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Design Thinking

A new perspective on insight

Design Thinking is a stimulating approach to the development and implementation of ideas. Although the general principle has been around for many years, it has recently been developed to new levels by Tim Brown and his team as a unique way of solving problems. Tim is CEO and President of IDEO, an innovation and design company based in California.
 
A blast from the past
An early example of Design Thinking comes from Thomas Edison. Although he is perhaps primarily thought of as the inventor of the light bulb, he actually built an entire industry around this – the generation of electricity. Edison’s genius stemmed from his understanding of people’s wants and needs and of their likes and dislikes.
 
This is also the basic principle behind Tim Brown’s approach to Design Thinking. Insight professionals need to be aware of this very progressive approach, as it contains a wealth of invaluable ideas. Design Thinking embraces many aspects of insight, but develops them even further. Most importantly, it provides some very practical suggestions for one of the most difficult parts of the insight life cycle – the ability to put insight into action.
 
Three stages of idea development
Brown’s approach starts with Inspiration. This stage involves looking at issues from the viewpoint of the customer and incorporates many insight principles – including the use of ethnographic and other techniques. These help the insight team to really get into the customer’s mindset so that they can empathise with them and gain an even deeper understanding of their business issues.
 
The next stage of the Design Thinking approach is Ideation – the development of good ideas, fuelled by insight. It looks at processes such as prototyping and how these can be used more effectively to bring ideas to life.
 
The final stage is Implementation. This is the point at which many good ideas can easily be lost. Brown suggests different ways of helping businesses to take on new ideas, including story telling. 
 
All of these three stages apply to insight – and if Insight teams aren’t already putting many of these ideas into action, they are potentially missing out. We should all be much more actively involved in idea development. As Brown himself says, “Insights are about getting out into the world, connecting with new things. Designers see the world as a source of innovation, not just validation.”
 
He comments that not so long ago, designers were regarded rather as a ‘priesthood’. They would be given a project, disappear and then some time later would present the results to the client. However, Brown’s notion of Design Thinking is very different, with a host of people from different disciplines being involved in the process.

Tim has recently written an article in the Harvard Business Review that explains the approach in more detail. A video of a lecture he gave also gives an overview of his approach to Design Thinking. It can be found at http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/357/. It's an hour long but we believe its an hour very well spent.

There’s also a You Tube video that shows Design Thinking in practice (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZH70qhmEso). It's shorter and a bit more fun.

In future editions of 5 Minute Insights, we will take a closer look at each of the three stages mentioned above.

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