “Critical Thinking?”

When designers want a seat at the adult table, what do they claim to bring to the corporate purpose?

Corporate leaders need clear rationale backed up by tangible evidence to change behavior. Some may be swayed by the latest business fad, but the really great leaders will only have a meaningful relationship with Design Thinking when they understand it.

I propose that they will more readily understand it when either:

1) everyone in the world knows what Design Thinking is because sheer repetition of a long period of time sinks in; or

2), designers can effectively articulate their purpose to the cause and back it up with success.

There! I got that off my chest. I am hoping this sparks some dialogue and a modification in my [design] thinking. I eagerly await the exchange of ideas.

Comment and participate in the discussion on this article at DMI’s Linkedin Group

Brian Matt:

Email: b_matt [at] altitudeinc.com
Blog: dustbowl.wordpress.com/altitude
Twitter: @BrianMatt
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/brianmatt

Overview of Post

Thoughts on this Post:  This makes a lot of sense from the designers point of view, but the things that Dan says are “givens” are not “givens” to non-designers.  As this field continues to define itself, it is important to remember that a large percentage of the people who are getting interested in Design Thinking are not familiar with any of the terms and methods that designers use. [ Again that is one of the primary purposes of the dTblog!]

Thinking About Design Thinking

Probably the phrase in design circles I’m hearing the most these days is “design thinking.” As in, “We need to bring some design thinking to this project.” Or “What sets designers apart is their design thinking.” It’s even on the main image of Stanford’s new d school website. Interestingly, I haven’t seen much about what “design thinking” really is though.

I’ve heard it used in any number of ways, some of which are vague enough and/or general enough so that they are insulting to other professions. Are we saying other disciplines aren’t creative or aren’t problem-solvers? I didn’t really become a designer until I was 30 years old: does this mean I was thinking differently before then?

Certainly, design thinking is creative, innovative, and focused on problem-solving. But so is the thinking of many different types of professions: lawyers, engineers, and contractors, to name only a few. So lets remove those as differentiators right away. No, if there is such a thing as design thinking, it’s probably shorthand for these things:

• A Focus on Customers/Users. It’s not about the company and how your business is structured. The customer doesn’t care about that. They are care about doing their tasks and achieving their goals within their limits. Design thinking begins with those.
• Finding Alternatives. Designing isn’t about choosing between multiple options, it’s about creating those options. Brenda Laurel speaks of her love of James T. Kirk’s “third option” instead of two undesirable choices. It’s this finding of multiple solutions to problems that sets designers apart.
• Ideation and Prototyping. The way we find those solutions is through brainstorming and then, importantly, building models to test the solutions out. Now, I know that scientists and architects and even accountants model things, and possibly in a similar way, but there’s a significant difference: our prototypes aren’t fixed. One doesn’t necessarily represent the solution, only a solution. It’s not uncommon for several prototypes to be combined into a single product.
• Wicked Problems. The problems designers are used to taking on are those without a clear solution, with multiple stakeholders, fuzzy boundaries, and where the outcome is never known and usually unexpected. Being able to deal with the complexity of these “wicked” problems is one of the hallmarks of design thinking.
• A Wide Range of Influences. Because design touches on so many subject areas (psychology, ergonomics, economics, engineering, architecture, art, etc.), designers should bring to the table a broad, multi-disciplinary spectrum of ideas from which to draw inspiration and solutions.
• Emotion. In analytical thinking, emotion is seen as an impediment to logic and making the right choices. In design, decisions without an emotional component are lifeless and do not connect with people.

Other disciplines, I’m sure, do one or more of these at any given time. But I think it’s the combination of these that people mean–or should mean–when using the phrase “design thinking.”

For those of us who teach and practice Design Thinking, there is still a huge debate over the “true” definition and whether the process that is used should even be called “Design Thinking”. Our internal debate can be challenging at times.

What we do agree upon is that the single most significant contribution of Design Thinking is that it offers  a holistic  approach to solving problems/creating products.  “Holistic” in that it is not self limiting – it does not focus one “type of knowledge” or “school of thought” to find possible solutions.

Design Thinkers in the field of mobile devices are just as likely to go to the zoo for insights and inspiration as they are to look at other Industrial Design concepts.  The arrogance so often associated with “pure” schools of thought is absent for true DTrs. (This is actually where Design Thinking departs from traditional Design).

It is also holistic in the emphasis on tapping the ENTIRE brains’ ability to bring insight and create solutions.

While this is not a new concept (LB/RB approaches have been around for at least 25 years) Design Thinking has given a reliable development and delivery approach for the concept.  In most of the LB/RB models, each group is given the opportunity to have input into the project, and someone takes the input and decides which group really has the better approach.  This does not bring the SYNTHESIS that Design Thinking values, but rather a push towards discernment of one view over the other.

Creatives FEEL they have the best approach, Analytics KNOW they have the best approach…and the two groups will argue and dismiss one another almost every time. Design Thinking provides a way for both RB (creatives) and LB (analytics) to VALUE each other and BUILD on each others’ insight.

