3/18/2019 Design Thinking at Work Free Summary by David Dunne

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Design Thinking at Work

How Innovative Organizations are Embracing Design
David Dunne
University of Toronto Press, 2018 
 180  1
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 180 Recommendation
More than ever, executives seek creativity and innovation from their teams.
Their greatest hope that their teams will discover a disruptive breakthrough
 that can dominate their industries. Their greatest fear is to find themselves on
the wrong end of disruption. David Dunne, a foremost expert in the field,
explains the advantages of design thinking: advance warning of future
 disruption, a stream of incremental improvements to existing products and
even game-changing innovation. But, he warns, design thinking works only if
you understand it well and apply it with patience. Unlike many authors who
 extol the wonders of design and creativity, Dunne doesn’t cheerlead. He offers
a sober assessment, including the common mistakes leaders make and the
ongoing difficulty of making true design thinking succeed and endure in
organizations. Leaders should embrace this slim volume, including the high-
level steps they must take to overcome the common pitfalls that
undermine design thinking initiatives.

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3/18/2019 Design Thinking at Work Free Summary by David Dunne

In this summary, you will learn

• What elements constitute design thinking,
• Why design thinking has grown in popularity as a means to incremental
and disruptive innovation, and
• What strategies are necessary to implement design thinking while
balancing the “three tensions” common to almost every firm.

Take-Aways
• The essence of design thinking, in many ways, involves identifying
problems by seeing things that other people miss.
• Design thinking requires executive support for slow, reflective
experimentation and systems thinking, not only for creativity.
• Spend time framing and reframing a problem or opportunity.
• Allow an indefinite period for experimentation, prototyping, discussion
and reflection.
• Give design teams separate creative space while keeping them
connected with your firm.
• Balance the team’s focus on incremental improvements of existing
products with their search for breakthrough innovations.
• Help the team balance internal and external stakeholder demands.
• Build credibility and support for your team by focusing first on “quick
wins.”
• Develop a design mind-set throughout your firm. Bake creativity into
your culture.
• Emphasize the multiple perspectives of internal and external
stakeholders, including the systems that new innovations must work
within.

Summary
Difficult Magic
Design thinking focuses on users finding solutions that meet their needs
while driving business value. Successful design thinking demands creativity
and systems thinking. Design thinking helps you identify business problems
and generate creative solutions through iterative development that involves
feedback, experimentation and reflection. Outcomes often produce novel,
creative and practical solutions – sometimes even industry-changing
breakthroughs – but still must survive organizational processes. Design
thinking requires patience and long-term commitment from designers, the
organization and its leaders.

The Design Process

When innovator Gerwin Hoogendoorn reinvented the umbrella, he didn’t
conduct market research or study umbrella history. He took umbrellas apart
and experimented by reconstructing them in different ways. He drew
pictures, pieced together prototypes, tested those prototypes in harsh weather
and talked with people who tested them for him. He considered his results
before starting the process again…and again. He iterated his way to his first
marketable product and, eventually, enormous success. Hoogendoorn’s
experience illuminated umbrellas’ shortcomings, so he dove right into
experimentation. In most cases, designers first talk to and observe users to
spot problems that consumers might take for granted but that a designer
might recognize and fix. The essence of design thinking involves identifying
problems by seeing things other people miss.

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3/18/2019 Design Thinking at Work Free Summary by David Dunne

”
“While design thinking may be revolutionary for
organizations, for most it is a slow revolution – more like
lighting a candle than a fuse.”

Procter & Gamble (P&G) took this path in its billion-dollar Swiffer line of
products. Designers went into homes, watched people clean their floors and
asked questions. They zeroed in on what people hated most – the messiness
and the time it took to sweep, get water, wet the floor, drain the mop and
repeat. After identifying users’ problems, P&G designers invented a tool that
combined sweeping and mopping while eliminating the need for water.

Design thinkers reflect on a problem before attempting solutions.

They consider it from many angles and perspectives through a process called
“abductive reasoning” or inventing possibilities. Through experimentation
and prototyping, gathering knowledge and reframing, design thinking
can solve the “wicked problems” complex organizations face – problems that
often defy articulation.

