Literary Insights

• Innovation is humankind’s greatest genius and core to human progress. Our collective imagination fuels innovation.

• Purpose-driven, design thinking organizations create meaningful innovation and customer experiences.

• Despite knowledge and technology, organizations struggle with innovation and leveraging human potential.

• Surveys show CEOs see innovation as critical but struggle to transform cultures.

• Key findings:

Fostering innovation is a top strategic priority.
CEOs grapple with engaging cultures in change for innovation.
Most say innovation must be in business strategies.
Many see need for transformational change.
Most worry existing products/services won’t be relevant in 3-5 years.
Struggle with speed of tech innovation.
Customer experience is the main competitive factor.
Personalized customer experience is a top priority.

• But fewer than 1/3 say their culture encourages risk-taking or “safe-to-fail.”

• People need predictability and safety, so risk-taking requires the right environment and leadership.

• The challenges are complex but the solutions are simple: Connect, create, and collaborate.

• This book provides a roadmap to build an culture of innovation through design thinking.

• Companies and leaders face significant challenges in creating innovative environments due to a fear of failure and risk. This limits their ability to explore new ideas.

• A study found that only 29% of CEOs feel their organization is capable of creating a “safe-to-fail” environment where people feel free to take risks. Only 20% of CEOs rank innovation as a top priority.

• The authors have decades of experience helping companies build innovation and design capabilities. They discussed these challenges over coffee which led them to conduct research on how the most innovative companies succeed.

• One company the authors worked with is New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE), which helps New Zealand companies expand globally. NZTE uses design thinking to solve problems and had a successful leadership summit called “The Hillary Step.” The authors saw that NZTE’s use of design thinking led to a culture where people felt free to take risks and be creative.

• Separately, the authors observed the growing trend of companies acquiring design firms and adopting design thinking. Research shows design-driven companies significantly outperform the stock market. As more companies adopt design thinking, two trends emerge:

Design is becoming a core strategy for innovation, customer experience, and differentiation.
Companies are realizing design thinking skills like collaboration and creativity are key to their success. Design thinking helps bring new ideas to market through both incremental improvements and disruptive innovations.

• In summary, while a fear of failure inhibits innovation, design thinking can cultivate a “safe-to-fail” environment where creativity and risk-taking are encouraged. This leads to higher performance and competitiveness. Design thinking is a key strategy and skill set for innovation.

Design thinking has become a core competency for companies to compete. Investing in design organizations and design thinking capabilities provides benefits beyond just good design.
There is a race among companies to build design thinking competencies. Some companies are acquiring design firms to gain experience and speed up the application of design thinking. Between 2004 to 2016, over 70 design firms were acquired. Starting in 2013, major consulting firms started acquiring design firms. In 2015-2016, over 50% of acquisitions were made. Some companies are hiring thousands of designers.
Three key trends are converging: innovation, culture, and design thinking. Exploring how companies are using design thinking could provide insights into how organizations can drive innovation and influence culture.
The researchers identified companies with advanced use of design thinking and measurable success beyond just financial gains. They considered social, environmental and financial impacts. Financial success alone does not always indicate innovation or long-term success. Companies must adapt quickly to changing conditions.
Key tenets of design thinking include: identifying the right problem to solve and understanding users; using empathy and collaboration; accelerating learning through experimentation, visualization and prototyping. Design thinking helps solve radical and incremental problems. Quick prototypes help get feedback and learn before investing in development. Failing fast leads to learning.
Prototypes include sketches, mock-ups, stories, role-playing, concept storyboards, etc. They make intangible ideas more tangible.

Ten messaging, visual cues, and emotional storytelling are overtaking written forms of communication. Visualization has become a primary tool in engaging innovative thinking.

Tom advocates integrating business model innovation into the design thinking process, rather than adding it later or using it to limit creative ideas. Effective design thinking organizations balance creativity and business aspects to learn from a complex, diverse perspective. This helps anticipate new business activities and resources for implementing new initiatives.

There are many similar definitions of design thinking. It refers to designers’ creative strategies and has been applied broadly to business and social issues. In business, it uses designers’ methods to match people’s needs with the technologically feasible and viable business opportunities.

The study focused on peer-recognized, advanced design thinking organizations, some of which appear on innovation lists. Selection was not based on industry, size, or financials. These organizations are highly innovative, meeting their purpose in innovative ways. Design thinking applies to any organization, industry, or size to drive innovation and performance.

Research and 70+ interviews analyzed how organizations apply design thinking to: products, services, and experiences; processes, systems, and structures; culture; long-term strategy; teams, decisions, and conflict resolution; environments; experts and consultants; and personnel development.

Ten attributes were identified as giving power to the human-centered design thinking in these organizations. They represent qualities separating the truly innovative from those aspiring to be. The attributes come to life through an organization’s culture and collective imagination: human motivation and drive to share knowledge and ideas, enabling creative and critical thinking that feeds innovation.

The attributes provide a framework for implementing and integrating design thinking in a way that aligns with the organization’s culture. One size does not fit all. Examples show how to apply the traits to any organization or team.

Design thinking was implemented at different scales, in different ways. Some took a top-down strategic approach, while for others it spread from solving a specific problem. Regardless of introduction, people were drawn to participating in design thinking.

The “pull factor” is the emotional momentum from people wanting to engage in design thinking and innovation. It transcends generations. Rather than eliminating human emotion, innovative organizations leverage it as a key element of human creativity and business.

