Module 1

Innovation & Design Thinking

Introduction, Design Thinking as a Solution,

The Value of Design Thinking,
A Look at the History of Design Thinking,
Four Core Principles of Successful Innovation,
A Model of the Design Innovation Process,
Seven Modes of the Design Innovation Process, Understanding
Methods.
 Understanding the Concept of Strategy
• According to Porter (1985), strategy is about identifying and
subsequently exploiting competitive advantages.
• Competitive advantage can either be achieved through cost leadership
or through differentiation.
• More formally, developing a strategy means defining a particular
configuration of the value chain, which is unique and sustainable over
time, providing an offering that cannot easily be copied by competitors.
• Strategy is about choice, making trade-off decisions while competing
(Porter 1996).
• Barney (1991, 2001a, 2001b) takes a different approach.
• He defines a strategy as a means of exploiting a firm’s resources and
related internal strengths to exploit environmental opportunities and
neutralize external threats.
• The SWOT2 analysis framework is at the core of developing such
strategies. Success is based on effectively mapping resources to
opportunities.
• Such strategies are called resource-based.
Approaches to business strategy focusing on three
complementary elements
Strategy Design Process
Supported by a common language addressing four key questions:

(1) What customer needs, pain-points, and sought-after gains are currently
addressed or nor addressed, and what customers are not served?
(2) How can the identified needs and pain-points be addressed in a way
that customers are willing to pay for?
(3) What are the distinct capabilities and resources required to achieve a
sustainable competitive advantage in delivering upon the promises made,
that is, addressing the identified needs?
(4) How is the strategy ensuring that sustainable profits can be generated?
A Distinct Definition of Strategy
• Strategy in this book is defined as the combination of a strategic
focus, that is, a differentiating value creator, a business model
describing how the firms aims at delivering value to customers and
other stakeholders, and an approach to differentiate, focusing on the
competitive positioning of the firm in the business environment.
• Strategy = strategic focus + business model + competitive positioning
Challenges Faced by Traditional
Approaches
to Strategy Design
(1) Speed—They are slow to execute.
(2) Customer focus—They tend not to focus on customers, their needs,
their felt pains, and sought-after gains.
(3) Complexity—They are complex and hard to understand by the non-
strategy trained manager or executive.
(4) Outsourcing—More often than not, are large parts of the strategy
development process outsourced to industry experts and strategy
consultants.
Challenges Faced by Traditional
Approaches
to Strategy Design
(1) Speed—They are slow to execute.
Traditional strategy development schools define sound approaches to the strategy development process.
But they fail to cope with the fast-changing world, mainly due to their analytical foundations. They are slow,
rigid, and often very ineffective.
(2) Customer focus—They tend not to focus on customers, their needs, their felt pains, and sought-after
gains. Traditional strategy development approaches primarily focus on capabilities, those of the firm, those
of competitors, and those defining the environment (suppliers, substitutes, etc.). They take an internal
approach. They put the firm at the center of the strategy. But they fail to focus on customers and their jobs-
to-be-done.
(3) Complexity—They are complex and hard to understand by the non-strategy trained manager or
executive. Managers have a hard time navigating complex strategy frameworks, like Porter’s five forces
(Porter 1979), by themselves. It is an incorrect assumption to believe that successful managers are
necessarily trained strategists.
(4) Outsourcing—More often than not, are large parts of the strategy development process outsourced to
industry experts and strategy consultants. Consequently, the buy-in into the developed strategy is only half
heated, resulting in a lack of follow-through.
Design Thinking as a Solution
• Any successful strategy design process addressing the identified
challenges, should exhibit six key characteristics:
(1) Consistent with the strategy design school, the strategy design
process should be top-down, starting with designing and validation a
sound foundation.
(2) The strategy design process should follow an agile, JIT.
(3) The focus should be put on designing the future rather than
analyzing the past.
Design Thinking as a Solution…

