The Difference Between Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and Agile

As more large companies begin to embark upon audacious transformation plans and set up innovation teams, more corporate professionals are being introduced to a world in which terms like design thinking, lean, agile, pivot, experiment, fail, adapt and so on are used almost interchangeably.

Many fall victim to the law of the instrument bias and after attending a one day design thinking workshop, load all of their eggs into that one basket, maintaining a firm belief that design thinking is the silver bullet solution for their innovation woes, but as I detailed in a previous blog post, design thinking is only one step in the process.

With that, I often get asked by professionals new to the space what the difference between design thinking, the lean startup and agile is and the answer forms the basis for this article.

Design thinking refers to creative strategies designers use during the process of identifying problems designing solutions.

Brainstorming in its traditional sense is perhaps one of the worst ways to come up with ideas.

Usually, ideas come to us when we give our minds space — while going for a long nature walk, while working out, while in the shower — they tend not to come to us while in a high intensity groupthink environment…