Design thinking cultures aim to identify and solve root causes, not just pick low-hanging fruit or generate ideas. They develop the competency to find and focus on the right problems, especially those of customers and users. The end goal is delivering value to those with needs. These organizations seek meaningful challenges that motivate innovation and energize purpose fulfillment.

Like any process, design thinking can either take flight or fail to integrate, depending on cultural awareness. The innovative organizations studied valued unique cultures and enhanced them with design thinking. They were open to understanding how design thinking could strengthen culture. Continuously evaluating culture and people’s experiences enabled the best integration and trust in the design thinking process.

Design thinking fails to stick due to lack of culture fit. Organizations need empathy and ability to assess culture to implement new ideas.

Design thinking encourages confronting issues, embracing ambiguity, and managing conflict constructively. It provides a platform for expressing diverse ideas and listening with empathy.

Co-creation, involving various groups collaborating, leads to information sharing, problem solving, and engagement. Despite hierarchies, innovative organizations invite inclusion.

Innovative organizations creatively use space, technology, and visuals to encourage open expression and collaboration. Open mental spaces enable strategic conversations.

Innovative organizations communicate creatively by storytelling, using visuals, and understanding emotions. They show information in engaging ways to solve the right problems.

Leadership involvement, role modeling, and support are key. Leaders trust and engage in the design thinking process and expect others to as well, regardless of style.

Innovative organizations have a sense of purpose to bring value. They balance external customer focus and internal culture. Purpose engages members in creative, possibility-oriented thinking.

The “pull factor” recognizes that design thinking accelerates participation and creativity. The more it’s used, the more people want to participate, generating more innovation.

The collective imagination, fueled by human motivation to participate, gain knowledge, and express freely, powers the 10 attributes. It emanates from human and cultural cores.

A model aligning customer experience, branding, and culture uses FIRO theory, where behavior derives from needs to feel important, competent, and liked. The collective imagination meets these through participation, knowledge pursuit, and expression.

In summary, design thinking and innovation succeed through culture, co-creation, openness, communication, leadership, purpose, and tapping the human drive to participate, learn, and create. The collective imagination powers these attributes.

There are three pillars underlying successful collaboration and innovation:

The human need for inclusion and feeling valued. This is why listening is so important in design thinking.
The pursuit of knowledge. Innovative cultures are always seeking new ideas and ways to understand the world. They analyze data, seek new information, and ask “what if” questions.
Free expression. The ability to freely express thoughts and feelings without fear of rejection enables uninhibited creativity and ideation.

These three pillars fuel our collective imagination and quest for innovation. Design thinking leverages them effectively.
There have been four orders of design:

Visual communication: Focusing on graphic design, signs, symbols, print. Now includes web design.
Product design: Focusing on the form and feel of products. For example, Apple’s rounded corners.
Interaction design: Focusing on customer experience, services, user experience, and information.
Systems design: Focusing on how people interact with and within systems like businesses, education, and government. Aims to solve “wicked problems.” Considers organizational culture.

A fifth order of design is emerging: the intentional design of culture and learning. This requires understanding human psychology and motivation. Rather than restructuring organizations, it aims to deconstruct and reconstruct culture. It leads to greater creativity, innovation, knowledge sharing, and emotional awareness.
Design thinking organizations are learning organizations that use design thinking to gain awareness of problems, customers, obstacles, options, knowledge, and each other. By empowering creativity and collective imagination, these organizations can meet basic human needs and motivations.
The chapters explore how design thinking organizations build innovative cultures, increase capability for innovation, and leverage the collective imagination. Design thinking provides a methodology to design innovative cultures and a path to the fifth order of design: awareness.
Design thinking can transform an organization’s culture by changing individual and collective behavior. It fosters greater collaboration and innovation.
GE is an example of a large company using design thinking to shift its culture. It recently moved its headquarters to Boston to be in an “ecosystem” of ideas and innovation. The new office will be leaner, faster, and more open, like a startup. This is helping GE move from a functionally driven, siloed culture to one focused on creativity and collaboration.
Fear of change and the unknown can prevent organizations from transforming their culture. The desire for predictability and control creates barriers to change and innovation. Long-standing management practices and organizational structures can also limit creativity over time.
Leaders are now exploring how to build more innovative cultures. They recognize business requires creativity and are giving people more opportunities to engage in design thinking.
Understanding culture is key to successfully implementing design thinking. Culture informs people how to achieve success through acceptable and unacceptable behaviors. Each organization’s culture is unique.
Design thinking organizations need a framework for understanding their culture in order to spark change and innovation. Leaders and members need greater awareness of their context and relationships.
Culture defines success and how to attain it for individuals, teams, and the organization. It encompasses supportive behaviors as well as obstacles. “Politics” refers to the unwritten rules of behavior that shape culture.
Culture is unique to every organization. There is no one-size-fits-all culture. What works for one organization may not work for another.
The 12 culture keys provide a framework for understanding culture and guiding the implementation of design thinking. The culture keys include:

Power and influence: How power and influence are attained and used in an organization. This could be through expertise, ability to connect with others, or integrity and values.
Planning and goal-setting: How planning and goals are set. Aligning design thinking practices with familiar planning processes can help with adoption.
Problem-solving: How problems are solved and decisions are made. A lack of clarity around this can lead to conflict and lack of commitment. Design thinking can help address this.
Decision-making: How decisions are made, including who is empowered to make which decisions. Clarity around decision making is important for a successful culture.
Conflict management: How conflict is experienced and addressed. This provides insight into the values and motivations of a culture.
Incentive and reward: How people and behaviors are recognized and rewarded. This could be through compensation but also through participation, flexibility, learning, or challenge. The incentives used depend on the motivations of the culture.