(4) To ensure buy-in and subsequent successful implementation, the

strategy design process should integrate stakeholders early in the
design of the strategy, especially at the validation step.
(5) There does not exist not a one size fits it all approach to strategy
design.( that is, customer centric strategies, innovation-oriented
strategies, capabilities based, strategies, or cost-driven strategies)
(6) The strategy design process must put the targeted customers at the
center of any strategy design activity.
Design Thinking as a Solution
• Any successful strategy design process addressing the identified challenges, should exhibit six
key characteristics:
(1) Consistent with the strategy design school, the strategy design process should be top-down,
starting with designing and validation a sound foundation.
(2) The strategy design process should follow an agile, just in time, sometimes also called lazy,
approach, allowing for refinements and pivoting along the way.
(3) The focus should be put on designing the future rather than analyzing the past,
notwithstanding learning from historical successes and failures.
(4) To ensure buy-in and subsequent successful implementation, the strategy design process
should integrate stakeholders early in the design of the strategy, especially at the validation step.
(5) There does not exist not a one size fits it all approach to strategy design. Any successful
strategy design process must allow for different types of strategies, that is, customer centric
strategies, innovation-oriented strategies, capabilities based, strategies, or cost-driven strategies.
(6) And finally, the strategy design process must put the targeted customers at the center of any
strategy design activity.
Design thinking
• Design thinking is a method for solving wicked problems (Churchman
1967), that is, problems with no upfront clear solution. It is based on
abductive reasoning.
• It aims at iteratively designing and validating solutions using a
forward-looking approach and putting the customer at the center
stage.
• Strategy design is a typical wicked problem. It exhibits the four traits
of openness, complexity, dynamism, and networking, as defined by
Dorst (2015).
Abductive reasoning
• Abductive reasoning is a form of logical inference that seeks the
simplest and most likely conclusion from a set of observations.
Design Thinking Approach
Design Thinking Approach…
• Design thinking is an abductive approach to problem solving,
combining the advantages of design and thinking. It finds its roots in
architectural and industrial design.
• The underlying process can be characterized by a two-by-two matrix,
as shown in Fig. (Previous slide).
• The first dimension looks at the thinking process, which can be
divergent or convergent.
• The second dimension describes the time period considered, which
either focuses on the past or on the future.
Design Thinking Approach…
• To avoid non-value-adding analysis, design thinking proceeds in an
agile, just-in-time, way, moving to the next step as soon as enough
insights have been gained.
• Whenever insights from a previous step turn out to be insufficient or
incorrect, design thinking iterates back to the previous step and
reconditions the missing or incorrect information.
• This allows proceeding in an agile way and avoids the use of
unproductive labor whenever possible.
Delivering Value to Customers
• Design thinking supports building the strategy around the customers and their
jobs-to-be-done.
• To be successful, strategy design must address four categories of questions
related to customers (Brown 2009):
(1) Desirable—Are the offerings and associated value propositions underlying the
strategy desired and sought-after by the targeted customers? Do they help satisfy a
need, alleviate a pain, and/or provide additional gains to the targeted customers?
(2) Feasible—Can the firm deliver upon the promises made to the customers, both
in terms of functionality and quality? Can the value proposition be upheld?
(3) Viable—Do customers consider the value of the offering worth paying for? Are
customers willing to pay a price which will allow the firm to generate a profit?
(4) Distinct—Can customers distinguish the offering of the firm from that of its
competitors? Do they value the uniqueness during their purchasing decision
journey?
A Common Language
• When individuals with diverse backgrounds, from marketing, product
development, operations, legal and compliance, to finance,
collaborate on the design of a new or the upgrade of an existing
strategy, a common language is required.
• The business model canvas, introduced by Osterwalder and Pigneur
(2010), provides such an easy to understand language, allowing for
common fact finding, designing, and validating by all stakeholders
involved in the strategy design process.
• Through its four major components, that is, customers, offerings,
capabilities, and financials, it ensures a holistic approach to strategy
design.
Integrating Stakeholders
• A strategy is only worth what senior management, executives, and
members of the board of directors, believe it is.
• Having senior decision-makers on board is core to success.
• To achieve this needed buy-in, design thinking integrates all key
stakeholders into the strategy design process from the beginning on.
• Senior managers are expected to participate, based on their
experience, in the fact-finding steps (observing and learning steps).
Integrating Stakeholders…
• More importantly, the designed strategy should be the outcome of a
collaborative exercise between senior decision makers (designing
step).
• Especially important is the active involvement of decision makers at
the validation step.
• Participation in validating the assumptions ensures a higher degree of
confidence and a commitment in the formulated strategy.
 The advocated strategy design process
A Three Layers Process
(1) The Foundation Layer,
(2) The Business Model Layer, And
(3) The Competition Layer.
A Three Layers Process
• The advocated strategy design process ensures success by decomposing
strategy development into three layers, that is,
(1) the foundation layer,
(2) the business model layer, and
(3) the competition layer.
• Each layer focuses on a specific characteristic of a strategy, starting with
an operationalized version of the vision concept—the foundation.
• Based on the foundation, the business model supporting the strategy is
designed. It defines the key elements of a successful firm.
• The third layer focuses on competition and differentiation. It puts the
business model into perspective and ensures a positioning that provides a
lasting competitive advantage
The Value of Design Thinking

