I have
been teaching and practicing design thinking for business for the almost ten
years and over the years I saw the growing interest of design thinking among both
business and design communities. Take away the aspiration side for now
including notion such as design thinking to change the world etc., design thinking in business
is barely understood let alone bring practiced widely. This is the time when businesses
have been desperately looking for the next big thing - think the management
“wonder drug”. Lets
put some thought into this, is “design thinking" helpful or is it just a
hype that is exporting the dogmas of design to business strategy? Design
industry is having their own set of big issues.
What's Design Thinking? Design Thinking
bascially refers to the methods, framework, tools and processes for investigating
ill-defined problems, acquiring and visualizing insights, synthesizing knowledge,
and imagining solutions in the design and planning fields. As a style of
thinking or a method of creating solution, it is generally considered the ability to combine empathy for the
context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights and ideas, and
rationality to analyze and fit solutions to the context.
While design thinking
has become part of the popular lexicon in industrial design and engineering, its broader use in describing a particular style of creative
thinking-in-action is having an increasing influence on 21st century
education across disciplines. In this respect, it is similar to systems
thinking in naming a particular approach to understanding and solving problems.
Buchanan’s
(1992) paper “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking” shifted design theory away
from its legacy in the world of craft and industrial production towards a more
generalized “design thinking” that could be applied to nearly anything. I mean
anything, whether a tangible object or a complex system. Drawing on Pragmatist
philosopher John Dewey, Buchanan saw design as a liberal art, uniquely
well-placed to serve the needs of a technological culture in which many kinds
of thing are designed, and human problems are complex. It is basically
instilling new perspectives to look at a problem and frame them in different
ways to provide more options to tackle whatever the problem is.
And for Design
Thinking in Business - The very core of many management theories are being
questioned and “management” is close to a point of failure or needed serious
reset. Business leaders are looking to find something new to grasp onto in
order to make sense of what’s going on and are looking to organize for a future
of unprecedented uncertainties. Design Thinking brings a refreshed,
revitalized, and rejuvenated approach to management and strategic thinking- but
design thinking is far from a cure-all. Innovation, strategy and leadership are
closely interconnected and to succeed you must have all three. Innovation is
the ability to differentiate options for the future and develop a set of
perspectives to guide them there. Strategy is the ability to connect customer
needs and wants to the corporation’s core capability, economics and leadership
is the ability to instill a sense of purpose for the organization and to
mobilize everyone to work towards a common goal.
I don't think Design Thinking will end up like other short-lived management fads and it will eventually deeply embedded in what we called 'management' today and it will help connect the three: Innovation, Strategy and Leadership.