The culture keys provide a framework for intentionally designing culture through design thinking. They support developing a “fifth order” of design thinking awareness.
Understanding the culture keys and motivations of a culture is important for leaders trying to implement design thinking and create change. The approach needs to align with the unique culture for the best results.

Culture is built on a foundation of shared beliefs and values. When people within an organization have clarity about these beliefs and values, and understand how their efforts and performance will be rewarded, it leads to stronger culture.

Building a strong culture requires hiring people who share the organization’s values and purpose. Employees who believe in the culture are the best recruiters of like-minded talent.

Clearly defining people’s roles within the culture is important for their sense of belonging, purpose and achievement. Roles should align with the organization’s values.

How an organization interfaces with customers reflects its culture. In today’s digital world, every employee interacts with customers in some way. Their experience of the internal culture impacts the customer experience.

Teamwork and collaboration are essential to organizational culture. There are three main types of teams: based on expertise, cross-functional, and aligned around shared ideals. Teams need autonomy and trust to thrive.

Organizational structure should follow and align with culture, not the other way around. Leaders often design structure from the inside out, focusing on operations rather than the customer experience. The structure that works for one company won’t necessarily work for another.

Shared values are central to culture but often poorly executed. Leaders must constantly communicate values, explain them, role model them and reinforce them. Values shape how people interact and the overall human experience of the culture.

In summary, understanding an organization’s unique culture and aligning the implementation of design thinking to that culture is key to success. The next step is identifying what type of culture the organization has so the approach to design thinking can be tailored accordingly.

Kevin Lee, the Chief Design Officer at Visa, believes that design thinking can transform an organization’s culture by creating experiences that connect with people. He says that when people’s experiences change, their perceptions and interpretations of the culture shift.

The researchers aimed to understand how different organizations introduced and integrated design thinking into their cultures. They found that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Success depends on:

Understanding the existing culture. Leaders need to evaluate the current culture and identify the specific behavioral changes they want to see. They should assess culture attributes like empathy, collaboration, and experimentation.
Having an open mind. Leaders should embrace uncertainty and be open to unexpected changes. Jeffrey Immelt, former CEO of GE, was initially skeptical of design thinking but came to recognize its importance.
Applying “culture keys.” For example, redefining teamwork, adjusting incentives and rewards, and providing coaching. Combining these keys with an understanding of culture types (participation, expertise, authenticity) can help determine the best way to implement design thinking.

The researchers introduce the “collective imagination” and three motivations: participation, the pursuit of knowledge, and freedom of expression. These motivations connect to three culture types:

•Participation culture: Values inclusion, engagement, and collaboration. Aligns well with design thinking.

•Expertise culture: Focused on individual achievement and performance. May require adjustments like team incentives to support design thinking.

•Authenticity culture: Values freedom of expression and empowerment. Also compatible with design thinking.

The culture types provide a framework to assess a current culture and determine the best way to introduce design thinking. The traits of design thinking, like empathy and experimentation, align with the motivations of younger workers and the desire for more meaningful participation. Applying design thinking depends on the culture type and requires aligning the approach to the motivations and norms of each type.

In summary, design thinking can transform culture through experience. Success depends on understanding the existing culture, being open to change, and applying tailored approaches based on culture types. The culture types frame how to assess culture and implement design thinking in a way that aligns with employee motivations.

Every culture is unique. It’s important to observe and understand a culture’s traits to implement design thinking effectively.
Look out for subcultures within an organization that may not align with the overall culture. This can lead to dysfunction and inhibit collaboration.
Leaders should coach their teams on the organization’s culture, including strengths and challenges. This helps employees understand the culture and succeed.
How an organization treats its customers is usually reflective of how it treats its employees. Alignment of culture and brand leads to greater trust internally and externally.

Expertise cultures:

Motivated by becoming experts and building competence. They deliver trust through expertise.
Power comes from ranking high in your peer group. Advancement comes from strong performance. Teams are formed by assembling the best talent.
Planning and problem-solving are done by the most competent experts. Meetings are avoided unless directly relevant. Decision making is top-down or based on expertise.
Conflict management involves logical arguments and challenges. Rewards are based on individual performance and recognition. Hiring focuses on competence and skill.
Roles leverage expertise. Teams have a functional or project focus, assembling individual competence. Values include excellence, innovation, and mastery.

Participation cultures:

Motivated by involvement and being collaborative. They see themselves as family-like and inclusive. Power comes through participation.
Planning and problem-solving involve group processes and teamwork. Decision making is shared and group-driven. Disagreement leads to collaboration.
Rewards reinforce group contribution, like shared rewards, equity, team recognition, and social celebrations. Hiring involves group input and finding good team players.
Roles focus on being team players who work cross-functionally. Teams work directly with and spend time with customers. Values include community, shared purpose, and belonging.

Authenticity cultures focus on being genuine and caring. Decision-making and planning prioritize values and ideals over metrics. Conflict resolution aims to strengthen relationships. Rewards are intrinsic and hiring prioritizes cultural fit.

Participation cultures value teamwork, community, and inclusiveness. Power is shared and communication is open. The customer is a focus, and people feel like family. Rewards celebrate group success.

