According to Wikipedia, “Design thinking is a methodology for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result. As a style of thinking, it is the ability to combine empathy for the context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality to analyze and fit solutions to the context.”
There’s no question that design thinking has rapidly moved to the forefront of the current management zeitgeist as a fresh take not just on how to rethink key products and services, but also how to reframe everyday processes and projects, with the goal of creating a cross-company culture of innovation and collaboration.
While there are many books on the subject, it’s as difficult to learn design thinking from a book as it is to learn how to swim or ride a bike from a book. Aside from a few well known graduate schools offering immersion education–notably Stanford’s d.school and U. Toronto’s Rotman School, there isn’t a wide variety of readily available ways to gain a learning experience blending theory with technique.
That’s exactly the design challenge taken on by Jeanne Liedtka, a professor at U. Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business and Tim Ogilvie, CEO of the innovation strategy consultancy Peer Insight, in their new book Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Took Kit for Managers.
Liedtka and Ogilie cover the rationale, mindset, techniques, and vocabulary of design thinking, unpack the connection between design and growth, and show you how to exploit the potential of design.
Big Idea:
You can’t grow a business without good design. But there’s a difference between design and design thinking. The skills of a gifted designer are beyond most of us and can’t easily be taught. But when it comes to fostering business growth, having a systematic approach to problem solving is the gift every manager needs, and it can be taught. “Design thinking can do for organic growth and innovation what TQM did for quality,” write the authors, “take something we have always cared about and put tools and processes into the hands of managers to make it happen.”
Key Takeaways:
Designing for Growth describes the design thinking process as being organized around four key questions: What is? What if? What wows? What works? Each question requires a few key tools to help answer it.
The What is? stage explores the current reality. The tools include:
- Journey Mapping. Assessing the existing experience through the customer or user’s eyes.
- Value Chain Analysis. Assessing the current value chain that supports the customer’s journey.
- Mind Mapping. Generating insights from exploration activities and using those to create design criteria.
What if? envisions a new future. The tools include:
- Brainstorming. Generating new possibilities and new alternative business models.
- Concept Development. Assembling innovative elements into a coherent alternative solution that can be explored and evaluated.
What wows? requires making some choices. The tools include:
- Assumption Testing. Isolating and testing the key assumptions that will drive the success or failure of a concept.
- Rapid Prototyping. Expressing a new concept in a tangible form for exploration, testing and refinement.
What works? takes us into the marketplace. The tools include:
- Customer Co-creation. Enrolling customers to participate in creating the solution that best meets their needs.
- Learning Launch. Creating an affordable experiment that lets customers experience the new solution over an extended period of time, to test key assumptions with market data.
Liked Most:
Designing for Growth is laid out and organized to be a workbook that utilizes the toolkit above. The reader gets to delve into each tool with an example, an assignment or exercise, and lots of tips, how-to’s, and to-do’s.
Best For:
Anyone wishing to get up to speed on design thinking by actually test-driving the methodology on their own will find great value in this tutorial-in-a-book.
What People Are Saying:
“This intelligent how-to follow-up to the first wave of popular design books will serve as a useful guide to going through a design project start to finish.” Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
This review originally appeared here at the AmEx OPEN Forum Idea Hub.
