Design at Business: Humanizing the Corporate World
“You can design and create and build the most wonderful place in the world. But, it takes people to make the dream a reality.” –Walt Disney
All companies are at risk of failing from the very beginning, especially now, when the technological revolution that we are living through has disrupted markets and made innovation cycles shorter. Trends and consumer behaviors are constantly changing, so the only way to stay afloat in the market is to innovate. The key to innovation, and to creating a successful product, however, is to design a practical solution that meets actual human needs.
Design at Business, a network of design-minded people, was created in response to this need for innovation, in order to “accelerate Design Thinking as a people-centric innovation approach across large enterprises worldwide.” In other words, it’s a platform that connects design thinkers from various levels of maturity in a trusting environment to share resources, learn from one another, and co-create new approaches to challenges that they face. Though Design at Business involves companies from across the globe, it wasn’t created to meet the needs of companies. It was created to meet the needs of the people within companies.
“The community is important because we are also on the same journey at Philips. And it’s difficult: You have to tell people that they have to behave differently or do things differently, so we are looking for peers and other companies to share knowledge and experiences, to learn from each other.”
-Maarten Rincker, Team Lead Cocreate, Philips Design
If you are familiar with Design Thinking methodology, then you know that it is widely used to find problems within large organizations. Companies like SAP, Philips, Swisscom, Siemens, and P&G have gained valuable insights since using Design Thinking to drive innovation across their large organizations for more than 10 years now. But, these companies also recognize that, soon, many other organizations will use this approach, which is why they wanted to share their own insights and challenges with other enterprises who are beginning to practice Design Thinking.
“There’s a lot of lessons learned at SAP, a lot of things that we would do differently, and we feel that in sharing our experiences we can uplift the entire industry.”
-Sam Yen, Chief Design Officer, SAP
Today, an increasing number of enterprises around the world, such as Daimler, Fidelity Investments, and GE, realize that using a design-led approach to innovation is not only an effective way to maintain creative capabilities within an organization, but that it also drives business growth. Design Thinking isn’t just another sales effort, or a way to maintain an edge over competitors. Rather, it is a way to create better designs that are focused around human needs. Using Design Thinking to drive innovation in society or in today’s market is a useful, and proven, approach. However, like other methodologies, it takes time to learn, which is why Design at Business was started — to help people overcome any difficulties they may encounter.
“Design Thinking is now being a given, really something substantial in so many large corporations. (…) It seems there is hardly any company not considering it. Every attempt to work together in more human and open, more creative, intuitive, collaborative ways is a good development for most of the companies I know of.”
-Ulf Brandes, CEO, Brandes & Partners
In 2010, SAP’s Tobias Haug was looking for peers working for European companies that were striving for change through design. Tobias began connecting companies at events to share insights and connect through design thinking topics. Shortly after, Sam Yen, SAP’s Chief Design Officer, gathered a group of design-minded change makers with similar needs in North America. Thus, Design at Business was born.
Design at Business has grown into a global community network, with over 150 members connecting regularly to discuss how to advance design-driven innovation and transformation in their organizations.
“Having a group of design thinking experts from various companies, also competitors, is an amazing platform for knowledge exchange. I found in the network very open minded, engaged people who are sharing their method and application knowledge and a willingness to support each other.”
-Bettina Maisch, Senior Key Expert Industrial Design Thinking, Siemens Corporate Technology
Creating a space where Design Thinkers can come together and share their experiences was not an easy feat, however. Before Design at Business became a global network, members only met through small meetups. But, as the community grew, members needed to be engaged through new approaches that could accommodate a much larger group. One way was through Connect & Share. Though the traditional meetups were helpful in connecting a small group, Design at Business leaders began hosting energizing events, such as summits and conferences, to scale a larger community.
Coach camps and working groups are now used to engage with members on a deeper level. These trainings are focused on the learning aspect of the network, so people can learn by doing and learn by teaching with one another — a more hands-on approach. Engaging with the community helps create a trusting environment in which Design Thinking can be spread across enterprises worldwide.
Mark Rogers, a Design Strategist at Fidelity Labs, the innovation engine of Fidelity Investments, has been part of the Design at Business network for five years. The group has helped him consider the process of product design within the larger frame of company-wide innovation:
“The community has connected me with deep practitioners in the innovation space who are at the cutting edge of scaling design thinking within the enterprise. We share lessons about designing better products and better companies. Its about process and people. Execution and education. Outcomes and organizational design. Some of these leaders have been at it for decades. Hearing those lessons learned allows you to stand on the shoulders of giants.”
-Mark Rogers, Design Strategist, Fidelity Labs, the innovation engine of Fidelity Investments
“I’ve met folks who are passionate and practice design thinking in their respectable organizations from different companies and learning about what is going on and how they are spreading the whole design thinking aspect, either as small organic groups or large standalone organizations.”
-Ruma Bhagat, Design at Business Network Member
The Design at Business community members met at the network’s first international Conference in Berlin in November 2016. 110 participants attended from 57 companies and 8 countries around the globe. Though this was the first time the network met at such a large scale, it was not the last. The Design at Business community is highly invested in one another’s successes and mistakes, and the conferences are a way for employees to network so they can bring insights back to their own companies to grow design thinking within their workplaces.
“The community is a great place for exchange and learn from each other. We are still on the way and there are some things to solve and problems to discuss on a deeper level to do this.”
-Axel Platz, Design at Business Network Member
Although Design at Business has been around for a short seven years, it has helped connect hundreds of experienced design thinkers, both face-to-face and digitally, to help accelerate design thinking as a methodology that can be shaped and adopted across enterprises. This year, the network will continue their work to connect, share, learn, and co-create with Design Thinkers to center their innovation around users, and to help companies continue to thrive in today’s fast-paced market.
