Design Thinking ? Innovation

Ever picked up a book on Design Thinking at the airport and thought: this is it. This is the right approach to innovation. This will work for my company.

Dave Blakely , who taught Design Thinking at Stanford, will be the first to tell you that Design Thinking and Innovation are not interchangeable.

Surprised? Don't be. Dive into his perspective.

The time to start is now. Enjoy.

By Elke Boogert, Mach49 Managing Editor

Design Thinking ? Innovation

By Dave Blakely , EVP Growth Institute at Mach49

Enamored with Design Thinking? You’re not the only one. But if you find yourself thinking that Design Thinking is the only path to innovation, let’s talk.

There’s more than one perspective on innovation, and, what’s more: they’re not mutually exclusive. And here’s the important part: Winners in the innovation game always combine methods and tools from many different perspectives, to create a set of tools which are right for their organizations.

Let's back up

Since the late 90’s, the C-suite has been using Design Thinking to fundamentally alter how services, experiences and businesses were designed. And as a leader at IDEO, most recently as their Managing Director of Technology Strategy, I led teams around the world to create new ventures based on Design Thinking.?

People got very enamored with Design Thinking.

Unfortunately, now we’re at the point where folks conflate Design Thinking with innovation. I saw entire innovation departments built exclusively around Design Thinking, after a (former) Chief Innovation Officer took a class at Stanford on the method.?

I say this as someone who has taught Design Thinking at the Stanford d.school: design thinking does not equal innovation. I don't want to diminish it! Not at all. It’s just one perspective, and Design Thinking has very little to say about certain types of challenges your business experiences. And, just for clarity, let’s define innovation:

Innovation includes new approaches to decarbonizing your manufacturing processes. Or participating in the future of electric, autonomous vehicles. Or capturing a market with new target personas and new content marketing.?

I urge you to get familiar with these ‘big five’ perspectives on innovation:

Design Thinking

Design Thinking – which is a learnable skill, not an innate talent – starts with the needs of human beings. Observe people to become inspired and only then consider the possibilities of technology and the requirements of business and policy. You then use your inspiration to visualize possibilities and prototype.?

Agile Thinking

With Agile Thinking, you accelerate growth and adopt technology by breaking programs into a series of sprints. The notion behind Agile Thinking is that you do away with the arrogant notion that new products or services are fully specifiable, predictable, and can?be built through meticulous and extensive planning. Instead, you develop high-quality products and services using a small team, using the principles of continuous design improvement and testing based on rapid feedback and change.

Lean Method

The Lean approach – which focuses heavily on workplace efficiency – captures customer feedback early and often, minimizing waste in the product development cycle. Lean prioritizes experimentation over elaborate planning, and celebrates continuous, incremental improvement.

Open Innovation

Open Innovation is unusual in that it’s the practice of businesses and organizations sourcing ideas from external sources as well as internal ones. This includes internal and external paths to development and release. Because you innovate with partners, you share both the risks and the rewards.

Disruptive Innovation

Finally, there’s Disruptive Innovation, courtesy of the late great Dr Christensen. This is the method of creating an entrepreneurial group of outsiders, focusing on overlooked areas, that eventually disrupt existing organizations, markets, and value networks. Disruptive innovation can result from the introduction of a product or service into an established market that performs better and at a lower cost than existing offerings (with the intent to displace market leaders and transform the industry).?

Let’s talk overlap

You don’t need a single perspective on innovation. You need multiple perspectives.?

That's what we did at Mach49 too, to develop how we incubate ventures and our strategies for venture investing. After all, design thinking doesn't say much about execution and iterative prototyping, so we took a page from the agile playbook. We also included elements of open innovation, and we took general inspiration from Clayton Christensen and disruptive innovation. And so on.?

I’ll be frank: design thinking has been very good to me. But I challenge anyone who thinks that any innovation challenge can be addressed by Design Thinking.

Nothing is that easy.

As EVP of Mach49’s Growth Institute, DAVE BLAKELY uses his experience at two successful startups and innovation firm IDEO, and his background as an instructor at Stanford and UC Berkeley. He cultivates dynamic new paradigms of training and distance learning, transforming a global network of professionals into successful venture builders and venture investors. Dave works to always be completely present in whatever he’s doing. When he's working, he's 100% present for his clients, and when he's spending time with friends and family, work is the last thing on his mind. As a husband and father, he cherishes his tight-knit group of friends and is deeply involved in his local community.

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