Expertise cultures rely on specialized knowledge and logical processes. Power resides at the top, and decisions follow a logical path. Efficiency, productivity, and results matter most. Rewards go to top performers, and roles and responsibilities are clearly defined.

Most organizations tend to be expertise cultures due to a desire for efficiency and control. However, design thinking helps overcome expertise cultures’ weaknesses by enabling collaboration, creativity, and customer-centricity.

Ten attributes of design thinking organizations:

Leadership commitment: Leaders actively support design thinking.
Alignment to purpose: Design thinking aligns to the organizational purpose and values.
Integrated into culture: Design thinking influences organizational culture.
Methodology at the core: Organizations have a well-defined design thinking methodology.
Investment in skill building: Resources are invested in developing design thinking skills.
Co-creation and collaboration: Cross-functional teams collaborate using design thinking.
Focus on customer experience: Design thinking aims to optimize customer experience.
Embedded into operations: Design thinking is used in day-to-day work, not just innovation.
Scaled throughout: Design thinking has spread broadly, engaging people at all levels.
Continuous learning: Organizations continuously improve their design thinking practice.

Design thinking “glues together” disciplines and functions. Innovative organizations scale design thinking throughout to influence culture and make it central to how work gets done. They invest in developing skills, use it in daily work, and continuously improve their practice.

• Design thinking can influence organizational culture and drive innovation at any scale. Companies of all sizes have adopted design thinking, from 20 to 300,000+ employees.

• Companies have taken unique paths to adopting design thinking. Some started from the top down, driven by CEOs. Some started from the bottom up, organically spreading through the organization. Some companies invested heavily in training while others relied more on hiring key people to spread design thinking.

• A company’s commitment to design thinking influences its culture. Companies that have fully adopted design thinking report shifts in mindsets and transformation of culture. Design thinking becomes a source of pride and part of the company’s identity.

• Key factors for success include:

› Scale: Providing design thinking skills and access to as many employees as possible.

› Focus on mindset over big training programs. Identify and hire people with the right mindset and have them coach others.

› Branding the design thinking program to align it with company culture and signal its importance.

› Leadership involvement and practicing design thinking themselves. Leaders need to be adaptable and help shape the path to an innovative culture.

› Embracing the passion and creativity of design thinkers to help shift mindsets and make design thinking part of the company DNA.

› There is no one roadmap. Each company’s path to adopting design thinking will be unique. Leaders need to think like designers and adapt to what their company culture needs.

• Examples:

› Intuit trained nearly 10,000 employees in design thinking and shifted to a “design-driven company with design thinking in its DNA.” They started by encouraging 10% unstructured time, then the CEO learned about design thinking.

› Kaiser Permanente and Marriott started with small groups and spread to eventually train 15,000 and 5,000 employees respectively. Design thinking helped engage employees and shift culture.

› Companies like GE, Philips, Visa, and IBM invested in talent and made design thinking a strategic competency.

• Conclusion: Any organization can leverage design thinking to build an innovative culture. Though there are some similarities in approaches, each company’s story is unique. Design thinking is a powerful way to solve complex problems, engage employees, and transform culture.

In 2007, Scott Cook, CEO of Intuit, decided to focus on design thinking to reinvigorate the company. He held an offsite for top managers to articulate Intuit’s approach to design thinking. However, his PowerPoint presentation was not well received.
An outside speaker, Alex Kazaks, then engaged the audience in an interactive design thinking activity. This highlighted the need to shift Intuit’s culture.
Intuit developed internal “Innovation Catalysts” to coach employees on design thinking. They have trained over 1,500 employees. The key was finding passionate employees, not just those in “creative” roles.
Examples of innovation stemming from design thinking include:

A team questioned why their product was only sold in packs of 5. Quick experiments showed more interest in singles and smaller packs. This led to $10M in increased revenue.
The finance team found that many customers did not update their credit card info, leading to canceled service. Talking to customers revealed the emails were not reaching the right people. Improving communication recovered $8M in revenue.

Intuit held forums and trainings to spread design thinking to all employees. They integrated design thinking into leadership development.
Intuit set a goal for all directors and above to visit customers 12 times a year to gain insights. The top 400 executives now have to share plans for customer-focused innovation each month.
Intuit’s design thinking group now reports directly to the CEO, showing continued commitment to design thinking.
Intuit transformed from an expertise culture relying on long planning and arguing over ideas to an action-oriented culture focused on engaging together to solve problems. Design thinking helped overcome obstacles like constantly changing specifications.

The key lessons are:

Get executives on board with design thinking
Spread design thinking broadly through the organization
Focus on action and customer insights, not just presentations
Look for passionate advocates, not just those in “creative” roles
Make design thinking a key part of leadership development and culture

Intuit and SAP are two large technology companies that have successfully scaled design thinking throughout their organizations. Some key factors in their success include:

• Committed leadership: In both companies, the founders and CEOs were instrumental in championing design thinking. They recognized the need to refocus on customers and made design thinking a strategic priority.

• Providing training: Both companies invested heavily in training their employees in design thinking methodologies. Intuit trained all of its employees, while SAP has trained about 20,000 employees so far.

• Developing a clear framework: Intuit developed the D4D framework to guide design thinking efforts. SAP focuses on “problem finding × problem-solving.” These frameworks help clarify design thinking for employees.

• Addressing challenges: Even with strong leadership support and training, scaling design thinking is difficult. Intuit had to shift to a “design doing” culture. SAP found that the term “design thinking” had acquired some negative associations, so they reframe it as a means for “problem finding” and “scaling creativity.”

