The design process, with its elements of open-mindedness, multidisciplinary collaboration, prototyping, execution and continuous refinement, is a comprehensive approach to solving business problems. But most companies don't use it, and even worse, most business schools don't teach it.
What is the importance of design thinking? Design Thinking is essentially a user-centered approach, project-based workflow, inductive, and deductive reasoning combined with group collaboration. Rather than focusing solely on analytics and rigorous quantitative analysis, the goal of the design process is to generate ideas with the customer in mind. It includes an almost anthropological insight into how the user perceives, interacts and uses the product or service and how these actions and responses can be best adapted.
As more companies such as Procter & Gamble, General Electric, Philips Electronics, Apple, Nike and Levi Strauss focus their executives more on adopting a design approach to problem solving, business schools are tasked with developing a curriculum that involves design.
Many forward-thinking business schools are embracing this change in thinking, developing curriculum, hybrid models, and forging strategic partnerships with design schools. The Rotman School of Management, Stanford University, the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University and the INSEAD schools in Paris are excellent examples. Business schools currently teach a closer form of collaboration. It's about finding someone who shares the same point of view and ideas as you and working with them. The approach to design is to work with people whose mindset couldn't be more different from yours to encourage new perspectives and unique insights.
Business school doesn't teach understanding the user, imagining something that doesn't exist yet, prototyping, and continual improvement. Unfortunately, there are many barriers to design thinking in business schools. In many post-secondary institutions, semantic gaps, misunderstandings of the brainstorming process, ideological deadlocks and social barriers are enormous. Teachers also need to adopt a more interactive approach rather than an "I'm right, listen to me" mentality, acting more as a facilitator among student-led groups, providing expert advice and communicating key findings so that students understand the advantages of incorporating design thinking.
The onus of adopting design thinking lies not only on business schools but also on the companies themselves, from small businesses to large multinationals. "We are on the cusp of a design revolution in business, and as a result, today's business people don't just need to better understand designers, they need to be designers," says Roger Martin of the Rotman School of Business. Teach the Hawk approach and harness in-house design thinking.
General Electric Healthcare sends its top managers to a technology development course at the Crotonville Learning Center in Usingen, New York. Managers step out of their comfort zones and focus on creativity, imagination, and problem-solving tools. The training program coupled with the appointment of designers to senior management has increased the bottom line and created a culture that puts the company at the forefront of innovation.
The success of design thinking can be seen in many large companies. Certainly the company that has seen the most success with a foundation based on design and design thinking is Apple Inc. Despite a weak economy and the existence of many cheaper alternatives, Apple has consistently beaten analyst forecasts, delivering earnings quarter after quarter. Jonathan Ives, Apple's VP of Product Design, claims that the focus on design is an inspiration to create a product that is simple, intuitive, and performs a task for the customer. Ives has the ears of Apple's enigmatic CEO Steve Jobs, and since the two joined forces in 1997, they've created products that have revolutionized both the computing and music industries.
Design thinking can be used in companies large and small. Its aim is to let go of convoluted ways of thinking and approach a problem or project with the mindset of a designer. As business schools and individual companies begin to recruit, train, hire and rely on designers and design thinkers, customers will see a direct benefit of better-designed products and services.
