Finding the pathway to effectively introduce Design Thinking to an organization
The business value of design has been established by numerous industry reports that suggest the outperformance of companies that have a high design maturity. There could be many approaches to introduce design thinking methodologies to an organization. For some organizations, the leadership takes the initiative and seeks external intervention, while for others, the designers scattered at the base level might try to bring about change from their humble position. Many organizations struggle to find an approach that’s best for them to transform into an innovation machine.
There has been a good body of research suggesting work done in the integration of design and business. Among many practices that organizations are adopting as a means for digital transformation or otherwise, adapting design thinking has been a strong contender. Outside the organizations, many sources can help organizations to be more design-centered.
Design thinking coaching institutes are training the human resource to be practitioners and promoters of the methodologies and frameworks of design thinking. This practice of design thinking needs to permeate throughout the organization to show compelling results. Organizations may also hire consultants who use design thinking to deliver value, but they miss out on the outcome of the process while being delivered just the output. Organizations may acknowledge the scattered innovation efforts at various internal levels and create innovation teams to foster them.
Depending on the size and structure of the organization, industry, and leadership, a culture of innovation can be harnessed by identifying and following practices that are most suitable for them.
The Leadership Dilemma
As vague as the definition of design may seem to be, it’s understanding and application also varies for everyone. As the leadership of an organization is developing strategies to gain competitive advantage or explore new business opportunities, they can choose to look at design from two very different perspectives. They can see design as just another asset in their toolkit to execute the action plan or they can apply design at a higher level while formulating the business strategy itself.
While navigating through the challenges and obstacles of managing and growing a business, an executive leader relies on a diverse set of resources, internal and external. As practices in the industry are always evolving, sometimes driven by the fear of competition, while other times borrowing inspiration from other industries, the leaders recognize the need for a new way to be innovative, many a time finding that in design thinking.
Developing the innovation capability in-house or outsourcing it can make a huge difference, so the decision at the hands of leadership is very critical. And not an easy one to make.
There are many risks involved, and convincing them to invest in design thinking as a methodology has always been a challenge. To its advantage, design thinking has many tools in the arsenal that are not only used for the end goal of business but throughout the process starting from showing its value to the leadership itself.
Sources of innovation
A traditional organization that is structured to work in silos puts in place many checks (or stages) for controlling quality and improving efficiency. These checks and protocols for decision making prove to be unwanted obstacles for speed and innovation. Every organization would ideally want to be very innovative to enable itself to explore new business opportunities, but without any legacy of innovation, it can take several years to reach that state (img d).
Many organizations outsource the innovation when it recognizes the need for it (img a), while few organizations can set up an in-house “innovation center”(img b) allowing it some autonomy and innovation budget to function as a small start-up and take risks, hoping that any ideas that stream out of it could one day be converted into viable blue ocean revenue streams. A few organizations also see kindles of innovation spirit scattered within the organization (img c), but without a strong culture of encouraging innovation, these organizations fail to take advantage of these potential opportunities.
The preference bias for external intervention
There are many factors, internal and external, that may trigger an organization to seek external consultation for innovation. Irrespective of the cause, when the organization seeks innovation, there are many influencers in determining the right approach for innovation.
One is the decision to look for it within the organization, or outside. As demonstrated in img c, an organization can see the potential within but may lack a framework to incubate those opportunities, especially when the middle and upper management do not have much experience with innovation. In such scenarios, the organization hires external consultants, and even though the actual individuals on the outside would be using similar methodologies, framework, and tools as those few scattered innovators inside, the perception of their ability to be impactful is increased.
Because the leadership has made the conscious decision of hiring an outsider in a more formal structure, they show a higher level of commitment and seriousness towards innovation, and provide much more support and approval to the ideas and opportunities that are offered, thus increasing the rate of success for these opportunities to be converted into sustainable businesses. On the other hand, they might be short-sighted in seeing the internal efforts as being beneficial just the individuals and for the sake of their career growth and not for adding business value to the organization. This leads to the bias in preferring outside resources over investing in the effort to encourage internal efforts.