• Learning over time: Both companies have been applying design thinking for many years and continue to adapt their approaches based on experience. Intuit’s journey has spanned over 9 years. SAP has been building a design thinking culture for over 13 years.

• Focusing on customers: A key motivation and outcome of design thinking at both companies is developing a deeper understanding of and focus on customers. This has been key to their business success.

In summary, scaling design thinking requires committed leadership, investment in training, a clear framework, addressing challenges, continuous learning, and maintaining a customer focus. When done successfully, it can have a major impact, as demonstrated by Intuit and SAP. But it is an ongoing journey that requires persistence and a willingness to adapt along the way.

At Marriott International, design thinking is applied to everything they do at a global scale. They have over 130,000 employees worldwide and engage over 500,000 people in their ecosystem.
Scaling design thinking to this level requires changing leadership mindsets and creating a motivational culture where design thinking is seen as a key differentiator. Engaging 500,000 people in this way is an immense challenge but Marriott has achieved great success.
Marriott’s desire to co-create with customers and employees has made it one of the most innovative companies. Over 5 years, Marriott’s stock returned 22.3% (vs 16.6% industry average), it grew from 73 to 87 countries, and from 3,700 to 4,400 locations. Marriott is #5 on Forbes’ largest companies list.
Marriott’s success is due to innovation and customer experience, not just acquisition and growth. Examples include:

• A mobile app for check-in, room keys, requests, and communication.

• Larger, inviting shared spaces for community interaction.

• Shared spaces used in new ways e.g. gyms used for coworking by day.

• AI chatbots to enhance customer service.

• Focus on stakeholders and co-creating value with them. Engaging employees and customers in design thinking.

• Seeing innovation as everyone’s job through grassroots programs and internal competitions.

• Investment in developing skills like empathy, creativity, collaboration which spread through the culture.

The outcomes of Marriott’s design thinking culture are increased customer loyalty, higher employee engagement, and sustainable growth and profitability. Marriott shows how design thinking at scale can be a key competitive advantage.

• Marriott International has focused on using design thinking to enhance the customer experience through innovative offerings like in-residence bartenders and continuously redesigning guest rooms based on customer feedback.

• The key innovation enabling these offerings is inviting customers to co-create their experience by submitting ideas and providing feedback. Customers can participate in the design process on Marriott’s website and in real-time at hotels like the Marriott in Charlotte.

• This strategy engages customers and aligns the customer experience with Marriott’s culture of using design thinking to improve creativity and performance. Design thinking spread through Marriott over time as more groups saw its value.

• The “pull factor” refers to the emotional energy and motivation that comes from experiencing design thinking. This pull factor causes people to become evangelists for design thinking and want to spread it in the organization. It leads to a paradigm shift where people naturally work to solve problems and innovate, rather than requiring leaders to push change from the top-down.

• At Visa, the pull factor enabled “multiplying engagement,” where people collaborate beyond their individual roles and ensure the success of partners. This counters internal competition and siloed thinking.

• To invest in design thinking, Marriott’s leadership identified innovation as a key risk and strategy. They first used design thinking for branding, showing its value. They then invested in a dedicated design thinking team and education program to spread capability, starting with high-potential leaders. The CEO and board have also continued to endorse design thinking.

• Marriott’s example shows that investing in design thinking starts with leadership support, aligning strategy, demonstrating value through initial projects, building internal capability, and continuing to advocate for design thinking over the long run. With the right investment and pull factor, design thinking can spread through an organization and become self-sustaining.

The success of using design thinking for a branding problem led to its widespread adoption across the organization. Its multiplying effect of innovation created a pull factor, influencing people to use it without much direction from leadership. This reduced the need for permission and reliance on authority to solve problems. It lowered costs from reduced politics, planning, lack of collaboration, redundancy, and missed opportunities.

Marriott benefited greatly from the pull factor, gaining financially and in its culture and reputation. It sees innovation stemming from human experiences and emotions, not just data and science. While time and money are key to innovation, interpersonal skills are essential. Marriott developed design thinking skills through training and role modeling.

Wells Fargo started using design thinking 13 years ago to improve software and now uses it broadly. Working with outside experts helped introduce it. Defining a project, like exploring new retail experiences, helped in using design thinking’s ethnography, prototyping, user involvement, and executive involvement.

Design thinking fosters a “culture of care” and helps people learn in a primal, engaged way, unlike statistics or data alone. It focuses on the big problem and alignment to solve it, using visuals. It enables “conscious collaboration” that’s satisfying. Simplicity is key for customers. Workshops focus on understanding users, not efficiency. The end goal is emotionally engaging solutions.

Design thinking spreads naturally due to its power, emotional pull, and way of connecting people to utilize competencies and be involved. This radical approach to innovation feels natural and creates deep enjoyment for those practicing it.

In summary, design thinking had a multiplying effect on innovation at Marriott through its pull factor. It lowered costs, improved culture, spread naturally, focuses on people, and creates emotional connections. Wells Fargo sees it enabling care, learning, collaboration, and simplicity for emotionally engaging solutions.

The key to successful problem solving is finding the right solution to the right problem. Focusing on the wrong problem can lead to wasted time and resources. Design thinking helps uncover the root problems by exploring the context and environment around the issue, including the perspectives of customers and stakeholders.

