From Ideating to E3: Executing, Engaging and Envisioning

The detailed analysis of over 40 Italian organizations providing advisory services based on the Design Thinking paradigm allow us to map 4 different and particular kinds of Design Thinking.

The Creative Problem Solving approach is based on three fundamental principles rooted in the origins of Design Thinking. The main aim of this kind of Design Thinking is to solve problems; it assumes that users have a need or a problem, and they search for the best solution. This approach implies that organizations innovate by understanding the user needs (what problems customers currently have), and then creating ideas to better solve these problems. If solving problems is the main aim of this kind of Design Thinking, ideating is the activity to be nurtured and stimulated to originally solve the problems addressed. The assumption is that the more ideas are generated, the greater the chance of finding a good one. Ideating is about sharing insights with the team, make sense of a vast amount of data, and identifying opportunities for design to generate many ideas. Creative problem solving is not about coming up with the ‘right’ idea, it is about generating the broadest range of possibilities. Ideating is the principle that suggests exploring broad landscapes in terms of concepts and opportunities. Ideation provides both the fuel and the raw materials that enable building prototypes and getting innovative solutions into the hands of users. Ideating allows crossing the bridge between identifying the problem and creating the solution for users by combining understanding of the problem with team imagination to generate solution concepts.

In terms of practices, the Creative Problem Solving approach moves from the outside-in. It starts from going out and observing how users use existing products; then it requires the ability to interpret these observations to create original solutions. Recognizing relevant insights requires empathizing with the users. Transforming the selected innovative ideas into tangible, even if rough, prototypes allows interacting with the users, receiving feedback, and learning from failures. A prototype can be anything that a user can interact with. The Creative Problem Solving approach relies on combining the conscious and unconscious mind, rational thoughts, and imagination. The contribution of the na?ve mind allows addressing the problems in a fresh and lateral perspective. Innovation teams adopting the Creative Problem Solving approach need to be optimistic and demonstrate an experimental attitude; they need to empathize and iterate, looking for inspiration in unexpected places.

The Sprint Execution approach to some extent represents the linear evolution of Creative Problem Solving to the point that both the principles and practices highlight some similarities. The aim of the Sprint Execution approach does not consist in just designing a product concept or an innovative idea, but aims at delivering products ready to be launched on the market in line with user needs. The product is the principal vehicle to both capture the value and learn from the reactions of the market. If one of the main principles of the Creative Problem Solving approach is ideating, Sprint Execution addresses the acceleration that digital transformation requires with significant tension in quickly building products to launch on the market. The way of thinking adopted in the Sprint Execution approach is constantly driven by a practical attitude: everything that is thought in the initial phase has to be delivered at the end of the process in realistic and working products. In the Sprint Execution approach, users have a fundamental role, but interpreted in a very different way from Creative Problem Solving. They are fundamental stakeholders to interact with in order to collect their feedback and reactions, but they are not considered the main source of information at the beginning of the design process. In other words, the direction pursued by the Sprint Execution approach is inside-out: this means that the product is initially conceived by the team, and then the team brings the product to users to get feedback. This does not mean that service providers adopting the Sprint Execution approach do not consider knowing the market they are addressing as fundamental, but they strongly believe the valuable knowledge they need to be innovative can only be obtained through the interaction with products.

From the practice point of view, Sprint Execution significantly leverages the contributions provided by minimum viable products, defined as a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future developments. The need to quickly create products able to bring value to users requires design teams composed of experts (usually internal stakeholders) able to deal with different categories of constraints and opportunities.

The Creative Confidence approach is one of most interesting evolutions of the Design Thinking paradigm and is characterized by profound differences with the Creative Problem Solving approach, both in terms of principles and practices. First of all, the main aim of the Creative Confidence approach is to nurture mindsets and shape the organizational culture, which are the fundamental premises for any kind of innovation: products, services, processes, business models, etc. It is a matter of creating the appropriate mentality to face business challenges and feel confident in going through changes. The Creative Confidence approach focuses especially on people because the most effective way to transform businesses is through several changes in the mindsets and attitudes of people. Engaging people and supporting them in feeling confident with new perspectives and new horizons stimulates proactive behaviors and creates the appropriate premises to deal with innovation challenges. Very often, the users that the design projects adopting the Creative Confidence approach address are employees. For this reason, the direction that connotes this kind of Design Thinking is co-designing and co-developing. As previously mentioned, the main aim of the Creative Confidence approach is to nurture mindsets that enable employees to feel confident in facing organizational changes and innovation challenges. For this reason, it is fundamental to engage employees allowing them to propose (design) and realize (develop) the change according to their beliefs and attitudes.

In terms of practices, the adoption of the Creative Confidence approach is based on the early and intense involvement of all those experts (usually internal stakeholders) who can support the change. Especially in digital transformation projects, it is fundamental to involve all those stakeholders that can contribute to the design phase and then support its realization.

Similarly to the Creative Confidence approach, the Innovation of Meaning approach is one of the most interesting evolutions of the Design Thinking paradigm. At the same time, it significantly differs from the more established and diffused Creative Problem Solving both in terms of principles and practices. According to the Innovation of Meaning approach, organizations envision scenarios to support the search for new meaning and to make people fall in love. This concerns a novel vision that redefines the problems worth addressing, proposing a new reason why people use something, a new value proposition, a new vision. Differently from the Creative Problem Solving approach based on ideating, the Innovation of Meaning approach is based on criticizing. Criticism is the practice of going deeper into interpreting things. It strives to unveil what lies underneath the surface of things by contrasting different perspectives to develop a richer and more robust interpretation. The Innovation of Meaning approach needs criticism for two reasons: (i) it starts from our values and beliefs, and criticism is the practice that supports the evolution of the individual perspective; (ii) it enables people and organizations not only to move beyond the past, but also to create the new. The role of users also significantly differs in the Innovation of Meanings approach compared to the other kinds of Design Thinking. Meanings are new interpretations of what is good and what is bad; thus, there is no a scale of judgement. This is why the outside-in process is no longer effective, but rather requires taking the opposite direction: from the inside-out. Meanings are interpretations, and interpretations cannot be outsourced, they can only come from us: people will never love a product that is not loved by its designers and developers. If they do not love it, the market recognizes the weak relationship. The purpose of going through a process based on inside-out criticism is to create a vision that is powerful, robust, and meaningful: something for people to love. In a world awash with opportunities, focusing on quantity simply increases confusion, entropy. It instead requires going deeper. The way to obtain a novel meaningful interpretation is not by having another one, but by going deeper with a few good perspectives, contrasting them, fusing them.

The Innovation of Meanings approach significantly relies on metaphors because they are the most powerful way to express concepts and emotions, especially when these concepts are new and abstract, such as a new meaning. Interpreters are defined as experts from far-flung fields who address the same strategic context, but from different perspectives. They help reflect even deeper on the implications of the emerging vision.

Claudio Dell'Era and Stefano Magistretti

For further information, download the Booklet "Which Kind of Design Thinking is right for you?" developed by the Observatory "Design Thinking for Business"