Changing the internal innovation culture
Very few organizations brave the challenge of changing the whole organization as IBM did, and it takes time, money, and commitment. The larger the organization, the more friction it faces to change the set ways of its people. Long term employees especially show resistance to change either because of the threat of being replaced or by the fear of inability to learn.
The challenge falls to the hands of leadership to change this mindset and provide reassurance to the people, empower them to develop themselves in these abilities and make innovation a part of their work life. One very effective way to do that is to coach their high-spirited talent to be advocates of change. This coaching, offer executed by innovation or design thinking institutes is effective because of the external bias discussed before. The coaching, however, is most effective only when the leadership makes persistent efforts to reinforce the practice of design thinking and empowers its employees to become not just regular users, but also promoters and instructors of design thinking methodologies inside the organization.
A young designer’s desire
The brave souls represented in img c, who have the spirit of innovation in them, but are working in an environment that does not necessarily provide support for their ideas, and expects them to fulfill their tactical responsibilities, face a bigger challenge to seek recognition. Because these individuals are driven and creative, they want to do more than what is specified in their KRIs. Tugging along the monotony of their daily work, they want to do something new, have an impact on the organization, solve relevant problems, and change the world.
However, their managers sometimes overlook this energy and mistake it for temporary short-sighted excitement. And sometimes it may be just that. But more often than not, there is hidden potential and it remains hidden due to the missing culture of recognizing and developing that.
To considerably improve the chances of success and for their ideas to see the light of day, they have to put in extra effort to show the value of their efforts to the stakeholders in the language they understand. In most cases, it’s the potential return of investment, but early-stage concepts can rarely paint a complete picture of market opportunity size. They need to be backed up by signs of desirability, feasibility as well as viability for the organization to take on a project that requires the investment of time and budget.
Fortunately, designers are equipped with tools that can help them produce tangible artifacts, visualizing user stories to humanize their need and the potential to develop solutions addressing these needs, leveraging quantitative data and synthesizing insights from its analysis that the stakeholders can resonate with and illustrate against their objectives, and referencing the ever-increasing documentation and case studies that are an undeniable testimony of the evolution of design-centered methodologies and the value they've added in practically every context.
Innovation demands proactive design leadership
Design thinking has already proved its value in organizations across many industries. To effectively and efficiently adapt these methodologies and become more innovative in finding business opportunities, organizations must find the right approach to implement them, and with a proactively leading effort. It has been observed that having external intervention proves better than just internal effort, not just in the efficiency but also the level of commitment from the leadership. Additionally, having the leadership’s buy-in is very important in addition to the bottom-up approach to effectively spread the culture of innovation throughout the organization and explore sustainable business opportunities.
References
Just some of the academic research that inspired the ideas discussed above. I strongly recommend these materials.
1. Martin, R. (2009). The design of business. Cambridge MA: Harvard Business Press.
2. Bijl-Brouwer, M. V. D. & Dorst, K. (2017). Advancing the strategic impact of human-centred design. Design Studies.
3. Roozenberg, N. F. M., & Eekels, J. (1995). Product design: Fundamentals and methods. Chichester, Endland: Wiley.
4. Dorst, K. (2001). Creativity in the design process: co-evolution of problem-solving. Design Studies.
5. Kolko, J. (2017). The divisiveness if design thinking. Interactions Magazine.
6. Steyaert, C. (2007). Entrepreneuring as a conceptual attractor? A review of process theories in 20 years of entrepreneurship studies. Entrepreneurship and regional development.
7. Sarasvathy, S. (2008). Effectuation: Elements of entrepreneurial expertise. Cheltenham, England: Elgar.
8. Kolko, J. (2018, June 29). When The Business Wags The Dog • Modernist Studio. Retrieved from http://www.themoderniststudio.com/2018/07/02/clues-to-a-poor-experience-when-the-business-wags-the-dog/
Parts of this article were taken from my master’s essay at Carnegie Mellon University. At the time of writing this piece, I am working as an innovation consultant for technology companies in Pittsburgh.