Another holistic factor is that the person(s) that will be most impacted by the solution (UX, user, customer, patient) is allowed to be part of the project from the very beginning.  Their perspective is unique and important.  They give insights into the underlying problems that may have been overlooked, and provide valuable  feedback along the way. They can also speak to the likelihood of proposed solutions actually being adopted and advise on how best to present the final product/service to those who are expected to use it.

While having end users as part of the process is not new (focus groups have been around for a long time) what is new is the level of importance that is placed on the insights they bring to the process.

Every now and then I will have someone bring up the infamous quote attributed to Steve Jobs “We don’t build for focus groups – we build what we like”.  Clearly, Apple has done a fantastic job figuring out what to build that works well, looks great, and people will use.

So does that kill the entire argument for users being a part of the process?  No.  It validates the concept.

In reality, what Apple does is function in all three areas (LB/RB/UX). They hire great engineers and designers and let them build stuff they would like to use. But in most situations, the company/organization working on a new product or solution does not have that privilege.  They are somewhat removed from those that are end users of the product/service.

Another interesting variation of Apple’s approach is the group Mother Teresa led, the Missionaries of Charity.  They live and work with those they are serving.  They use all their God given abilities to understand the problems of those they serve and bring them effective solutions.  And they have also been very successful.

If there is one area that Design Thinking has not effectively addressed is it the implementation challenge.  In some situations, the biggest challenge is not really determining the best product/solution, but getting that product /solution implemented.  Design Thinking teams should put as much effort into making sure that it happens as they do into making sure it is created.

Overall, Design Thinking really does have tremendous advantages over most traditional approaches.

It is a framework that is holistic,

a method that is teachable,

and a process that is proven.

Why wouldn’t you want to use it?

Overview of Interview:

Thoughts on this Interview: Great interview! Berger does a really great job explaining how Design and Design Thinking are related but different and puts it in terms that non-designers can understand.

…”Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result.^[1] It is the essential ability to combine empathy, creativity and rationality to meet user needs and drive business success. Unlike analytical thinking, design thinking is a creative process based around the “building up” of ideas. There are no judgments early on in design thinking. This eliminates the fear of failure and encourages maximum input and participation in the ideation and prototype phases. Outside the box thinking is encouraged in these earlier processes since this can often lead to creative solutions. In organization and management theory, design thinking forms part of the A/D/A (Architecture/Design/Anthropology) paradigm, which characterizes innovative, human-centered enterprises. This management paradigm focuses on a collaborative and iterative style of work and an abductive mode of thinking, compared to the more traditional practices associated with the traditional M/E/P (Mathematics/Economics/Psychology) management paradigm.”

Or should we look to Tim Brown or Roger Martin as the final word.  Not necessarily.  Why would their definition be better than Arne van Oosterom or Nicolae or  even mine?

The core of the problem is that the primary voices offering a definition are from the creative side of the conversation.  They generally don’t like a confining definition of what they do – their “art”.  Imagine the artist who gets offended when a potential buyer says ” I see that you paint in the same way that Bernal paints”.  The artist will probably choose not to sell to that person.

Creativity is a personal expression for many.

The primary voices asking for a definition at this time are the business leaders.  They want a basic, unchanging understanding of how Design Thinking can improve the financial bottom line.  Think in terms of Six Sigma, TQM, and other “hot” management approaches to doing things. All of these were exciting and effective at one point, but business leaders are looking for the next big thing.

This dichotomy is producing the standoff as to whether or not there should be standard, plain, (boring) definition of  Design Thinking. My thought…

I don’t think so.

That will be the first step in turning Design Thinking into a non-creative endevour that businesses will package and dillute until it has no meaning or effectiveness left within it.  Look at the above examples and consider where they are today.  Six Sigma? TQM? Anyone…?

Overview of Post:

Thoughts on this Post: Kip gives a very good argument on the down side of adopting the concept of Design Thinking without understanding the disciplines that are foundational to Design.

Original Post Here: Thinking about design thinking? Try thinking about design instead

Published by kipbot on September 24, 2009 12:44 am under design

I’m in the middle of several threads with friends, co-workers, former co-workers, and the voices in my head about what to do with the on-again off-again me-che (meme + cliche, pron me-SHAY) of design thinking. Having just read Designful Company with others, I felt that the book and the me-che of design thinking makes it far too easy to say we’re all deisgners, or that a couple articles will help us do design thinking. I can’t resist quoting Dr Malcolm in Jurassic Park:

I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you’re using here: it didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility… for it.

So, I’m thinking, instead of thinking about design thinking, why not learn something about design? I’m not suggesting a career change, or even a massive effort to learn some new tools or software. Rather, read some books that help people understand the DNA, rhythm, and thought patterns of a design discipline. Dig deeper into a craft and see what makes it tick.

I just love 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School. It’s quite literally a whole series of things — grand and trivial, obvious and subtle — that one would learn in architecture school. And, like all great books that dive deep into a specific area of expertise, it finds universal truths or univerally useful ideas. Examples:

“Being process-oriented, not product-driven, is the most important and difficult skill for a designer to develop” — this emphasizes the importance of understanding the problem and putting the time into it, moving between concept- and detail-levels of the work, understanding the value of dead-ends and near-misses.