• Design thinking addresses diverse shortcomings of analytical strategy

development methods in a dynamic and fast-paced business
environment.
• It aims at learning from methodologies used by designers, such as
architects, artists, or creative directors, to solve problems which are
incomplete by nature and cannot be solved by traditional linear
problem-solving approaches.
Design thinking exhibits four key traits
valuable to strategy design:
(1) Design thinking is customer-centric. Problem solving starts with
observing and understanding customers and their needs.
(2) Design thinking is iterative in nature. It incrementally addresses
challenges, improving solutions step by step.
(3) Design thinking is based on prototyping and validating ideas. It
ensures that the designed solutions work.
(4) Design thinking combines the best of the two worlds of analytical
and intuitive thinking, resulting in a so-called abductive reasoning
approach.
Design thinking exhibits four key traits
valuable to strategy design:
• (1) Design thinking is customer-centric. Problem solving starts with observing and
understanding customers and their needs, their suffered pains, their sought-after gains, and
their jobs-to-be-done. Insights are acquired by focusing on observing and listening to
customers in their natural environment, avoiding any interference that could distort the
observed.
• (2) Design thinking is iterative in nature. It incrementally addresses challenges, improving
solutions step by step, considering what has previously been learned, and using resources
(time and money) wisely. It allows avoiding unfocused data gathering and analysis.
• (3) Design thinking is based on prototyping and validating ideas. It ensures that the
designed solutions work. It does not assume that there exists a single best solution, but
rather uses prototyping to identify trade-offs, validating them, and retaining those solutions
that work.
• (4) Design thinking combines the best of the two worlds of analytical and intuitive thinking,
resulting in a so-called abductive reasoning approach.
The Value of Design Thinking…
• Design thinking is a systematic process for wicked
problem solving as well as a visual language for
communicating about ideas.
• Through its structure, design thinking ensures that
resulting solutions generate value for the customers
for whom they have been designed.
• By being iterative in nature, design thinking aims at
solving 80% of the problem with 20% of the
resources.
The Value of Design Thinking…
• Design thinking is a systematic process for wicked
problem solving as well as a visual language for
communicating about ideas.
• Through its structure, design thinking ensures that
resulting solutions generate value for the customers
for whom they have been designed.
• By being iterative in nature, design thinking aims at
solving 80% of the problem with 20% of the
resources.
Customer-Centric Problem Solving
• Design thinking is based on the observation that solving typical
business problems requires an in-depth understanding of the
customers, their needs, their perceived pains, and their thought-after
gains.
• Traditional analytical approaches rely on historical data, like surveys
or past experiences, to understand customers and their needs.
• They put the focus on known facts from the past subsumed in data,
answering the “what do customers need”, rather than the “why do
customers have specific needs” question. The rationale behind the
data is often missed.
Customer-Centric Problem Solving…
• As Henry Ford is often quoted saying, if he had asked what customers
want, they would have said, faster horses.
• In contrast, observing customers and their behavior, the design
thinking expert would have found out that the customer need or job-
to-be-done is getting from point A to point B in a fast way without
sacrificing flexibility and simplicity.
• By relying on intuition and experimenting jointly with customers in
different environments, design thinking provides more relevant
insights.
• It focuses on the unknown rather than the knowledgeable.
Iteratively Improving Through
Prototyping
and Validating
• Design thinking is based on the observation that it is not possible to
get the solution of a wicked problem right the first time.
• Design thinking relies on iteratively trying out different options and
improving solutions over time by considering what has been learned,
what worked, and what did not work.
• In that sense, design thinking borrows ideas from agile, or just-in-
time, methodologies and puts them into the context of ideation.
Iteratively Improving Through
Prototyping
and Validating…
• Stakeholders are actively involved in ideation, designing prototypes,
and experimentation.
