How Design Thinking transforms organizations and inspire innovation

By: Tim Brown

 Book Summary
The book explores the concept of design thinking and how it can be used
to drive innovation and change in businesses and organizations.

Part One: Part Two: Part Three:

The idea of design thinking The Designer’s Process Design in Action

The Nature of Design: In the first chapter, it Process: The second part of the book The final part of the book explores how
defines design thinking as a problem-solving delves into the design thinking process design thinking can be applied in a variety
approach that combines creativity, empathy, and how it can be applied to drive of settings, from businesses and
and rationality. The book also emphasizes the innovation and change. organizations to schools and government
importance of collaboration and teamwork in agencies. Brown provides several examples
The Book outlines a five-step process for
the design thinking process. of companies and organizations that have
design thinking, which includes empathy,
successfully implemented design thinking
definition, ideation, prototyping, and
The Innovator’s Dilemma: discusses the to drive innovation and change.
testing.
challenges that companies face when trying to
innovate and adapt to changing market It discusses how design thinking can be
conditions. It argues that many companies used to drive innovation and growth in
become trapped by their own success and are businesses and organizations (Apple,
unable to adapt to new trends and Google, and Procter & Gamble)
technologies. Design Thinking in Education (create more
engaging and effective learning
experiences)
Design Thinking in Government (to
improve services and drive innovation)…
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the
City of Philadelphia.
Design Thinking
What its all about: Design thinking is an iterative process in which you
seek to understand your users, challenge assumptions, redefine
problems and create innovative solutions which you can prototype and
test. The overall goal is to identify alternative strategies and
solutions that are not instantly apparent with your initial level of
understanding.

Design thinking is more than just a process; it opens up an

entirely new way to think, and it offers a collection of hands-on
methods to help you apply this new mindset.
In essence, design thinking:
Revolves around a deep interest to understand the people for
whom we design products and services. Helps us observe and
develop empathy with the target users.
Enhances our ability to question: in design thinking you question
the problem, the assumptions and the implications.
Proves extremely useful when you tackle problems that are ill-
defined or unknown.
Involves ongoing experimentation through sketches, prototypes,
testing and trials of new concepts and ideas.
EMPATHIZE
Understand the users Pain Points, Needs and Desires (user-
centric research). You want to gain an empathic understanding
of the problem you are trying to solve.

DEFINE
define the problem statement in a human-centered manner.
Organize the information gathered during the Empathize stage.
Analyzing observations to define the core problems you and
your team have identified up to this point.

IDEATE
Identify innovative solutions to the problem statement you’ve
created.

PROTOTYPE
Identify the best possible solution. These prototypes can be
shared and tested within the team itself, in other departments or
on a small group of people outside the design team.

TEST
Test solutions to derive a deep understanding of the product
and its users.
Design thinking and organization
Begin at the beginning: Companies should have design thinkers sitting on
their corporate boards, participating in their strategic marketing decisions, and
taking part in the early stages of their R&D efforts. They will bring the capacity to
create new unexpected ideas and will use the tools of design thinking as a means of
exploring strategy. Design thinkers will connect the upstream with the downstream.

Take a human-centered approach: The human-centered approach of

the design thinker can inform new offerings and increase the likelihood of their
acceptance by connecting them to existing behaviors

Fail early, fail often: How rapidly are ideas made tangible so that they
can be tested and improved? Leaders should encourage experimentation and
accept that there is nothing wrong with failure as long as it happens early and
becomes a source of learning.

Get professional help: There are times when it makes more sense to
go outside your organization and look for opportunities to expand the
innovation ecosystem.

Budget to the pace of innovation: Design thinking is fast-

paced, unruly, and disruptive, and it is important to resist the temptation
to slow it down by relying on cumbersome budgeting cycles or
bureaucratic reporting procedures.

Find talent any way you can: Design thinkers may be in short
supply, but they exist inside every organization. The trick is spotting them,
nurturing them, and freeing them to do what they do best.

Design for the cycle: When core team members are not able to follow
a project through the complete cycle, both will suffer.
 Design thinking and you
Don’t ask what? ask why? For the design thinker, asking “Why?” is an
opportunity to reframe a problem, redefine the constraints, and open the field to a
more innovative answer. Is it really faster cars that we want or better transportation?
Televisions with more features or better entertainment?

Open your eyes: We spend most of our lives not noticing the important things.
Good design thinkers observe. Great design thinkers observe the ordinary. Make it a
rule that at least once a day you will stop and think about an ordinary situation.

Make it visual: Record your observations and ideas visually, even if just as a
rough sketch in a notebook or a picture on your camera phone. If you think you
can’t draw, too bad. Do it anyway.

Build on the ideas of others: If an idea becomes a piece of private

property, it is likely to grow stale and brittle over time. If it migrates
throughout an organization, undergoing continual permutations,
combinations, and mutations, it is likely to flourish.

Demand Options: Let a hundred flowers bloom, but then let them
cross-pollinate. If you haven’t explored lots of options, you haven’t
diverged enough. Your ideas are likely to be incremental or easy to copy.
Design a life: There is a big difference, though, between planning a
life, drifting through life, and designing a life. Above all, think of life as a
prototype. We can conduct experiments, make discoveries, and change
our perspectives. We can look for opportunities to turn processes into
projects that have tangible outcomes.
We can learn that reward comes in creation and re-creation, not just in the
consumption of the world around us. Active participation in the process of
creation is our right and our privilege. We can learn to measure the
success of our ideas not by our bank accounts but by their impact on the
world.
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