Design Thinking for Business: A Handbook for Design Thinking in Wicked Systems

FOREWORD

This monograph describes ways to develop systems in complex environments using design thinking. It provides a framework that can be adapted to create design thinking spaces in such environments. Systems is used here is a generic term; it does not focus on a particular domain. Systems can be business supply chains, smart cities or any other business or social enterprise. The monograph focuses on systems that address what are commonly known as wicked problems. These are problems where neither the problem nor solution can be clearly specified. Solutions for wicked problems cannot be predefined; they emerge guided by a vision. Such vision itself emerges as stakeholder learn and better understand and learn how use the new services. By doing so they get new insights and identify new possibilities. The key word here is emergence; it is not chaos as often seen by external observers. Emergence is more systematic; it leads to continual improvement through learning, exploring, adapting to change in a systematic way. Emergence is now almost normal as enterprises must continually deal with unanticipated events.

Managing new developments in this increasingly complex environment requires new methods. It is difficult to use analytical methods to propose solutions; here solutions cannot be precisely specified nor stakeholder requirements precisely defined. A formal way to represent these views and reasoning of these stakeholders is difficult as stakeholder criteria cannot be specified algorithmically; they continually change anyway as new information becomes available. Addressing wicked problems relies on the judgement and decisions of people in the different communities – what is now often referred to as a design thinking approach. The emphasis in design thinking is not on just talking; it is to encourage structured narratives by multiple stakeholders to creativity develop acceptable innovative and mutually acceptable solutions.

The monograph describes a Collaborative Governance Framework (CGF) to introduce and support design thinking in businesses, social communities, government agencies or smaller groups and businesses. These may be trying to establish a competitive position in the marketplace, or create digital habitats that foster the social interaction needed to create smart communities. The CGF goal is to provide readers with ways to introduce design thinking into their enterprises by providing connected design spaces where stakeholders can reach mutually acceptable decisions through continuous collaboration.

The CGF addresses a number of challenges now facing developers of ICT systems in large complex systems. These include:

• Finding ways to create systems that benefit all stakeholders not just the main stakeholder,

• Focusing on the entire system not just the ICT component as is often the case, and

• Reducing emphasis on top down development that excludes most stakeholders during the development stage.

A Collaborative Governance Framework

The CGF has the three main goals – Collaboration to involve all stakeholders, Governance so that everyone to be included and contribute to solutions, Framework to be adaptable to any enterprise. Collaborative governance has its roots in public administration and defined by Emerson (2011) as ‘processes and structures of decision making and management that engage people constructively across the boundaries of public agencies, levels of government to carry out a public purpose that could not otherwise be accomplished".

The CGF provides guidelines for users to set up design spaces. Each space is made up of collaborative design activities that encourage the development of new ideas together with the support tools to create, document, model and evaluate solutions. Each collaborative design activity provides a canvas of building blocks to create solutions. These building blocks are put together to create a business model. The idea of a canvas (Osterwalder, 2010) is to present a visualization of all the building blocks relevant to a problem. The CGF provides the guidelines to systematically divide the building blocks into levels to focus on levels of governance. The structure of the CGF level together with the building blocks at each level is briefly described in the diagram below and outlined in detail in the book.

The CGF provides a standard structure including:

• Guidelines for creating design spaces at different levels,

• Ways to create and organize design spaces for small and large enterprises, including an evolutionary path for small enterprises,

• Ways to choose the building blocks appropriate to the design space,

• A set of tools including templates, models, storyboards and guidelines to encourage creativity through discussions and narratives in design spaces.

The CGF provides a systematic way to create design spaces for each level in which it applies. The design spaces engage stakeholders, who have the responsibility to make decisions at that level. It brings together the right people at each level, empowering them with the knowledge and resources to carry out their work, and giving them the responsibility to jointly act.

The CGF canvasses are organized to capture ideas about the building blocks and how to pout hem together; and choose combinations that lead to acceptable outcomes. This applies to wicked problems where unique rather than standard solutions are needed. For example, there is not just one solution to create a smart city or smart community. What is needed is a number of solutions each addressing one issue but which together create such a city or community. There needs to be a solution for traffic management, education, retailing, safety and security for women and children, agriculture as well as spaces for recreation and relaxation. In more rural communities services include provision of advice through for example kiosks in villages.

The CGF addresses the challenges by:

• Capturing value prepositions from all stakeholders not just the main stakeholders and ensuring that they are taken into account at each level,

• Integrating the design spaces through their building blocks create holistic solutions, and

• Designing ICT systems in the context of their social environment, now increasingly referred to as ICT4D (ICT for Development)

The emphasis is on involvement of stakeholders through design thinking by creating new design spaces as the need arises. It also provides a predefined structure that combines different levels into an enterprise wide process. It is based on collaboration through dialogs that lead to acceptable outcomes through collaboration and commitment by stakeholders. It provides guidelines for asking the right questions as only be doing so is the right answer reached.

This monograph also includes a number of assignments and case studies that can be used by students interested in design thinking needed to solve wicked problems.

1. TRENDS IN BUSINESS SYSTEM ENVIRONMENT

We all work in an increasingly changing and innovative environment. Systems do not stay the same; they continually change. People’s behaviour also changes as systems change. People are always adding new features to products or options to services. Mobility is now the trend – almost becoming a norm – an example of change driven by technology. There are indications that with the increasing functionality of mobile devices all access will be through mobiles. The ease of developing new apps mean those new features can be easily added to existing processes.

Complexity is another trend. It is not simply that systems are more complicated because they are made up of a large number of parts whose interactions can be predicted and used to provide solutions using formal mathematical methods. Complexity is more characterized by dealing with change: it is characterized by unanticipated events, emerging situations and enterprises reorganizing to respond to them. It often includes issues across a number of domains requiring collaboration between domain experts to resolve them. Examples here include:

• Smart cities including ways of living in increasingly larger cities while conserving energy needs and providing services to citizens,

• Designing social systems now found in society – these are almost always wicked problems. These typically cannot be solved using analytical or predefined solution and need increasing social solutions to change behaviour as for example improving health, or raising educational levels,

• Supporting rural communities to agree on their specific needs and arrange delivery of services that lead to improved health or education,

• Managing large organizations within global environments to find competitive advantage, including finding new market,

• Logistics systems in the delivery of materials including food supply in underdeveloped regions.

• Collaborative systems to support energy, food and water security that is now emerging as an issue in emerging economies.

In summary enterprises are facing increasingly complex situations that need solutions, which are not standard response to a well-defined problem. They are most often composed of many local solutions; or solution fragments, which must be evaluated, selected and combined to provide a holistic acceptable outcome providing services to different clients – hence increased importance of social communities. For example, as outlined earlier, there is not just one solution to create a smart city. What is needed is a number of solutions that work together create such a city. There needs to be a solution for traffic management, education, providing space for retailing as well as spaces for recreation and relaxation. Often priorities must be set, choices made on what solutions to select, and priorities set. All these need to be put together to create a smart city.

It is now generally recognized that collaborative governance does lead to better solutions as local change agents are involved in the process. This is especially the case in large systems such as those concerning food or water security where behavior is usually managed locally and difficult to driven through top level directives. Involving local agencies in the planning process brings local issues into the planning cycle. The World Bank Institute for example (http://wbi.worldbank.org/wbi/about/topics/governance) is in their words:

"helping governments engage with citizens and organizations from the private and civil society sectors and vice versa by using innovative concepts such as building coalitions and tools aimed at ensuring that all stakeholders have the ability and capacity for effective engagement