When is Design-led Innovation not right for you?

We always want the best for our clients, so one of our key business tenets is to teach our clients to fish. As the ancient wisdom goes, “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”

Our Design Thinking approach ignites a transformation journey towards sustainable innovation through a change in our client’s mindset (or culture), focus and processes.?We aim to ensure our clients are able to continue this innovation journey when we are done with the project.?

However, in some situations we have to look at things from a different perspective and take a change in approach. We could not agree more with Bruce Kasanoff, “When a person is starving, that's not the time to fill their head with knowledge. The right thing to do is to first give the person a fish - banishing their hunger - and only then teach them to fish.”

In some instances where businesses are facing operational challenges or financial distress, they should critically evaluate which type of innovation is the priority at this stage.?

We suggest using a quick-wins approach in the short run, to stabilize the business through designs that can be easily and safely implemented. Examples like improvements to existing services as a result of customer feedback that was long ignored, designing better processes to improve productivity, or removing things from your offerings that people won’t pay for etc.

Some time ago we worked with a client in the watch business, who wanted to create a new retail experience and an extensive lineup of watches for different customer segments.? Upon a deeper analysis of the business, while the idea we had for this client would be fantastic, the fact the business was struggling meant that this client would not be able to follow through with it.? Furthermore, our client’s inability to join co-creation workshops was a red flag.?We eventually advised the client to take a more moderate approach by focusing on a better sales process and buying new watch designs off a catalogue.??

Once the business has stabilized, the focus from the client can be to use design to innovate with an eye for the longer term.?This allows us to explore more radical solutions that fulfill long-term goals and strategies for the business.?

What type of design should you be embracing with your current business??