Design Thinking, Lean Startup and Agile: What is the difference?

What is the difference between Design Thinking, Lean Startup and Agile?

I often get asked what the difference is between those terms. “Is lean startup opposite of design thinking? oh no, maybe it is the same?” and “Ah ok, so you mean agile?” or “I think Agile is a better word for it”. Those are some of the comments I get whenever I talk about one of terms above.

I will hereby try to clarify what these terms relate to, and how they can be integrated with each other.

Design thinking

Design thinking is an iterative process in which we thrive to understand the user’s pain, challenge assumptions, redefine problems, in order to create new strategies and solutions.

Opposed to “Brainstorming”, Design thinking promotes “Painstorming”, in order to fully understand the user’s pain.

The usual Design thinking phases are the following:

• Empathize with your users
• Define your users’ needs, their problem, and your insights
• Ideate by challenging assumptions and creating ideas for innovative solutions
• Prototype to start…