The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage?

Martin Roger produced The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage? in 2009, in which Martin links design thinking to business strategy as a way to help organizations gain a sustainable advantage. In this semester’s course, we focused on how to build design thinking, and this book was able to connect design thinking to real-life challenges, which is why I chose it. After reading the book, the ideas presented by the authors helped me to think differently. For example, the author presents the pros and cons of analytical and intuitive thinking, and argues that design thinking can dynamically combine the two to make an organization reliable and innovative at the same time. In this article, I will focus on analyzing how puzzles shape design thinking and how to develop yourself as a design thinker.
The moment when one of our ancestors, some Homo sapiens, looked up at the stars 400,000 years ago inevitably led our species to the stars, and today we are able to explore the universe. Curiosity is humanity’s most powerful weapon, which is why puzzles are such an important tool in forming design thinking. Driven by curiosity, people are primed to understand the mysteries around them, which leads to the desire to unravel the puzzle. In the process of exploring the puzzles, people will be inspired, and the inspiration will be transformed into rules of thumb, and the organized search for a variety of possible answers to the puzzles, this rule of thumb is the opportunity to form design thinking. However, this rule of thumb is not enough to be fully applicable in today’s society, and its understanding of puzzles is incomplete and incomplete. The emergence of programs solves this problem by integrating loose, discrete inspirations and further simplifying, structuring, and standardizing them to ensure that people using the same program are able to get the same efficiency out of it. In some problems, we can’t solve the problem by simply using a program. For example, in some artistic endeavors, we need to think more creatively. In fact, we can think of the formation of Design Thinking as the process of human beings exploring puzzles, and when people subconsciously use rules of thumb or programs when facing problems, they are using Design Thinking.
After exploring how puzzles shape design thinking, I will discuss how to develop yourself as a design thinker. First, we need to build a design thinking body of knowledge. A personal knowledge system reflects how we view the world around us. It helps us organize our thinking and perceive the world in such a way that when solving problems, we are able to use our unique solutions. The personal body of knowledge determines where we stand, what skills we use, and what experiences we go through when dealing with a problem. Second, we need to work effectively with different types of coworkers. In business, we cannot avoid working with our coworkers. How validity-oriented and reliability-oriented employees work together is a challenge. We must ensure the reliability of the business while breaking the constraints of the rules and regulations. We have to do five things well. First, we cannot blindly oppose extreme intuitive thinkers and extreme analytical thinkers; we can look for favorable opportunities from different viewpoints. Second, think differently about the two ways of thinking. Third, we should learn the two languages of reliability and validity. Fourthly, we should streamline the complex language. Fifth, when we need to prove our point with evidence, we need to adjust the amount and presentation of evidence in the most favorable way. Finally, we need to get along with our colleagues. An important part of design thinking skills is its ability to accommodate many ideas, such as blending between reliability and innovation. There are inevitably conflicts and arguments when dealing with completely different ideas, so design thinkers need to deal with these conflicts in order to get more value out of them.