A Disciplined Creativity
Design thinking has caught on in the private and public sectors, but often
manifests in a “dumbed-down” format that emphasizes brainstorming
and wild creativity aimed at producing disruptive goods or services. Leaders
embracing this approach often don’t invest the time needed to recast and
explore problems from all sides or to commit to indefinite prototyping,

“ ”
testing and reflection.

“Exciting as design thinking is…it is not easy to apply.”

A true design mind-set is difficult to instill. Governments and other large

bureaucracies might fund design labs and staff them with creative people, but
often lack the discipline to leave their teams alone or the patience to extend
them the runways they need. This light version of design thinking often fails,
giving it and the real process a bad name. Smart companies accept the
unpredictability of the process. They know it may deliver peripheral benefits
beyond innovation, new product design or industry disruption. For example,
design thinking often spurs creativity across the firm, lures creative hires or
prompts critical thinking. It can spark collaboration across silos or encourage
employees to consider customers’ and other stakeholders’ perspectives.

Organizations such as the Australian Tax Office, P&G, the Mayo Clinic and
the government of Denmark’s MindLab successfully installed design thinking
and sustain it through leadership transitions. The culture in places like a
government department, a hospital or a manufacturing plant will clash with a
design team’s methods – most pointedly, its focus on experimentation over
execution. But it can succeed in any determined firm.

“Three Tensions”
In virtually every organization, leaders face similar challenges in
implementing design thinking. The designers’ need for distance and freedom
from the dominant culture must balance against their need to stay near
enough to the mainstream not to lose the internal perspective.
Managers must help the design team balance demands from inside the firm
with those of external stakeholders. Leaders’ desire for design thinking to

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3/18/2019 Design Thinking at Work Free Summary by David Dunne

contribute to the bottom line must balance it with their hopes for truly
disruptive breakthroughs. To implement design thinking successfully, your
firm must overcome these critical challenges:

1. “Inclusion Tension”
Design labs within bigger organizations, like the Mayo Clinic, face a culture
clash. For example, doctors view experimentation as a process grounded in
the scientific method. Designers go about it differently. They don’t develop
hypotheses and isolate variables. They prototype, fail, and reflect on what
they learned. They repeat this process until they succeed or abandon the
effort. Their process might not appear rigorous to a trained scientist, but what
works for doctors doesn’t necessarily work for designers. But if designers
adopt the cultural norms of their organizations, they lose their advantage and

“
relevance.

”
“The term ‘design thinking’ is now well-established. For
organizations, what matters is not the label but its ability to
provide a fresh perspective through its methods and iterative
approach.”

Resist the urge to protect creatives from the culture by isolating them in an
off-site lab or creative space. This gives designers creative freedom, but they
must remain sufficiently close to their organizations to produce innovations
that address their firms’ needs, and to infuse creativity and collaboration
throughout their organizations.

To stay integrated and survive an organization’s culture, design teams need

executive protection. Provide cover and generate appreciation for design
thinking and the process throughout your firm. Build broad support for
design thinking by emphasizing “quick wins,” in which the design team helps
existing lines of business improve. Develop clear success measures, whether
you use a simple count of the number of successful innovations or measure
culture change through employee surveys. Nurture your design team; give it
time to blossom. Make sure the team establishes strong internal and external
connections to keep new ideas flowing in the context of your firm’s needs.

2. “Disruptive Tension”
Design thinkers might aim at moon shots – the big, disruptive innovation
that changes industries and grabs headlines, but organizations must improve
bread-and-butter products. Gear your design team to look to the future to
create disruptive technologies or products and to foresee disruption
that might threaten the firm. Ensure that they maintain a separate focus on
improving what the firm already does. Focusing simultaneously on small

“
improvements and monumental change causes great tension.

”
“The survival of design thinking depends critically on support
of leaders.”

Finding people with the skills and temperament to balance these demands –
creativity that aligns with interpersonal, teamwork and administrative skills –
is challenging. Small improvements are often more popular and less risky. Big
disruption faces big resistance; big firms rarely, if ever, “disrupt themselves.”
Organizations have a way of silencing people, squashing creativity and

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3/18/2019 Design Thinking at Work Free Summary by David Dunne

encouraging conformity, especially during trying times when they most need
creative ideas. This can give designers pause when considering whether to
share ideas or counter opinions.

