Innovation Through Design Thinking

This is the story that I tell to business leaders about why they should invest in design.

Design is everywhere these days. Beyond the beautiful stuff, designers have a unique way of solving problems. Stuff is not the only thing that is important. We call it design thinking. It’s the way we go about solving problems. It can be used to tackle a whole range of creative and business issues.

Design thinking is a great way of thinking about design strategy and the vision for future business. Design thinking can be used to develop whole new markets. Design thinking has been used to create new products and offerings. Design thinking can even be used to create new business models and new applications for technologies. Design thinking can be used to create new ways of connecting with customers. Design thinking can be used also in a place we never expected: in the infrastructure of business.

What is design thinking?

It is a human-centered approach to innovation. You either grow through acquisition or you grow through innovation.

There are three buckets of innovation: technology, business, and people. All innovation is a combination of those things. Lots of people are doing the technology and business. Technology is the main engine of innovation. Most businesses come from a business perspective. But most designers come at it through people.

Three Important Phases: Inspiration, Ideation, and Implementation.

Inspiration. Where do ideas come from? Insights are the fuel of inspiration. You don’t get ideas from sitting at your desk. Use the world as a source of inspiration (not as a source of validation). It starts with empathy and seeing things from other people’s viewpoints, not yours. Aim to understand people on multiple levels: physically, cognitively, emotionally, socially, and culturally. Method: Analogous Situations. Where else might we go to get a similar type of situation? Insights can come extreme users. Not in the middle of the bell curve of users. Get out there and look, listen, and try.

Ideation. Building to think. Prototypes aren’t milestones. Really the value of prototypes is what you learn as you build it. Learn by prototyping. An idea might go through literally hundreds of prototypes. Better be able to build them quickly and cheaply. Not all prototypes need to be physical, but they do have to be tangible.

Implementation. We tend to forget that we need to be really good at storytelling. Ideas need to navigate through an organization. Storytelling can keep good ideas alive. Stories provide a framework for creating and preserving ideas. Can bring stakeholders together. Stories can be tangible and experiential. Sometimes the story can even be the end result: the strategy, an idea, etc.

Managing Innovation

Ways to grow: extend new (brands, share, leveraging users), create (markets), manage (raising price/usage/share), adapt (expand footprint, winning share).

Three different types of innovation: incremental (existing offerings and users), evolutionary (either a new offering or new users), and revolutionary (new offerings and new users). From least risky to highest risk. This can be tracked and measured. Ways of measuring: portfolio outcomes, time to first prototype, net promoter.