A good example comes from Marco Steinberg, former Harvard professor, who shared a story of the Helsinki public swimming pool. In the 1940s, the pool had a robust membership. But over time, membership declined and the budget was cut. The city decided to build a new pool and hired an architect. However, the architect’s solution was simply to reestablish the bus route that stopped near the pool after work hours. He realized that the reason people stopped coming wasn’t the pool itself but the inability to get there when they had free time. By understanding the context, he found the real problem.

Finding the “true what” requires avoiding isolation and quick fixes. It means exploring broadly to understand if the problem is internal, external, process-related or systems-related. The ability to find the right problem allows organizations to perform at a high level, avoid unnecessary conflict, and achieve desired outcomes. At SAP, the formula “problem finding x problem solving” guides their design thinking approach. They define innovation as finding the right problems to solve at scale.

In summary, focusing on problem finding through exploring context and environment helps uncover the root issues. Solving the right problems then leads to the best solutions and outcomes. Design thinking provides a way to find the right problems at scale.

Development: Design thinking emphasizes developing solutions to problems through understanding user needs, finding the root causes of problems, and reframing problems. It focuses on solving complex, multifaceted problems. Key examples of using design thinking for development include:

Kaiser Permanente’s Nurse Knowledge Exchange which developed a new process for shift change handoffs to address problems with information exchange and continuity of care.
P&G’s development of the Swiffer which came from reframing the problem from improving mops to finding an alternative floor cleaning system.

Partnering: Design thinking relies on collaboration and co-creation with stakeholders. Key examples include:

Kaiser Permanente partnered with nurses, patients, and other hospital staff to understand the problems with shift changes and develop the NKE solution.
P&G partnered with an external design firm, Continuum, to help reframe the problem and develop the Swiffer.

Relationship to the customer: Design thinking puts the customer or user at the center of problem solving and solution development. Solutions are developed through understanding customer needs, experiences, and perspectives. Key examples include:

Kaiser Permanente focused on understanding the experiences of nurses, patients, and other staff during shift changes which revealed the problems to address.
P&G aimed to understand how people currently cleaned floors and what problems or unmet needs existed in order to reframe the problem and develop an innovative new solution.

In summary, design thinking relies on development through understanding user needs, finding root causes, and reframing problems; partnering with stakeholders; and maintaining a strong relationship to the customer by putting them at the center. Successful examples show how this process can lead to impactful innovations.

P&G wanted to increase revenue from its mop category but merely having statistical marketing data was insufficient. Design thinkers needed to gain deeper insights into how people actually use mops.
Ethnographic research revealed that people make mud while cleaning floors and spend a lot of time cleaning the mop itself. This insight led to the idea of using chemicals on disposable pads instead of a reusable mop - resulting in the Swiffer.
The Swiffer was a huge success, generating billions in revenue for P&G. It demonstrated the power of design thinking and empathy.
Empathy is key to human-centered design. It allows designers to understand users’ feelings and experiences. Applying empathy internally also helps solve organizational problems.
Successful companies apply design thinking to both external products/services and internal issues. It helps address complex, cross-functional “wicked problems.”
Organizations need to adapt design thinking to their unique culture. When aligned with culture, design thinking is more likely to succeed and scale.
Culture is shaped by human interactions and needs to support people’s emotional needs. Leaders in design thinking organizations understand their culture and how to implement design thinking.
Empathy enables people to relate to and experience others’ emotions. Organizational empathy is a cultural attribute where people can empathize with each other. It improves collaboration, problem-solving, and decision making.
In summary, design thinking relies on empathy to gain deep insights. Applying it successfully requires cultural awareness and alignment. When implemented well, design thinking helps address complex problems and fosters organizational empathy.

The key points are:

Empathy and deep insights are essential to design thinking
Cultural alignment and adaptation are needed for success
Design thinking helps solve “wicked problems” and builds empathy

Does this summary cover the main highlights? Let me know if you would like me to clarify or expand on any part of the summary.

Organizational empathy refers to an organization’s ability to relate to and understand the emotions of its members. It is key to overcoming barriers to collaboration and enabling effective teamwork. Leaders can role model empathy.
Design thinking shifts how success is defined to emphasize collaboration, engagement, and meeting people’s needs. It requires aligned leadership and an understanding of organizational culture.
Kaiser Permanente created the Nurse Knowledge Exchange (NKE) to address nurses’ challenges, demonstrating empathy and engaging them to solve problems. This shift in mindset and success empowered staff. Recognition of the program reinforced these changes.
GE Healthcare introduced design thinking in 2009 and has trained thousands of staff. They named their program Menlo to connect to GE’s history of innovation. Menlo focuses on innovation, design, and culture. Design thinking outcomes are 10% product innovation and 90% business problem-solving.
GE Healthcare has an expertise culture that values measurable results and continuous improvement. They approached design thinking by first proving its value through measurable outcomes and impact on innovation. Design thinking is a competency and must execute ideas to create value.
How design thinking is valued depends on the culture. In a participation culture, it increases participation and inclusion. In an authenticity culture, it enhances openness and actualizing creativity. For GE Healthcare, it generates proven results and impacts innovation.
Deutsche Telekom is another example of aligning design thinking with culture. They focused on engaging and empowering employees to make the company more agile, collaborative, and human-centered. Leaders championed the transition, and design thinking outcomes spread from a small team to many areas.

In summary, the application and success of design thinking depends greatly on how well it is aligned with and integrated into an organization’s culture. Leaders need to understand culture and motivation to determine how best to apply design thinking. When done effectively, it can help transform culture and empower people.

