The Design Process Of Innovation

Innovation has become a buzzword — one that represents an important concept that is continually changing the world.

It’s a word that explains the importance of coming up with new ideas, products and services that advance modern technology with new ways of doing things; you’ve innovated.

A word that highlights how more organizations try to build solutions around everyday challenges in a non-conventional way; the process followed to arrive at the output being referred to as Innovation.

When related to the concept of design thinking, innovation follows an order that makes it inseparable from design thinking while trying to build solutions around problems.

Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that seeks to understand users’ needs, challenge assumptions, redefine problems, and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. And like the design thinking process, innovation follows five steps:

• Generating ideas,
• Developing prototypes,
• Testing,
• Adapting,
• Scaling,

Innovation in Design Thinking

In companies, design teams employ design thinking skills to solve ill-defined problems. The process itself reframes these problems and allows designers to focus on what’s most important for users.

Innovation can be applied according to the type of problem it seeks to solve and who will benefit from the solution, e.g. Innovation as a novel solution to a social problem where the value accrues to society as a whole rather than private individuals.

Design thinking helps designers carry out the right kind of research, create prototypes and test out products and services to uncover new ways to meet users’ needs.

Innovation as a process

In solving conventional and unconventional problems, understanding how innovation takes place is crucial to how it happens. Innovation follows a sequential process through the following key stages:

i) Defining or recognizing a problem, challenge or opportunity;

ii) Inventing potential solutions or ideas and creating plausible options with processes and plans;

ii) Implementing, testing, adapting, piloting; and then

iii) Scaling up or diffusing. In some instances, an innovation may skip a stage, or repeat multiple stages where required. In many cases, Innovation starts by doing things, testing them, and then adapting and adjusting in the light of experience. Testing, learning, and adapting are critical components of the process from idea to implementation, and can determine whether a concept will progress as an innovation.

Frances and Bessant’s ‘Four Ps’ of Innovation offers a useful structure for managing the process of Innovation. They include understanding different types of innovation namely;

Product innovation: Product innovation is an introduction or improvement of a product or service;

Process innovation: Refers to modifications of the ways in which products are created or delivered;

Position innovation: Talks about changes to the context in which the product is framed; while

Paradigm innovation: Has to do with the redefinition of the dominant models, theories, and methods adhered to by an organization. While Frances and Bessants’ idea about innovation talks about the outputs of the innovative process, Ramalingam, Scriven & Foley (2009) are of the opinion that the following are the levels of change that can result from Innovation.

A designer considers all the potential ways an innovation might manifest itself, establishes the criteria and strategies for evaluating these ideas then develops and delivers a design solution.

For organizations planning to innovate, they should be prepared to access the right design expertise for every innovation to executed as the exact form of design expertise required depends on the type of innovation being pursued. This is why Design Thinking is a part of our curriculum in Semicolon. It’s the first step to every innovative creation!