Following recent awareness in design thinking in France and abroad, we thought it would be great not only to promote the approach, but to provide ground observations on why it matters. So here is what we believe and bring in our work related to design thinking.
Every industry requires a specific mix of skills and a range of profiles. But within those industries, only some players used to adopt a designer mindset, first product and engineering teams, then service teams. It is now becoming a consensus that the principles and ethics of design should be applied to the way everybody works. Here is why we also believe that design is a core competence for every worker.
Design thinking comes from product design where it was used to build functional and attractive products. It then spread to services where the notion of experience was central. Today it is propagating quickly to all the corporate functions.
The core principles of design thinking are simple:
- User centric: design focuses on the experience of the user whether a customer, an employee or another stakeholder of the organisation and its ecosystem.
- Iteration: design works by trial and error. It emphasises prototyping and testing as the central selection method. This was best embodied by Nicholas Negroponte, MIT Media Lab founding director’s moto: “Demo or die”.
- Co-creation: design is a holistic and integrative approach seeking to build solutions taking into account all the parameters of a given challenge. This means collaborating with experts in a wide range of different fields.
Design Thinking has gained popularity throughout corporate functions and in particular in innovation, marketing and product management teams. However other corporate function are still reluctant. We will take a closer look at the impact design thinking can have on two of the most reluctant corporate function: corporate strategy and process development.
Corporate strategy
The holy grail of management, corporate strategy is still stuck in a battlefield, command and control model. Design methodologies can bring a much needed paradigmatic shift based on collaboration rather than conflict and user centric rather than competitor centric view. This is a shift that has already been embraced by large companies such as IBM where Bridget van Kralingen, the senior vice president of IBM Global Business Services says: “There’s no longer any real distinction between business strategy and the design of the user experience”. Moreover, key design skills and methodologies are invaluable in developing and implementing a strategy. Design and strategy are about crafting a shared vision. To achieve this, designers and executives need to build consensus. When a designer produces a beautiful design he then needs to convince engineers, marketers and sales teams to adopt his vision or risk seeing his design scrapped. This is the exact same situation an executive faces when he needs to rally all the employees of his company to his vision. Both corporate strategy and design are not just setting a vision. They are about managing a complex network of stakeholders with different views and interest and building a consensus. While charisma and professional respect are central to consensus building in traditional corporate strategy, design offers an alternative solution. Rapid iteration and fast prototyping of solutions are a great ways to implicate all the stakeholders and gain their trust. Experiencing a solution is a fantastic way to prove your concept but it is an even more powerful tool to initiate discussions.
Process development
Processes might look like the most unlikely candidates to benefit from the design methodologies. However it should not. The designer process is capable of diverging and converging as freely and messily just as much as it is capable of being systematic and methodologic. It is becoming a meta process that can contribute to any process’ efficiency, streamlining or innovation efforts.
Process development today present one major flaw, they are often developed by one of the departments in isolation in order to meet the needs of this specific department alone. This development in silo can generate negative externalities on other parts of the organisation.
Processes need to be co-created by cross-functional teams that understand the impact a given set of actions would have on their operations. The design thinking and co-creation methodologies developed over the years make designers excellent facilitators of such transdisciplinary exercices.
Moreover prototyping and iteration is a fantastic way to reduce complexity. Yes there can be systematic approaches to reduce general uncertainties and prioritize leads. But finding the best solution often rests on discovering dozens of imperfect solutions and building on the knowledge acquired rather than coming up with the perfect solution straight out of the drawing room. Quickly building and testing processes allows to eliminate a great amount of impractical or inadequate solutions and allows the teams to focus on moving on at a much faster pace.
Allowing a broader diffusion of design thinking within companies might allow faster learning from each and everyone’s point of view and a true systematic approach. Turning one’s company into a learning and doing vehicle in an ever accelerating environment can only be accomplished if everyone is contributing. This will allow organisation to avoid design gaps and accelerate the continuous improvement of your strategy, operations and processes.