• Observations and insights are transformed into prototypes of ideas
that can be validated with real customers.
• Each validation round leads to new observations and insights which
allow improving upon previous prototypes.
• Successful design thinkers embrace the back and forth nature, making
mistakes, learning from mistakes, and improving upon them, while
knowing when good is good enough.
Case - Oxymetry
• Example Having worked in a hospital, a team of students had identified an
interesting challenge with pulse oximetry equipment: the wirings proved difficult
to handle for the staff and hindered patient mobility. So, they came up with a
wireless pulse oximetry prototype.
• They showed it to nurses to validate their idea, who immediately loved it. But
when they talked to hospital administrators, who oversaw procurement, they
were confronted with a “no interest in spending money on wireless pulse
oximetry” answer, as administrators did not see the value of the solution. This
lead the team of students to iterate and look for other applications of their idea.
• They identified the issue of infants dying from respiratory failure as a possible
problem that could be solved with their wireless pulse oximetry system.
• Further iterations lead to an innovative solution, a sock solution that comfortably
fits the equipment on infants and new-born babies. The OwletCare Baby Monitor
was successfully launched in the U.S. market.
Validating Ideas with Stakeholders
• Designed solutions are only good if deemed so by their actual
stakeholders.
• Design thinking requires involving different stakeholders, especially
those involved in decision making, into the validation of the designed
prototypes.
• Depending on their skills, they are requested to perform validating
experiments themselves.
• This allows them gaining first-hand experience and thus strengthens
their confidence in the obtained results.
Validating Ideas with Stakeholders…
• Although decision makers are often reluctant to actively participate in
assumption validation, they regularly value the insights gained ex-
post.
• Unwillingness of decision makers to participate in assumption
validation is often indicative of a reluctance to change.
• Being able to identify and address that reluctance at an early stage
increases the probability of success.
Case - a new business model

• While developing a new business model for a multi-family office, the design team
was confronted with the challenge of choosing the right pricing model, that is,
relying on fixed prices, effort-based pricing, asset-based pricing, etc.
• As the team knew that this decision would be critical to success, not only with
respect to customers embracing the offerings, but also to get buy-in from the
executive team, they decided to involve key executives in finding out what pricing
model is considered most appropriate by the targeted customers.
• To do so, they looked for executives willing to interview customers themselves
(unfortunately not all found this a good idea) and coached them to do so. The
outcomes from the interviews where not only that the executives identified the
most appropriate pricing model to implement, it also strengthened their buy-in for
the chosen model, as they had heard first-hand how customers think about price
models and what they value, and thus no longer had to be convinced by a
subordinated design team.
Combining Analytical Thinking and
Intuition
• Analytical thinking is based on using data combined with theoretical
models and deriving insights to make sensible decisions.
• In today’s world of big data, analytical thinking is often the preferred
approach.
• It proceeds by understanding complex problems and decomposing
them into simpler ones.
• To do so, analytical thinking starts with often unfocused data gathering
and fact finding, followed by explicit search for matching patterns.
• Only at a later stage are the insights gained from the information
combined to derive a solution, usually aiming directly for the optimal
one
Combining Analytical Thinking and
Intuition…
• Intuition, on the other hand, is based on the ability to acquire insights
without significant amounts of data, evidence, or formal proofs
Intuition relies on unconscious pattern-recognition and instinct.
• Experience plays an important role in feeding the unconscious
cognition, inner sensing process.
• Intuition often solves problems without being able to explain why,
that is, validating the proposed results.
Design thinking..
• Design thinking aims a combining the
advantages of the two extreme deductive and
inductive problem-solving approaches into one
method. The resulting abductive reasoning
A Look at the History of Design Thinking

