A closer look at design thinking
Mcebo Vilakati
Strategy Evangelist, Driving Business Transformation and Strategic Growth in the Digital Era
Design thinking became a buzzword in the boom of start-ups and we saw plenty of these become unicorns to contest the very competitive existence of established corporate organisations. Start-ups disrupted markets, changed conventional business practice and swayed consumer opinions by taking advantage of already accessible digital channels. Several people have come up with different approaches to design thinking. You hear words such as brain dumping, brain storming, brain mapping, brain walking, brain writing, brain mapping etc...But what exactly is this buzz about design thinking?
Not the least imporatant to mention that it stimulated large & medium corporate's to explore the idea of digital transformation to reinvent their businesses or stay relevant to changing client needs. Such transformation is brought about by ideation and automation of systems and processes (the hub of design thinking).
As technology converges a new skills set is required to retain a distinctive competitive advantage for businesses. We have evolved so quickly from Web 2 technologies to Web 3 which promises a world of opportunities such as in blockchain, artificial intelligence and the Meta-verse. These new technological developments present a quantum of opportunities for those who harness them; from digital currencies enabling authenticated cross border payments at low fees to developing real estate in the meta-verse where clients can have state of the art consulting, educational, recreational or shopping experiences.
These technologies present limitless opportunities and a lot of these stemming from gaps that front-runners couldn't fill. Recent testing by technology company Meta showed that preliminary users of a corporate office meta-verse app complained that they couldn't write notes or take notebooks into the virtual world. The kind of talent required in companies today is one that will question activities in the Meta-verse; " What about calculators? What about white boards? What about an interactive break, perhaps gaming or just pay bills or order a meal for when I get back to the real world? What about advertising platforms? Can I do a google search while I am there? How can these be monetized? These are an example of the type of questions that provoke innovation and they should be ubiquitous across all employees.
But where exactly does design thinking fit in here? There is a bit of clout in this area and particularly how it aligns to the organisational strategy. Do you recall a point when there was a buzzword for hiring talent with emotional intelligence? That is exactly where design thinking sits. Design thinking is an empathetic process that allows managers to view their clients needs, pains and frustration as theirs. This allows for a more formidable process of applying frameworks and models to create circumspect solutions with a demonstrable value.
Design thinking requires a significant element of creativity in order to drive innovation & organisation-wide growth. Creativity should however not be confused with innovation. Even children have creativity, however innovation should be the ability to apply creativity to solve complex business problems .
Empathy brings you closer to understanding the root problems customers are facing. This inspires thoughts to investigate possible solutions, feasibility and required resources. However it is driven more by a desire to provide a demonstrable value to clients. Design thinking wants to answer questions such as;
Critical Success Factors
1.Clarity of business strategy
Effective design thinking methodologies have to be aligned with the strategic intent. At ceteris peribas (all things equal), the organisation will have a clear, communicable and executable strategy. The strategy in itself should be able to articulate the company's position in new product development, market sectors, and share of total addressable market desired and timelines.
2. Embedding strategy in teams
The participant stakeholders in the execution of the business strategy need to be connected to the strategy. The various roles organisation-wide need to understand how their roles contribute to which element of the strategy.
This is an opportunity to create a hype and a common goal among teams. For example when each employee knows what their contribution towards the strategy execution is and visa vi the potential rewards. This is now where the heart of creativity lies. Once there is a creativity friendly environment, employees empathize with the needs of their clients at ground level and provide feedback for all ongoing new product campaigns.
This is where ground teams seek "not to understand who their customers are but rather what their clients need." To deploy product or service offerings that would create a demonstrable value we need to understand current client pains and what tasks need to be undertaken to translate those into gains and strengthen the value proposition.
3. Resource Analysis
Most frameworks and models used for design thinking and product ideation cover everything but the aspect of resource analysis. In today's world companies make significant acquisitions to improve their capabilities. Product ideation should always be aligned to existing capabilities or available resources. It requires an empathetic mind to realise that resources are limited and figure how best to create a minimum viable product that could go through prototyping and user interface testing with a negligible runway. This process is part of the feasibility testing, however it conventionally resides with business analysts and not the bigger team. This calls for organisations to hire talent with skills that can be repatriated to various functional areas.
This concludes in leaving us to reconsider how talent acquisition & management could be a reliable resource to gain a distinctive competitive advantage.
Article by:
Mcebo Vilakati, Principal Executive at Palanto Strategy Consulting.