Design thinking entails thinking out of the box in order to come up with products that perfectly meets the needs of the customer. At the company level, design thinking can even be used to solve complex problems that, might be plaguing the company, for instance, low volume of sales.
Perhaps this is the reason corporate management, as well as corporate business, are fully embracing design thinking. They have realized its enormous potential for the delivery of competitive advantage by helping their organizations to be increasingly innovative, differentiate brands, and avail products that are more customer focused or centered (Martin, 2009).
The modern product market is characterized by customers who expect more customization and personalization of products from those who produce them. This is where the importance and benefit of design thinking is realized. Design thinking can be seen as enabling organization leaders to craft sustainable as well as humanly satisfying futures foe their businesses (Martin, 2009).
Design has always been acknowledged as an essential catalyst for innovation when it comes to the development of products and services. However, the term design thinking has gained more prominence in business circles in the last few years and has come to be viewed as a process or way of thinking that leads to evolution, transformation and innovation (Davis, 2010). Design thinking is currently understood as both a model for innovation in business as well a platform through which new process models as well as toolkits that can help to accelerate, and improve every creative process are developed (Martin, 2009). It is therefore not just a cognitive process as its two constituent phrases denote but is also a toolkit for the process of innovation and connects the creative design approach with the traditional thinking model of business that is based on both rational problem solving as well as adequate planning (Davis, 2010).
A lot of focus is usually placed on the creation of a product. Many organizations invest a lot in how a product should essentially look like once it is finished. This is quite different from what the process of design thinking entails. Design thinking is concerned with much more and in fact goes beyond the mere creation of products and services (Davis, 2010). It is concerned with exploring the role and purpose of design in the sustenance, development and integration of ideas into broader cultural and ecological environment. As described earlier, design thinking can be seen as a user-based approach that involves observing people so as to come up with practical solutions in the process of product design and then pushing this product into the marketplace. Design thinking can be seen as enabling an organization to essentially balance exploitation and exploration, business invention and business administration and finally mastery and originality. Therefore, by adopting the thought pattern of a designer, an organization is basically unrestrained from the proof burden whereby it is given the opportunity to explore the best solution and not the illusion of what may be proven later (Dorst, 2011).
Design thinking encourages businesses basically to respond the consumer's need, rather than just looking for ways to market to them things that are already in existence (Dorst, 2011). This has a close connection to the development of a functional perspective on what customers do and why they do these things (Carr et al., 2010). Normally, any product is supposed to fulfill particular needs of the consumer. These needs are not just related to the basic utility provided by the product. For example, a consumer does not simply desire phone that will enable him other to call or send messages (Carr et al., 2010). The consumer will require the phone to fulfill other needs such as those of status and fun. By adopting this perspective and recognizing the growing constraints of resources, as well as the changing consumer values and technologies, a designer is able to explore how these needs can be served or fulfilled in various ways.
Design thinking has therefore stimulated a shift in mindset in business organizations that make different products whereby a product is no longer viewed as a physical thing but is now currently seen as entity that is part of a complex relationships set that essentially fulfills different purposes and needs for different people (Carr et al., 2010). These relationships are, therefore, as important as the product in question itself.
Using and adopting design thinking when it comes to business thinking essentially has a huge potential to encourage thinking that is more sustainable. However, this is also partly dependent on the criteria used in the observation of the users, the choice of the particular needs that the organization hopes to explore and finally the overall intention of the organization (Drews, 2009).
There are many companies that have adopted the element of design thinking into their daily operations. One such company was already mentioned, and this is Apple. Another company that has also followed a similar path is Google. It is not just big corporations that can successfully adopt design thinking into their daily operations and succeed (Clark & Smith, 2008). On the contrary, design thinking can be adopted and applied by small corporations. In fact, the adoption of design thinking in small corporations is easier when compared to big corporations (Clark & Smith, 2008). This is because of the complexity of systems and processes in big corporations. However, this should not deter big corporations as research already shows that the overall benefits of design thinking overall outweigh the associated cost and problems.
The firsts step in implementing design thinking in business organization is obviously making the customer the center of everything. Different functional groups within a business organization mate tend to generate and develop ideas that may serve these group’s needs even more than they serve the customer’s needs (Meinel & Leifer, 2010). Although the ideas and decisions may not have ill intentions, they may however fail horribly when the customer is brought into the equation if the decisions have been made in functional isolation. This is why the customer should be the focus of everything including every creative idea advanced and every single decision made in the organization (Lockwood, 2010). The next step for successful implementation of design thinking into a business organization is the identification and definition of the problems on which solutions will be formed around. The business organization is required to define the right problem that is aspires to solve. The team that has been assembled to solve the problem should dissect it and analyze it from different perspectives with the ultimate objective being to solve and improve. Visual representation of the problem can aid a lot in this process.
In trying to solve the defined problem, as many options as possible should be created. Design thinking assists in going about things differently and not just focusing or using one way all the time. It does not matter the kind of problem; as many solutions as possible should be advanced. However, care should be taken no to overanalyze some ideas. Ideas should be extracted from the minds of everyone so that each important input can be incorporated.
There should obviously be some options that are more appealing than others and once these have been selected, then they should be fine-tuned. They should also be embraced by the entire groups, and old things should not hinder the embracement of the ideas (Holloway, 2009). Design thinking provides an exemplary environment where decisions can be made and experimented upon without the burden of proof and the fear and threat of mistakes. It is critical to make sure that all selected options are refined and fine-tuned since the best solution may currently be having a minor deficiency and failure to refine it may lead to the solution being abandoned all together even if it may be the best one (Holloway, 2009).
The winner from the selected options should then be chosen. Resources should then be allocated towards the implementation of the option, and then the actual implementation should commence.
Conclusion
As shown in the above discussion, design thinking holds the key to business organization success especially when it comes to products. It goes beyond determining how a product should essentially look like once it is finished and is instead more concerned with exploring the role and purpose of design in the sustenance, development and integration of ideas into broader cultural and ecological environment. It is a user-based approach that involves observing people so as to come up with a practical solution in the process of product design and then pushing this product into the marketplace. For business organizations, it brings about enormous competitive advantage by helping these organizations to be increasingly innovative, differentiate brands, and avail products that are more customer focused or centered.
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