An initial focus on incremental changes and quick wins may give your team
members the credibility, political capital and confidence they need to
spend more time on long-horizon disruptions. Canadian Tire’s design lab, for
example, produced Christmas lights users control from their smartphones.
The lights sprang from the design team’s “Internet of Things” project, which
they hope will change the game for the entire business in the future.
By blending incremental and disruptive innovation, Canadian Tire
largely removes this kind of tension.

3. “Perspective Tension”
From a physician’s perspective, your illness is the only issue. But from your
perspective, it might be one of many issues you deal with daily. Many doctors
limit their effectiveness in treating you because they consider only a narrow
range of information and factors – those central to your physical health.
Another doctor might see your medical condition from your perspective –
through the lens of all your challenges – and then can provide a treatment

“
that considers the system within which it must work.

”
“Design is everywhere: in the hat we wear, the flower bed in
our front garden, the paper cup we drink from.”

This paradigm holds true in almost every business and profession. Designers,
for example, can’t afford to hold only a single perspective, whether their own,
the user’s, their firm’s or an external stakeholder’s. They must balance and
manage each competing need. Nobody can hold multiple
perspectives simultaneously. Your firm’s needs may be easier to keep in mind,
because your colleagues are always around and your customers and other
external stakeholders’ aren’t. Establishing and balancing priorities creates
perspective tension.

Great ideas – truly innovative products – sometimes don’t survive first

contact with the broader organization because people see and use things so
differently, even within the same firm. For your intended innovation
to survive implementation, consider the perspectives of both internal and
external stakeholders. When the perspectives of all your stakeholders come
into play, you generate “wicked complexity,” especially when you try to gauge
the importance of each perspective in terms of your design. Some designers
manage this tension by deliberately delivering “unfinished” products to put
the onus on others to decide what to do with the solutions. This draws more
people into the process and gains buy-in at the same time. Other designers
take a hands-on role in implementation. This allows them to bring their
design mind-set to product management and administration, forcing them to
adopt a systems approach and systems thinking.

Best Practice
Though design thinking has existed for decades, many still perceive it as an
unstructured creative process rather than as a careful, reflective discipline.
When you practice it well, it contains elements of both, and more. Adopt the
following best practices to improve your odds of successful design thinking:

1. Separate but connected – At least at first, create a safe, close but

separate space conducive to your team’s creativity in layout,
furnishings, and the like. Even if you prefer to spread designers out in

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3/18/2019 Design Thinking at Work Free Summary by David Dunne

various divisions around your organization, maintain a separate space

where they can come together to exchange ideas and learn from each
other. Foster communities of practice for designers to gather, share and
discuss ideas – internally and externally.
2. Inform and educate – Designers need leadership’s strong support
and appreciation. Educate top executives and the rest of your firm in
design thinking and the benefits of a creative culture. Keep the
organization informed of what your design team is doing, its processes
and its progress.
3. Source multiple perspectives – Look for a variety of
perspectives on design from inside and outside your firm. Think about
designing platforms for wide application, as opposed to one-off
solutions. Help stakeholders understand how they can apply your
innovations. Bring people inside your circle to share feedback and
ideas through workshops and focus groups. Ask prospective users to
test your prototypes, watch them use your tools, then discuss their
impressions and ideas for improvement.
4. Adopt a systems approach to design – Your solutions must
operate within larger systems, and consider political, emotional, societal
or environmental concerns. Expand your notion of stakeholders to
consult with community and interest groups.

Creating a Structure
Understand your firm’s innovation strategy and whether design thinking
offers a good fit. Do its leaders want disruption or incremental improvement?
Do they seek an organizational mind-set or a cultural shift? Determine your
ideal structure. A think tank set-up may be best for disruptive innovation,
while a distributed approach could be best for incremental
innovation. Choose a design team leader who can garner and keep high-level
support and who appreciates the importance of maintaining support from the
organization. Find initial projects that can result in quick wins, and herald
those successes company-wide.

About the Author

David Dunne worked with Roger Martin and other thought leaders at the
Rotman School of Management in Toronto and teaches design thinking at the
University of Victoria in British Columbia.

This document is restricted to the personal use of Minnie Mouse ([email protected])

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Margarita Chicherina • 4 weeks ago

Интересно, но трудно реализуемо на практике. Intranet & soziale netzwerk корпоративный могут помогать развивать эту идею

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