Why Design Thinking Works

It addresses the biases and behaviors that hamper innovation.

by

Jeanne Liedtka

by

Jeanne Liedtka

From the Magazine (September–October 2018) · Long read

Marcos Chin

Summary.

While we know a lot about practices that stimulate new ideas, innovation teams often struggle to apply them. Why? Because people’s biases and entrenched behaviors get in the way. In this article a Darden professor explains how design thinking helps people overcome this problem and unleash their creativity.

Though ostensibly geared to understanding and molding the experiences of customers, design thinking also profoundly reshapes the experiences of the innovators themselves. For example, immersive customer research helps them set aside their own views and recognize needs customers haven’t expressed. Carefully planned dialogues help teams build on their diverse ideas, not just negotiate compromises when differences arise. And experiments with new solutions reduce all stakeholders’ fear of change.

At every phase—customer discovery, idea generation, and testing—a clear structure makes people more comfortable trying new things, and processes increase collaboration. Because it combines practical tools and human insight, design thinking is a social technology—one that the author predicts will have an impact as large as an earlier social technology: total quality management.

Idea in Brief

The Problem

While we know a lot about what practices stimulate new ideas and creative solutions, most innovation teams struggle to realize their benefits.

The Cause

People’s intrinsic biases and behavioral habits inhibit the exercise of the imagination and protect unspoken assumptions about what will or will not work.

The Solution

Design thinking provides a structured process that helps innovators break free of counterproductive tendencies that thwart innovation. Like TQM, it is a social technology that blends practical tools with insights into human nature.

Occasionally, a new way of organizing work leads to extraordinary improvements. Total quality management did that in manufacturing in the 1980s by combining a set of tools—kanban cards, quality circles, and so on—with the insight that people on the shop floor could do much higher level work than they usually were asked to. That blend of tools and insight, applied to a work process, can be thought of as a social technology.

A version of this article appeared in the September–October 2018 issue of Harvard Business Review.

JL

Jeanne Liedtka is a professor of business administration at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.

Why Design Thinking Works

Idea in Brief

The Problem

The Cause

The Solution

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