If you can’t explain your ideas to your grandmother in terms that she understands, you don’t know your subject well enough — emphasis mine. The ability to communicate simply and clearly is something we all praise (and that I’ve praised here) or at least give lip service to. What I love about this is that it places the onus on the person — if you can’t do it, you’re not that good at it.

A good building reveals different things about itself when viewed from different distances — much better than a big idea, how about having a rich idea?

Less is more
Less is a bore — yeah, yeah, not a news flash, but putting them on consecutive pages forces one to recognize that they are both truths and then think deeper about how and when to exercise them. Typically, we use the first to reflexively justify cutting something.

True architectural style does not come from a conscious effort to create a particular look. It results obliquely – even accidentally – out of a holistic process. — it results obliquely!

Roll your drawings for transport or storage with the image side facing bold — from the lofty to the mundane, but useful.

On the parti:

Some will argue that an ideal parti is wholly inclusive — that it informs every aspect of a building from its overall configuration and structural system to the shape of the doorknobs. others believe that a perfect parti is neither attainable nor desirable.

Music to the ears of a person who is sick of the nattering insistence on having a ‘big idea’ when designing a large, complex, rich experience.

Finally, my personal favorite, scanned directly:

Be careful of your design accents, or be careful of trying to create meaningful spaces where there aren’t any.

Love it.

For those who don’t remember the Dick Van Dyke Show (or Mary Tyler Moore before her show) or UHF:

Overview of this Article: Matthew May gives a quick definition of what Design Thinking is and how it is becoming more mainstream.

Thoughts on this Article: I don’t really agree with Matthew’s conclusions on what is currently driving the attention to Design Thinking.  It is more about the effectiveness of results than a stretching of resources.

Original Post Aug 03, 2009 -

Matthew E. May (How to Change the World)

“Design Thinking” has rapidly moved to the forefront of the current management zeitgeist as a fresh take not just on how to rethink key products and services, but also how to reframe everyday processes and projects. In an effort to create a cross-company culture of innovation and collaboration, businesses all over the world are taking a page from design firms, and realizing the rewards.

Graduate schools including Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (aka d. school) and the Rotman School of Management are helping to lead the way, taking the broad view that the designer’s approach to solving problems goes far beyond the traditional role of design in “making pretty.” Rather, they believe the designer’s blend of creativity and logic is applicable to all aspects of business, and that irrespective of job title, everyone can be a designer of sorts.

What’s driving the move is the very real pressure to innovate in a fiercely competitive marketplace, fueled by a down economy. That pressure falls on the individual, who is asked for higher commitment, more adaptability, quicker progress, better execution, stronger decision-making, and freer thinking. At the same time, they’re told to manage risk, meet short-term objectives, and only bet on sure things. All within the confines of environments that are often anything but free: powerful systems, rigid structures, conflicting agendas, privileged information, political posturing, and limiting rules. The truth is that uncertainty, risk and failure are all part of innovation, and the ability to meet business objectives doesn’t always square with the personal capabilities needed to innovate as required.

The solution? Think like a designer, work like a designer.

Great design is a result of a clear and thorough understanding of the user, creative resolution of competing tensions, multi-discipline collaboration, rapid experimentation via prototyping, with continuous modification and enhancement of ideas and solutions. The best designers leverage their expertise, pursue possibility, reject the status quo as a matter of course, view opposition to their ideas as an inventive challenge, refuse to let bureaucracy and hierarchy stifle their creativity, and use cutbacks and resource constraints drive new ideas and methods.

So what is “Design Thinking”?

Citing a 1969 book by Herbert Simon called The Sciences of the Artificial, Wikipedia defines it this way:

Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result. It is the essential ability to combine empathy, creativity and rationality to meet user needs and drive business success. Unlike analytical thinking, design thinking is a creative process based around the “building up” of ideas.

This raises the question of just what that process looks like. When design firm IDEO agreed in early 2005 to help Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City make their chemotherapy process more patient-friendly, the first thing the IDEO design team did was to take Sloan-Kettering staffers along with them as they followed patients throughout the entire treatment process, including the round trip from home to clinic. That allowed the discovery of a patient stress point: anxiety over treatment, the cause of which was the fact that patients didn’t know what to ask, and the huge information binder was far too daunting.

Understanding the situation allowed designers to ofer up a number of possible solutions, some of which were then carried out in much the same fashion as a scientific experiment. In design lingo, that meant “rapid prototyping.” One pilot entailed simply handing out index cards with “frequently asked questions,” such as “Where can I fill my prescription?” A few trial runs indicated that reviewing the cards during a quick guided tour of the clinic eased patient anxiety tremendously. The experiment quicly became standard operating procedure.

That’s a pretty clear strategy: Investigate, Design, Experiment, Adjust. What a great I.D.E.A.

For more insights from Matthew E. May, visit his past blog posts at here and follow him on Twitter here.