Many of us have the impression that Design Thinking is a totally different approach to solving modern day problems and is different from our many different approaches to innovation that has happened in the past.
According to the author, Design Thinking is another aspect of Innovation, which stresses more on the human aspect of Innovation, helping solve human related problems with a good understanding of human interactions, feelings, empathy, emotions. It is different from any other innovation exercise that may look at improved value creation, higher productivity, efficiency etc more than the human aspect.
What should be a Design Thinker's personality profile ?
Tim Brown mentions in his article that a Design Thinker should have mainly the follower character traits
Empathy - the design thinker should be a person who empathises with the customer, understands his pain points, the challenges, view the world from many different perspectives, ie, customer, supplier, manufacturer etc. He has the ability to look at the problem at the minute level and generate insights that can foster innovation
Integrative Thinking - design thinkers not only look at the analytical aspects but have wholesome thinking that helps to understand the problem better or expose solutions hitherto invisible to an untrained naked eye
Optimism - extreme optimism exhibited by the design thinkers go on the thought that there is at least one optimised better solution than the present one that is under practice
Experimentation - incremental advancements do not generate radical solutions, it is wholesome, repetitive engagements and brushes with reality and practice that can generate optimised solutions
Collaboration - it is interdisciplinary collaboration with people from different disciplines, practitioners etc that can help advance design thinking in different dimensions
All DT projects go through three phases
- Inspiration
- Ideation and
- Implementation
How can we make Design Thinking part of our Innovation thinking in the organisation ? Tim Brown brings in lot of practical ideas into the cycle to help faster achieve the goals.
- Start at the beginning - let design thinkers do the initial exploration for you on the projects and ideas to work on
- Take human centred approach - can bring human insights that were never explored or attempted
- Try early and often - try prototypes as early as the first week of execution, try quite often , collect feedback and improvise
- Seek outside help - engage with customers and other stakeholders to develop a deep insight
- Blend big and small projects - to help keep the motivation going, get small business units take lead in small projects while enterprise wide top leadership can lead large projects that span across departments and functions
- Budget to the pace of innovation - be able to easily tweak the innovating cycle to match the budgeting process, to guide through the implementation
- Find talent from multiple sources - hiring from interdisciplinary programs from design, biological sciences, mathematics , Physics etc can help bring the much needed diversity of thinking in the DT process
- Plan for the practical cycle - practical cycles of implementation in the industry is 15 - 18 months, when employees keep moving in and out. Planning the development and implementation cycle within this time period can see many projects go from initiation to fruition
Design Thinking is really an innovation process that brings the creative, inventive, ingenious mindset of humans to the fore to arrive at effective customer oriented solutions.
George.
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