Today design thinking must be holistic?

There are many ways of developing and applying design thinking within any organization.

According to the Hasso-Plattner-Institut für Softwaresystemtechnik (September 2015 and adapted from Junginger (2009)), design thinking is actually present in different ways and places, influencing the organizational structure in several different manners.

From a sample of 235 respondents:

• 72,3% still consider design thinking to be applied/practiced 'somewhere within the organization’, more specifically and exclusively in ‘isolated’ departments (e.g. marketing, UX or R&D departments);
• Only 27,2% consider design thinking to be 'intrinsic' to the organization, i.e. an established practice and mindset, which is furthermore integrated in all aspects of the organization, thus serving as a way to discover solutions for all kinds of organizational problems;
• 21,4% consider design thinking as 'peripheral', preferably to be outsourced and without any necessity to be continuously present within the organization;
• 17,5% consider design thinking as 'core', holding a central position within strategic decision-making processes, and thus linked to the overall business strategy and leadership.

As INNOKINETICS, we strive to implement an intrinsic culture of innovation, creativity and design thinking methodologies within the core of organizations.

Another important conclusion from the Hasso-Plattner Institute is that 75% of all the respondents have been actively engaged in design thinking concepts for less than four years. On the other hand, 71% reported that design thinking improved their working culture and 69% respondents perceived the innovation process to be more efficient with the integration of design thinking.

With these results at hand, one could wonder why companies don't integrate and implement design thinking more into their organizations?

Creativity, within an organizational scope and setting, can be defined as the set of processes, systems, spaces, organizational structures and design, enabling the development of a creative culture within an organization, and nurtured by a strong sense and sensibility of leadership. Design thinking principles are the real reason why professional organizations need to adapt design thinking processes, thus developing a creative culture, oriented towards innovation within their structures, i.e.:

• Creative Confidence– believing that every collaborator is creative and as important to the process;
• Human Centered approach – putting people in the center of the process by giving responsibility to each of them and requiring all collaborators to listen, interact and identify concrete needs and opportunities together “with” consumers instead of “of” consumers;
• Multidisplinarity – establishing an integrated knowledge approach to cooperate and overcome business obstacle and challenges;
• Collaboration & Co-creation – enhancing the power of teamwork and finding solutions through the cooperation of different perspectives and insights.
• Making – building, experimenting and prototyping; from simple mockups to almost finished solutions in the validation and test stage of the process.
• Living System – open formula and evolutionary approach, seeking to adapt it to each organization, market, competitive scenario and culture.

This fusion between “creative culture”, “design thinking” and the professional organization needs to sprout from the deepest foundations of an organization, and needs to be intrinsically connected with the organization’s DNA, purpose, values, as well as vision and mission. Yet, it should be parameterized to every single process, system, space, structure and design within the organization. It should be regarded as a continuous and integrative journey in order for it to have the capacity to detect the best possible creative and innovative solution to any given initial problem. This design thinking mindset, attitude and process development is helping companies to become more “innovation inclusive” with their collaborators as well as more open minded and co-creative with their current and future consumers and the market.

In short, design thinking should be in the heart and soul of every contemporary manager and CEO.

From our experience and expertise and backed by several scientific studies, it is clear that design thinking has a crucial role to play within every organization. It has the capacity to facilitate, identify and leverage a company’s internal richness, capabilities and know-how, thus enhancing its proactive mechanisms.Design thinking highlights what organizations are excellent at.

Design thinking is far from “a designers only” activity.  It should be an integral part of any organization, big or small, a for-profit or non-profit one.  According to the Hasso-Plattner-Institut report, it is being applied in basically all industrial sectors through a set of 16 main applications:

1. Better solution finding;
2. Development or improvement of new products - finding and meeting unmet needs and developing new services and features;
3. Alignment and Knowledge transfer - fostering the collaboration and sharing between departments merging knowledge and expertise into a specific focus;
4. Build empathy and understand the consumer - getting insight-driven data rather than established orientation and frameworks;
5. Improving internal structures and processes - improving inter-department workflows and using cooperation-intensive exchange processes between people with different organizational functions;
6. Speak consumer's language - retrieving information to build more efficient and insight-driven marketing campaigns;
7. Internal Staff Mindset - develop more widespread empathy, common motivation and objective among employees in the organization;
8. ToolBox - enabling the adaptation and application of specific tools to fit specific proposes based on design thinking models, methodologies and tools;
9. Teaching Formats - improving the process of teaching and learning competences for a more sharp, entrepreneurial and problem solving mindset in education;
10. Team creativity - Improving the ability and the motivation for creative thinking;
11. Customer engagement - involving customers in discussing new possibilities;
12. Reputation Management - development of advertising, used for developing communication and ambassadorship.
13. Experiences Improvement - Development and improvement of user and service experiences;
14. Test - Understanding perceptions and testing potential solutions;
15. Business Modeling - Development of innovative business models and disruptive approaches to go-to-market strategies;
16. Recruiting Tool - Being an important skill when a candidate is recruited.

We at INNOKINETICS strongly believe that design thinking has a crucial role to play within every organization, not only in the current and well-known areas where it is already well installed and applicable, but in a much broader sense.

More concretely speaking, we also apply it in the domains such as HR, learning and organizational cultures.

Our complete methodology is very much “design-thinking based” and furthermore fused and enriched by different skills and knowledge areas, enabling the most optimal and versatile application and implementation within any kind of business setting, context and/or organization. Foremost, we believe that the most important factor for successfully applying design thinking within the company are the people.

In need of specialists who can help you to develop powerful design thinking processes in order to build a true innovation culture within your company? In search of a more powerful growth path by practicing design thinking methods in a real-life context (contextual learning) and coached by real experts?

Just give us a call or send us a message.

Photo Source: https://catracalivre.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/design_thinking_-_reproducao.jpg

This post was originally published on our company website under: http://innokinetics.com/today-design-thinking-must-be-holistic/