Conclusion
These tools have always existed for the successful business across the world where they put the customer at the core. Successful businesses have feedback tools and strategy to constantly innovate in this efficiency-based changing world. Design Thinking can become all the more relevant today as times are changing fast but it only stays effective if understood and mastered and this takes time. As discussed that nowadays it hardly takes two to three years for a successful product to become boring and the danger of becoming obsolete and that is why Design Thinking methodology can help businesses thrive because it puts the customer at the core of evolving, changing or designing something new. As I have already discussed that if made a habit to incorporate Design Thinking into the culture, it can help organisations change faster than the likes of Nokia who could not adapt to the changing customers needs, wants and motivations. It is way of thinking and approaching a problem and once understood can do wonders. For management to actually imbibe Design Thinking into their culture requires top management to explore in a holistic way as a part of their business strategy rather than some tool used by some fancy design agencies.
How Design Thinking can be effectively used in businesses to foster growth and innovation?
First I would like to reflect on how few advocates of Design Thinking reciprocate that it is not effective if not understood thoroughly and applied properly. I have come to an understanding that Design Thinking can be mastered with time and works wonders once the essence of it is felt. As (Brown, 2011) says “ Whenever I’m faced with a tough business challenge, rather than trying to use some prescribed CEO logic, I tackle it as a design problem. That’s not an inborn ability, it’s a skill — OK, a mastery — learned over many years of doing”
(Nussbaum, 2011) one of Design Thinking’s biggest advocates says that Design Thinking has given the design profession and society at large all the benefits it has to offer and is beginning to ossify and actually do harm. He says that by packaging within a process businesses see it as a linear, gated by the book methodology. He adds CEO’s especially took to the process side of Design Thinking as an efficiency based process hoping that a process trick would significant cultural and organisational change. In order to appeal to business culture process, it is often denuded of the mess, the conflict, failure, emotions and looping circularity which is part and parcel of creative process. (Kilian, 2015) says that by conducting contextual one-on-one interviews, shopper-shadowing exercises, and “follow me homes” to observe, listen, and learn how people actually use and experience products, plot out customer decision journeys helps businesses understand exactly what motivates people, what bothers them, and where there are opportunities for creating delightful experiences.
(Sarrazin, 2015) director McKinsey’s Silicon Valley says Design thinking and everything associated with it is now more central to business strategy. He adds that good design can be very smart once measurement tools are in place to provide the feedback to the designers. This is just good business sense, and it’s exciting that we’re bringing an extra layer of thinking around what the customer is experiencing, or what the customer is expecting.
(Nooyi, 2015) PepsiCo’s CEO says that in order to have the sustainable competitive advantage you have to reinvent every two to three years, as opposed to an earlier period of eight to ten years. She wants to bring in a cultural change to push Design Thinking into business strategy. Design Thinking actually helps accelerates the process to build new products, fail and learn faster. PepsiCo could achieve double digits bottomline growth with this. In organisations like Amazon, the executive team is required to call in and visit the call centres and listen to customer needs firsthand. That’s a great example where everybody is in charge of understanding what customers’ needs, motivations, pain points, and behaviours are, and for making them paramount in solving business problems. Apple or Uber or even Airbnb have different ways of bringing the user experience to the forefront, it is a way to fundamentally compete. Deutsche Bank, for example, required all employees to use products that its customers used as a way to understand what customers were experiencing.
I believe that design is about learning, and what could be a greater gift than to have an organisation that’s constantly learning? I also believe that human’s constantly evolve and so should the products and services revolving around them. If businesses are able to understand the needs of the customer and have an organization that’s good at doing this on an ongoing basis, it can create engagement and loyalty and something truly special bond between a company, its customers and its employees. Understanding the customer is everyone’s job, keeping empathy as central to the organization, designing in real time, and being able to act quickly are the main pieces of the design-driven culture.
Of course, there are the trappings that make those things easier to embody. Things like flexible workspaces that have great areas for collaboration, making it easy to come together quickly. Rooms that can be set up so that there are hybrid teams sitting together that are cross-functional. Thinking about breaking down any traditional barriers and walls to make it easier to collaborate, easier to keep humans first, and easier to think about how we learn, and test, and fail, and get things to market quickly. That’s how design thinking and design- driven cultures can allow businesses to be more successful and have a greater impact. It is a strategic weapon businesses can include in their arsenal.
Comments