Design Thinking for Business Innovation
By Jeanne M. Liedtka, University of Virginia
About the Course
Design thinking is a popular new idea in the business world – organizations as diverse as entrepreneurial start-ups, big established corporations, and government and social service organizations are experimenting with design thinking as an alternative approach to traditional problem-solving. Accelerated by the spectacular rise of Apple and IDEO, design thinking is seen as offering a new approach better suited for dealing with the accelerating pressures for growth and innovation faced by so many organizations today. But design thinking can remain mysterious for people interested in introducing this approach into their decision-making processes. Demystifying it is the focus of this course.
The four sequential questions that take us on a journey through an assessment of current reality (What is?), the envisioning of a new future (What if?), the development of some concepts for new-business opportunities (What wows?), and the testing of some of those in the marketplace (What works?). The process of design thinking begins with data gathering: at the outset of the design process, designers gather a great deal of data on the users they want to create value for. They mostly do this through ethnographic methods like experience mapping, rather than traditional methods like focus groups and surveys. Farther along in the process, designers make their new ideas concrete (in the form of prototypes) and go out and get better data from the real world in a process that is hypothesis-driven. That is, they treat their new ideas as hypotheses to be tested. They surface the assumptions underlying their hypotheses and test them – usually looking for the kind of behavioral metrics that will allow them to iterate their way to improved value propositions.
Course Syllabus
Week 1: What is Design Thinking? We will begin our course by unpacking what we mean by design thinking and why it is more effective than traditional business methods when the goal is innovation in the business environment. By looking at the case history of The Good Kitchen, a Denmark program for providing meals for the elderly, we will explore how the mindset and practice of the innovation team that partnered with innovation consultant Hatch & Bloom enabled them to achieve innovation and growth. We’ll conclude session 1 by examining what kinds of problems and challenges are best suited for a design thinking approach.
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