• While ideas around the concept of industrial design can be traced

back to the late 1940s and early 1950s, the concept of design thinking
emerged for the first time in the 1960s in the context of participatory
design (Arnold 1959).
• Participatory design was a movement characterized by quick software
prototype development cycles, incorporating customer feedback into
the prototyping process.
A Look at the History of Design Thinking…
The 1970s

• It is fair to say that the first milestone in the design thinking history
was set by the publication of Herbert A. Simon’s book The Science of
the Artificial in 1968 (Simon 1968).
• He introduced a three-step process to solve complex decision
problems:
(1) Intelligence Gathering,
(2) Designing Possible Solutions, And
(3) Choosing A Particular Solution.
A Look at the History of Design Thinking…
The 1980s

• The term Design Thinking, written in capital letters, describing a

methodology of creative problem solving was introduced by Lawson
(1980) in his seminal book How Designers Think.
• He described how the concept of design is used in architecture to
solve problems.
• Architects, when compared to scientists, are more inclined to develop
series of solutions until they find one that meets their criteria of being
acceptable, rather than aim for the best possible solution right from
the beginning, and therefore differs from the more linear process
used by scientists and engineers.
A Look at the History of Design Thinking…
The 1980s

• Design thinking is viewed as one of three so-called cultures for

representing and accessing human knowledge.
These are:
(1) Science culture—Analytical, based on controlled experiments,
relying on classification, and focusing on the physical world.
(2) Humanities culture—Analogy and metaphor based, focusing on
evaluation and criticism, and driven by human experience.
(3) Design culture—Modeling driven, based on pattern formation and
recognition, synthesis focused, and based on a man-made world.
A Look at the History of Design Thinking…
The 1990s