Design thinking is a key tool for innovation and collaboration at Deutsche Telekom. It sits within the senior vice president of design’s organization and aims to spread design thinking throughout the company to change how it innovates. Though Deutsche Telekom’s story is unique, it shows how an expertise-based culture can use design thinking to build competency. Deutsche Telekom’s CEO recognized design thinking’s strategic value after attending Stanford’s d.school workshop. He then had 80 executives attend the workshop, demonstrating design thinking’s potential.

Deutsche Telekom gave its design group and HR responsibility for its design thinking program. This plays to the expertise culture’s focus on competency by giving the most competent groups ownership. The program gives all 220,000+ employees access to design thinking tools and has run over 5,500 design thinking sessions. Companies like Airbus now benchmark Deutsche Telekom’s program.

The program focuses on collaboration, design thinking as a mindset, teamwork, and that design thinking is for non-designers. The design thinking program fits Deutsche Telekom’s belief that customer experience is most important. It gives customers input into the company’s work. This counters the expertise culture’s hierarchy, heroism, and power focus. Design thinking spreads decision making and problem solving. Though hard to measure, design thinking increases creativity by bridging silos. All employees are expected to learn design thinking.

Leaders’ awareness of culture helps implement design thinking. Though messy, design thinking provides insight into culture and how to positively influence it. With leadership support, design thinking helps find and solve key problems, even cultural ones. Resistance to change is the main barrier.

Most study group companies have expertise cultures. These cultures struggle with communication, cooperation, silos, disagreement, hierarchy, and control—all barriers to innovation that design thinking addresses. The study group members were referred by early companies, possibly skewing the sample toward expertise cultures that see design thinking’s value.

In summary, design thinking is a key tool for building competency and better customer focus in Deutsche Telekom’s expertise culture. With CEO support, design thinking is spreading decision making, problem solving, and creativity in a traditionally hierarchical company. Though the implementation is messy, design thinking provides insight into positively influencing the culture. The main takeaway is that design thinking can be a strategic solution for expertise company cultures seeking innovation.

The key organizations that participated in this study associate with one another in implementing design thinking successfully to create change, shift cultures, and achieve greater innovation. They see each other as being adept at using design thinking for this purpose. The researchers found that most of the organizations have expertise cultures. However, they noted that each culture is unique. Using design thinking to deconstruct an organization’s culture to determine what is working and not working is an effective first step.

The researchers concluded that the success of implementing design thinking depends on how well it aligns with an organization’s culture, especially if it is used to design the implementation. This shows leaders support change and understand the culture. Lack of leadership support and alignment is the biggest barrier to successful design thinking.

An example is the Hunger Project, which works to end world hunger. They had to stop their initial approach and address what was missing to solve the right problems. They found the key issue was lack of political will and women’s empowerment. They reinvented their strategy to focus on transforming gender relationships by educating donors and creating internal/external alignment.

The Hunger Project leaders were able to confront realities, explore different viewpoints, and consider new ideas to find solutions. The researchers called this “curious confrontation” - facing different mindsets with a desire to investigate and learn.

Design thinking provides a way to manage disagreement and conflict. Organizations using it value curiosity and have better inquiry/listening skills. It allows for timely, healthy confrontation instead of dysfunction. It can break down silos by addressing disagreements between functions and leaders. Viewing disagreement and conflict as an opportunity is key. While commitment to the best solutions can lead to competition, design thinking facilitates constructive diverse thinking and managing the resulting conflict.

The summary highlights how the key organizations in the study use design thinking and see each other as successful in applying it to create change. It focuses on the Hunger Project as an example, describing how its leaders confronted realities to reinvent their strategy. The summary outlines key insights on how design thinking helps manage disagreement and conflict.

• Competitive creativity, when properly managed, can drive innovation in organizations. Having multiple teams independently work on the same challenge can increase the speed of innovation. Samsung uses this approach in some of its R&D centers by establishing several design thinking teams to work on the same problems independently. This internal competition seems to benefit Samsung’s innovation.

• Developing conflict management skills, like communication and listening, supports the success of design thinking. Design thinking encourages embracing ambiguity and building on each other’s ideas. It leads to shared creativity instead of individual creativity. The skills of listening and seeking to understand, which are part of empathy in the design thinking process, are key to constructively managing conflict.

• A mindset of curiosity is beneficial for managing disagreement and conflict. Curious people tend to be more open to new experiences and generate more original ideas. Research shows curious people have better relationships and are viewed more positively by others. Curiosity can be developed. As organizations adopt design thinking, they develop a cultural curiosity mindset with better listening, more openness to new ideas, greater empathy, less self-censoring, and freer expression. These traits help improve managing disagreement and conflict.

• Keeping the customer first, critiquing the work instead of the people, and trusting the design thinking process can help leverage curiosity to better manage conflict. Focusing on the shared goal of serving the customer helps create understanding. Critiquing the work, not the people, reduces defensiveness. Trusting the empathetic, inquiring design thinking process leads to innovative approaches to conflict management. For example, requiring design thinking to support budget requests focuses on improving customer experience, not individual department desires.

• In summary, competitive creativity, developing conflict management skills, adopting a curious mindset, and specific techniques like keeping the customer first can help organizations better manage disagreement and conflict, enabling greater innovation. Design thinking is key to developing these attributes and approaches.

• Ask simple yet critical questions to reframe problems and find solutions. Questions like “What’s missing?” and “How can we look at this in a new way?” can uncover the root issues.

