Designing Strategy: Using Design Thinking for Business Strategy

Use this five-step process to design a more competitive and innovative strategy

The lifespan of multinational corporations has never been shorter. Half of today’s S&P 500 firms will be replaced over the next 10 years in what will be the most turbulent decade in modern history.

The old model of top-down corporate strategy is broken. It often misaligns organizations, gives shallow, mostly ignored direction and lacks followthrough.

The caricature of senior executives isolating themselves at a strategy retreat, building a vanity deck and expecting it to land when they return feels antiquated. Call it a dog-and-pony show or a group hug but what you can’t call it is effective for driving change in complex environments.

The conventional approach to strategy fails for five reasons.

1. Fails to encompass complexity. There’s too much going on to think a handful of people in a room for a few days will be able to understand all the crucial factors influencing an organization's success.
2. Leaves out most stakeholders. The competitor, employee, and customer's voices are missing from the room. They all have insight into the market, values, alternatives, and trends shaping an industry, which must be considered.
3. Static and rigid. In a rapidly changing world, a strategy document that proposes what a firm will do for the…