Design Thinking — Innovation & Customer-Centric

Design thinking is a process for creative problem solving.

Design thinking has a human-centric core. It encourages organizations to focus on the people they’re creating for, which leads to better products, services, and internal processes. When you sit down to create a solution for a business need, the first question should always be what’s the users need behind it? Sounds intuitive right? Unfortunately, most companies don’t think that way, instead the inertial forces of the corporate structure zombify our perspective into doing the same mundane, repetitive task and processes that lead to pretty much nothing.

In employing design thinking, your primary focus is the customer and what they want and how they will perceive/use your solution. One of the main aspects of design thinking is the ideation (thinking) process. The task of ruminating between what is the customer’s perceived issue, what is the actual problem, and how can we solve it. This is why many successful Silicon Valley companies such as Google, Facebook, etc. allow their employees time to think as part of their job. Again sounds like common sense, yet most companies don’t do this.

It also allows those who aren’t trained as designers to use creative tools and methods to address a vast range of challenges. The process starts with taking action and understanding the right questions. It’s about embracing simple mindset shifts and tackling problems from a new direction and perspective.

The first step in design thinking is the customer. As teams in a company break away to tackle a customer’s issue, the silo effect unknowingly forces them to serve their functional need rather than the customer. Next, get a multi-functional team to find the real not perceived issue. Finally, generate multiple solutions even if the problem seems simple, have many ideas then select one and execute.

As company’s push more and more for innovation and digital, what they are missing in their equation is the design thinking factor. The equation for innovation is simple:

Innovation = Problem + Design Thinking + Scalability

Innovation is taking a problem, providing a solution that the customer actually needs and that is scalable across multiple networks. Only then can a solution be created that is innovative while also sustainable.

This is a key feature missing in many “innovative’ solutions today. Due to the fast-pace environment we operate in, no one thinks about long-term impact of a solution as well as ensuring it is sustainable under different environment and pressures.

Design Thinking coupled with Agile is a new paradigm that successful start-ups and disruptors are leveraging to drive change and cause ripples in industry. While all this sounds like common sense and something you would think businesses are doing, it is not. Successful, lean and innovative companies are driving such change within their organization to ensure such customer-centric organizations are organically taking root. To bring change to your company, integrate design thinking.