• The 1990s were characterized by the adaption of design thinking to

solving business problems. In 1991, Faste’s colleagues Kelley,
Moggridge, and Nuttall founded IDEO, a consulting company based on
design thinking.
• IDEO was, and probably still is, the most prominent product and
industrial design company embracing and advancing design thinking.
• Buchanan broadened the view on design thinking as a methodology
for solving wicked problems in his paper called Wicked Problems in
Design Thinking (Buchanan 1992).
A Look at the History of Design
Thinking…
The New Millenial
• The new millennial was shaped by the development and introduction
of formal processes to apply design thinking to problem solving.
• A large body of knowledge around design thinking, both from an
academic and a practical perspective, has been developed and
published over the years.
• The approaches described in this section cover the most relevant
insights gained over time.
• In 2001, the team led by Brown at IDEO, introduced its three-step
process around inspiring, ideating, and implementing (Brown 2009).
In 2005, researchers at the newly founded d.School at Stanford
University developed a five-step design thinking process that has
been at the heart of many subsequent researches on design thinking
processes. The five steps are:
(1) Empathize.
(2) Define. During the second step of the design thinking process, the gained data is used to
clearly define the problem at hand and describe the core challenge to solve in an objective
way.
(3) Ideate. New possible solutions are created by starting with a large number of ideas and
narrowing them down through eliminating those ideas that are unacceptable in terms of
cost, value, time, resources, etc.
(4) Prototype. Prototyping is about transforming ideas into actionable concepts that can be
shared, reviewed, and validated. Prototypes need not be perfect and are iteratively refined
and improved until they can demonstrate value from a customer perspective.
(5) Test. Before selecting a prototype as the problem’s solution, they are tested and
validated. To do so, experiments are designed and performed.
In 2005, researchers at the newly founded d.School at Stanford
University developed a five-step design thinking process that has
been at the heart of many subsequent researches on design thinking
processes. The five steps are:
(1) Empathize. This first step is about understanding the problem at hand. Observations, interviews, and measurements
are some of the key tools used to gaining an objective, non-judgmental view of the challenge at hand. Key are empathy
and customer-centricity.
(2) Define. During the second step of the design thinking process, the gained data is used to clearly define the problem at
hand and describe the core challenge to solve in an objective way. The problem is defined in terms of customer and their
needs, rather than the firm’s internal goals. Sometimes the define step is compared to a root cause analysis taking a
customer-centric perspective and using as input the data from the empathize step.
(3) Ideate. New possible solutions are created by starting with a large number of ideas and narrowing them down through
eliminating those ideas that are unacceptable in terms of cost, value, time, resources, etc. More often than not does the
ideation step include brainstorming or brain walking exercises.
(4) Prototype. Prototyping is about transforming ideas into actionable concepts that can be shared, reviewed, and
validated. Prototypes need not be perfect and are iteratively refined and improved until they can demonstrate value from
a customer perspective. At this step, several prototypes are usually defined.
(5) Test. Before selecting a prototype as the problem’s solution, they are tested and validated. To do so, experiments are
designed and performed. Based on the outcomes of the experiments, the prototypes are iteratively refined until a
validated working solution is found.
Four Core Principles of Successful
Innovation
Strategy: Provide a road map for innovation.
• Leaders must communicate their vision for innovation and
intrapreneurship -- through words and action. Organizations with a clear
vision for innovation help employees develop smart ideas and quickly
test, refine and scale them to become marketable products and services.
• Organizations must also strategically invest in innovation. To determine
the ideal total investment, leaders need to do their homework. They
should consider factors such as industry demands, market conditions
and their company's existing portfolio. Investing more does not
necessarily correlate to superior innovation. One 2018 study found that
research and development expenditures across the 20 most innovative
global companies ranged from as little as 3.6% of their revenue to more
than 25%.
People: Encourage talent to try, fail fast and learn from mistakes.
• To cultivate innovative mindsets, leaders need to create an
environment that empowers employees to try, fail fast and learn from
their mistakes. Employees will back down from innovation if their
ideas are poorly recognized -- or worse, condemned.

• Unfortunately, Gallup research shows that just 18% of U.S. employees

strongly agree they can take risks at work that could lead to important
new products, services or solutions.

• To remedy this problem, leaders should publicly celebrate employees'

