Design Thinking begins with a Curious Team

Design Thinking is always a team practice. It is the collaborative, multidisciplinary and diverse team out of which Design Thinking lives. This process ignores the ‘’sole-genius’’ narrative and brings the collaborative work methods to the front. Equal and continual participation from each team member is critical to the success, from project beginning to end, to ensure the whole team sees the holistic picture. Each discipline's value offers unique knowledge. This comprehensive and collective knowledge base can be leveraged to deliver greater insight and alignment throughout the innovation project.

Teamwork in Design Thinking can actually be much more convenient than individual work. It is much easier and faster to get a new idea from a team of people who have different opinions and imagination. This is extremely useful for an organization as a whole since it opens a new opportunity for competitive advantage due to the increased speed of the innovation process.

 In order to embrace an innovative culture across the team, ideally several individual, supporting values should be promoted:

●     Have an Outside‐in Perspective

●     Use Empathy for Users & Stakeholders

●     Embrace diversity

●     Think holistically

●     Collaborate in multi‐disciplinary teams

●     Generate many new ideas

●     Find & iterate alternatives

●     Fail early and often, and last but not least,

●     Be open and curious. 

In order to leverage the wealth of these values in a team-setup, teamwork in Design Thinking is all about a flat hierarchies, so that everybody gets a chance to express her/his opinion, since any opinion is not better or worse than the other. This way, every individual, no matter what kind of experience or level of expertise one has, can participate and express themselves in a different surrounding, or about a topic that may not feel comfortable. To achieve this type of equality, it is essential to be well prepared and build trust between team members prior to the problem-solving process, so everybody can feel like they belong and can express themselves.

In Design Thinking, teams begin to find it exciting finding solutions in constrictions. Team members feel obligated to be creative which is helpful in situations where they feel uninspired. Constrictions are viewed as new opportunities and challenges that need to be respected, but also used to come up with something new and never seen before. This is also why every idea is approached in the same manner, no matter how unrealistic it may be. One idea may outcrop during a one-on-one conversation, or a during a heated debate of the team. Therefore, not one idea or opinion should be thrown out, since they might be the ones that lead to the final solution.

Having multidisciplinary teams in Design Thinking is very helpful because team members have different skills and experiences, which helps approach the problem from different ankles sides. However, different occupations, knowledge foundations, access points or methodological approaches, need to be streamlined within the Design Thinking process to not leave the scope. Going through the process, asking questions, analyzing and coming up with ideas will make every individual gain deep knowledge about the problem.

 A Design Thinker’s Profile

Despite the subject matter expertise, there are several essential traits the ideal team member should have to discover and explore new opportunities. These traits can obviously also be found within individuals. Most of these traits/aspects are related to or can be associated with inquisitive thinking; they can be summarized as:

●     Empathy: Design Thinkers can imagine the world from many different perspectives and have the ability to put themselves in another person's shoes. They also take a “people first” approach and imagine solutions that are inherently desirable and meet explicit or latent needs. They notice things that others do not and use their insights to inspire innovation.

●     Integrative thinking: A Design Thinker has the ability to see all of the salient, and sometimes contradictory, aspects of a confounding problem and create novel solutions that go beyond and dramatically improve on existing alternatives.

●     Curiosity: A design thinker is eager to learn more about specific situations and contexts. Ideally he combines epistemic curiosity (knowledge-based: the trait to solve problems, or to learn about new things) with interpersonal curiosity (the interest in new people).

●     Optimism: Design Thinkers assume that no matter how challenging the constraints of a given problem, at least one potential solution is better than the existing alternatives.

●     Experimentalism: Design Thinkers pose questions and explore constraints in creative ways that proceed in entirely new directions.

●     Collaboration: The best design thinkers don’t simply work alongside other disciplines; many of them have signi?cant experience in more than one.

Curiosity as the Gatekeeper to Exploration

There are two different classifications of types of curiosity: state and trait curiosity. Both classifications determine whether curiosity comes from within or outside of a person. State curiosity is external such as wondering why things happen for the sake of just curiousness, for example, wondering the post closes at 6 p.m., whereas stores are opening at 8.p.m. (at least in Europe).  

This type of curiosity tends to be the most relatable for people on a day-to-day basis since state curiosity relates to high levels of reward. If you are assembling your perfect design thinking team though, you may be more focusing on people with curiosity as trait: people who are curious, because they want to understand, people who are digging deeper, because it satisfies their thirst for knowledge and comprehension.

 Can Curiosity be learned?

Neurophysiologists have shown that the human brain releases rewards when curiosity is satisfied. Curiosity gives many people “a kick”. A central question for corporates therefore is: can people in adulthood consciously increase their level of curiosity? According to personality psychologist Jens Asendorpf of the Humboldt University in Berlin, there is little research on this subject, but curiosity can be seen as a basic motive and my be therefore as stable and robust as other personality traits. These traits are for some people anchored in their nature - even beyond childhood. With others it only appears now and then. With increasing age some may have forgotten to be curious.However, this does not happen irretrievably. One can awaken curiosity again:

·     Reading and learning: read regularly and a lot. You will quickly notice that this way you not only learn a lot, but also become more and more curious. Many successful people are constantly reading new books.

·     Be open to new information: Are you eager to learn new things? Or are you suspicious of new information and prefer to rely on "what you've always known"? You never stop learning: Arouse your curiosity and continuously acquire new knowledge. Expand your horizons. Your life will become more colourful and exciting. And you will also become more interesting for other people.

·     Seize opportunities instead of shying away from risks: Actively seek and seize new opportunities. Get started with curiosity instead of recoiling from insecurity or fear. True to the motto "Who doesn't dare, doesn't win" or the other way around: “Who dares, wins!”

 Therefore Merck has designed Curious Elements . They consist of four exercises to stimulate curiosity that cover the four most important dimensions of curiosity:

·     Openness to people’s ideas

·     Joyous Exploration

·     Stress tolerance

·     Deprivation Sensitivity

Enjoy these little trainings and feel free to share your thoughts with us. Can curiosity be trained?

This text is a collaboration project for the Merck Curiosity Initiative. Merck is known as Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany in the United States & Canada. As a science and technology company, Merck fosters the idea of curiosity.