Design Thinking by Thomas Lockwood

Author:Thomas Lockwood [Thomas Lockwood]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781581157345
Publisher: Allworth Press

Role of design

At the end

At the beginning

Design thinking, methods, and techniques become vital parts of an organization’s innovation toolbox, in both research and development processes.

Focus

Pushing technology

Creating value

Value innovation can only be based on a deep understanding of the organization’s culture and potential, as well as the needs and desires of the people using its products and services.

This means that beyond satisfying external stakeholders and responding to external opportunities and needs, innovation should be driven from within. This has important consequences for the way innovation is managed within organizations. Again, we see four major shifts occurring (Table 2):

1. The drivers for innovation are changing. Where once the major drivers were external (new technologies, competitor behavior, and market metrics), now they lean more toward the internal (unique insights, vision, competence, and ideas). This does not imply that organizations in which innovation is internally driven are isolated from the outside world—to the contrary. The change we see lies in the way these organizations handle the outside world. External changes and influences are internalized and embedded in the organization’s unique culture before being used as a springboard for innovation.

2. Innovation is no longer about reacting to change, but rather about proactively creating change. It is about creating opportunities rather than saving one’s hide.

3. The role of design in innovation is changing from making the innovation look pretty in the end to being a source of meaningful new directions for growth. Design’s function is to merge the various disciplines involved in the innovation process into a synergetic team and to combine visionary inspirational ideas with tangible and concrete solutions.

4. The focus of innovation is shifting from the application of new technology to the delivery of meaning and value.

Again, the opportunities that arise from these shifts are huge. We see innovation growing toward a discipline focused on creating opportunities for delivering value. This value is based on a strongly embedded vision and sense of direction, with design in a lead role as a source for meaningful ideas and a linking force among disciplines.

This implies that the innovation domain within organizations needs a common internalized vision of what the organization is and of how it is connected to its changing environment, in the present and the future. In short, innovation needs the brand.

And so it appears that the domains of branding and innovation need each other to prosper and to benefit from each other in a number of ways. It also becomes clear that design is taking a lead role in this convergence. The bottom line is that for brands to have maximum effect, they need innovation to fulfill their promise, while for innovation to have maximum effect it needs the brand to provide vision, focus, and direction. And in this dance of branding and innovation, design is the music that bonds the two in a shared understanding and a common goal.

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