innovation efforts. The best organizations ensure their performance
management processes develop and incentivize innovative action and
treasure diverse ideas.
• Processes: Digitize activities to funnel and propel innovation.
• Leaders should make sure that organizational systems accelerate
innovation, not hinder it. Internal communication should keep agile teams
aligned on where and how to focus innovation efforts, when to shift, and
what to do next when a great idea strikes.
• Leaders should digitize and simplify processes wherever possible. This can
help companies better identify customer needs and react with fewer
iterations.
• Samsung's C-Lab (Creative Lab) allows employees to pitch their ideas,
collaborate and convert ingenuity into marketable innovation. It exists to
foster innovation. Samsung's approach cultivates brilliant thinking,
differentiates flawed ideas quickly and consistently generates novel
opportunities.
• Structure: Meet physical, temporal and collaborative needs.
• Physical collaborative spaces are also important for increasing innovation. Leaders can make
creativity part of employees' regular focus by providing dedicated, well-equipped spaces for
innovation.
• Truly innovative workspaces provide a variety of tools like rolling flipcharts or glass walls
employees can write on to capture and ponder what might otherwise be fleeting innovative
ideas.
• Leaders should also designate sufficient working hours for innovative efforts. If organizations
want to deliver more and better ideas, they need to revise role expectations accordingly. For
example, Google encourages employees to devote 20% of their time to developing new
solutions that will benefit the company.
• When it comes to collaboration, organizations should think outside their walls. Even the most
mammoth organizations can't innovate alone. Leaders who proactively build a strong ecosystem
of collaboration will gain a wellspring of ideas and approaches. The best organizations cultivate
a wide range of partnerships, including other companies, academic institutions and
governments.
• For instance, despite being a multibillion-dollar company, BMW Group partners with academic
institutions like the Technical University of Munich and startups such as Lime to keep up with
an ever-changing industry.
A Model of the Design Innovation Process
Design Innovation
• Products that go through a rigorous, empathetic, and iterative design
process and end up having a fundamentally innovative concept
and/or design that wholly innovates on the way the user interacts
with the product, and often therefore, the content of their lives —
this is design innovation.
• It’s innovating on a product through its design.
• It requires an immense amount of taste, empathy, creativity, and
variety of inputs / perspectives.
Principles of Design Innovation

• Contextual
• Empathetic
• Goal-oriented
• Intentional
• Iterative
Principles of Design Innovation

Contextual
• Good design innovation is respectful of its context. It understands and fits in to its surroundings. It does
not force a design meant for a different context on all contexts it lives in.
Empathetic
• Good design innovation is deeply empathetic. Understanding the problems people and organizations
face, the roots of those problems, how people approach them and think about them — these are all
inherently difficult things to do that most ignore. Empathy is hard, but necessary for good design
innovation.
Goal-oriented
• Good design innovation progresses people or organizations towards a goal, or works to solve some
specific problem(s).
Intentional
• Good design innovation is not superfluous; everything is intentional. Nothing is added simply for
aesthetic appeal without intentionality behind achieving some goal or adhering to a core value.
Iterative
• Good design innovation is ongoing; it requires learning from prior iterations, deeply understanding what
was observed, and from that, designing better educated iterations to run next.
Coca-Cola Bottle
Coca-Cola Bottle

• The Coca-Cola bottle represents design innovation to achieve specific

business goals, and it worked.
• The original bottle was pretty generic, and copied by many imitators.
So that consumers would know whether they’re buying a coke or a
knockoff, Coca-Cola launched a totally new bottle design, inspired by
the shape of a cocoa pod.
• The design killed off imitators and was “the catalyst that [helped]
Coca-Cola become the most widely distributed product on earth.” The
shape became so iconic that it was then used as an image on the
company’s cans
Hardware example
Hardware example
• After a decade of bland beige machines and dramatically failing sales,
Apple’s iMac G3 communicated something about where the new
Apple was headed; it drew a line in the sand and showed the world
what the new Apple was about, and the kinds of customers it was
going to serve. It put the “personal” back in personal computer.
• https://www.boardofinnovation.com/guides/
Design Innovation process
• Design Innovation is a unique blend of design thinking, computational
thinking, maker culture, and business.
• They are repeatedly used throughout 4 main cycles which we call
Gears of Design innovation,
• To enable younger age groups to understand the process to create
successful products, services, or systems (PSS) that resonate with
users.
Design Innovation process…
• The 4 main gears span across the three grids of desirability, feasibility,
and viability, evolving across the different stages of the innovation
cycle.
1.Proof of Value (POV) — finding out what are the problems and what
is of value to the users by co-creating with them.
2.Proof of Concept (POC) — testing the effectiveness of the prototypes
in delivering the value/eliminating problems.
3.Proof of Market (POM) — ensuring the sustainability of solution as a
business through iteration to achieve product-market fit.
4.Proof of Impact (POI) — showing the potential to deliver impact to
the masses through proven customer successes
Making Things