The latest issue of Harvard Business Review features an article titled "Design Thinking". The message of the article by Tim Brown of Ideo is not new for designers, but it is for conventional managers. The innovation here is not design thinking per se - it was practiced and explored by designers since there is design - but that it makes its way into the business mainstream. In terms of trend research, the fact that an article on design thinking is published in Harvard Business Review shows that it is finally coming out of the fringe. It took some time - business guru Tom Peters was advocating for design since at least 10 years, which makes him already part of the avant-garde.
Less discussed, but perhaps the most challenging goal for design thinking is how to transfer its approach into everyday organisational practice. This is because in everyday organisational life it is often the unquestioned, taken-for-granted attitudes and reactions which turn out to be barriers to design thinking. What to look out for? I have started to put together a list:
Preconception: "My idea is GREAT"
People love their own ideas. On the one hand, this motivates people to come up with something. On the other hand, it makes people fall in love with their ideas although they might not be that good after all (the TV series American Inventor is a great illustration). This is an issue which also regularly comes up in design teaching, when students stick to an idea simply because they are convinced that it is good.
Design, although it has much to do with art, is not art. Art expresses individual viewpoints and relies on the approval of a select few. Design, on the other hand, needs to appeal to a wider, and often very wide, audience.
Prejudice: "These guys are wrong, I am right"
Prejudice, unfortunately, is an everyday encounter, but it's a particularly bad trait for designers. There are are some whose work probably was rejected once or a couple of times, and they consequently blame their audience, or managers. In fact, lots of good designs have been rejected throughout history - but mostly there is a rationale why a design gets rejected. A design thinker is required to find out and understand this rationale.
In the corporate realm, the one side is the "suits", the other side are the people "with the long scarf". However, both sides are needed to make design thinking work and actual design reality. The "suits" are interested in, among others, planning and efficiency, while designers, among others, look at things such as aesthetics, harmony, and effects on society (see also here).
Patronizing: "That does not work. I tell you what works"
It might work, it might not. It pays off to listen to different opinions, but it also can pay off not to give up right away and to show that an idea can work. Be aware of the sort of specialists who pretend to know their job so well that they have found the only one way of seeing a problem and insist on sticking to it - they are just (see Preconception above) people who are in love with their idea and nobody in the last 20 years questioned it.
Design thinkers and innovators do not defend their first idea to the bitter end, but welcome constructive critique, are ready to take a risk and a second look - in short, try to see things through the eyes of others.
Procrastination: A tried and tested response of organisations when faced with a new idea is to delay it (see also here). An effective way to get rid of innovation, but also an effective way to get your own company behind and right out of the marketplace.