• Focus on shared purpose and values. Anchor discussions in organizational principles to determine the right path forward.

• Come from a place of inquiry. Adopt an explorer mindset by asking open-ended questions and listening without judgment. Give and receive feedback openly.

• Act with aligned leadership. Leaders should model constructive behaviors, confront key issues, and reinforce the use of design thinking. Misaligned leadership can damage trust and send mixed messages.

• Measure results and impact. Track how design thinking and conflict management influence key performance indicators. Look for events that led to innovation and better outcomes.

• Leverage diverse, inclusive groups. Rely on both depth and breadth of insight. Include a variety of perspectives but also ensure the right people are involved.

• Leaders need to take action. While discomfort is normal, leaders should not avoid difficult conversations or conflicts. Design thinking offers a systematic way to constructively work through challenges.

• Continuously improve solutions. Conflict resolution is an iterative process. Revisit discussions and make changes as needed to best meet everyone’s needs.

• Co-creation can turn conflict into an advantage. Engaging multiple parties to find mutually benefitting solutions helps overcome cultural struggles with disagreement and discord. More participation means more imagination and more insights.

In summary, the research found that design thinking helps constructively manage conflict and find innovative solutions. With practice, people can develop skills to have “curious confrontations” - honest yet empathetic discussions. By anchoring in purpose, asking good questions, including diverse groups, measuring impact, and continuously improving, organizations can turn discord into an opportunity for new ideas. Leaders must model this approach through aligned actions and by taking initiative in difficult conversations. The result is a culture where people feel engaged and able to voice concerns, knowing they will lead to co-created answers.

Philips wanted to shift its business strategy and saw design thinking as key to transformation. Under Sean Carney’s leadership as head of design, design thinking was integrated across the company.
This shift in strategy, along with restructuring the company into health tech and lighting divisions, led to improved financial performance. Design thinking was key to developing innovative organizational strategies that drove better financial outcomes.
The Co-Create program was developed to embed design thinking principles across Philips. It involved training 10-20% of staff as design thinking moderators and coaches, who then trained 70% of staff through real-world challenges.
The program focused on innovation in business strategy, new value propositions, business transformation and customer engagement. By applying design thinking to real issues, it achieved change and impact.
Co-creation engages and leverages the collective imagination. It involves sharing knowledge and training typically excluded groups. It leads to more openness internally and externally, enabling broader engagement in innovation.
Success in co-creation requires understanding people’s emotional experiences and using empathy. Communicating emotional qualities fuels idea generation and innovation. Co-creation requires thinking expansively and inclusively.
For co-creation and design thinking to scale and gain traction, it needs to be well-coordinated. At Philips, Sean Carney built a team of expert trainers to help departments apply design thinking. They started small but grew to 150 trainers, enabling company-wide co-creation.
Philips’ co-creation success led to billions in sales. Design thinking is now part of their sales process and long-term customer engagements (Bootcamps). They trained 200 sales staff in China to use design thinking and co-create with customers. This makes sense as salespeople can empathize with customers and uncover needs.
Co-creation at Philips involved executives, customers, insurers and healthcare authorities to envision future healthcare propositions. Design thinking is a key competency and process at Philips.
Design thinking encourages co-creation by bringing stakeholders together to understand problems and envision solutions in an empathetic, human-centered way.
Co-creation leads to significant outcomes by addressing complex, systemic problems. It increases internal empathy, expands customer involvement, and fosters collaboration.
Long-term partnerships with external partners, like Teague and Boeing, show how co-creation can transform organizations and customer experiences over time. Design firms like Frog and IDEO embed co-creation in their culture and processes.
Co-creation aligns well with existing organizational processes like Agile, Lean, and stage-gate models. At Philips, design thinking is integrated in HR, innovation, and business transformation.
Visa uses “design hacks” to put design thinking into practice and solve problems for clients and customers. This builds business results, impacts organizational culture, and empowers employees. Co-creation with Costco helped Visa win their business from American Express.
Innovation centers and labs provide a dedicated space for co-creation with customers and partners. Companies like SAP, GE, Kaiser, Intuit, Marriott, and Visa have created these open spaces for collaborative problem solving.
Co-creation taps into human creativity and engagement. It gives people confidence in solving complex problems and leads to a natural “pull factor” that multiplies participation internally and with customers.

In summary, co-creation through design thinking can positively transform organizations, customer experiences, and people. By opening up collaborative partnerships and spaces, aligning with existing processes, and engaging human creativity, the outcomes of co-creation can be truly significant. The case studies show how leading companies are achieving this with their culture, customers, and innovative solutions.

The physical workspace at Autodesk is designed to promote collaboration and creativity. It has movable furniture, height-adjustable workstations, whiteboards, and conference rooms in the center. Studies show that environments with natural light and views promote creativity and well-being.
LEGO’s new headquarters is designed like their products—with play areas, meeting spots, and temporary workspaces. It emphasizes community, collaboration, and creativity, reflecting LEGO’s philosophy. LEGO believes play stimulates imagination and creativity.
Creative spaces have attributes like openness, community, invitation to participate, support for brainstorming, and opportunity for artistic expression. They promote expansive and creative thinking. When workspaces encourage gathering, collaborating, and creating together, they tap into collective imagination and visual reasoning.
LEGO’s innovations include Automatic Binding Bricks (1949) and the modern LEGO brick (1959). LEGO inspires imagination and creativity, taking people back to childhood. LEGO is used in businesses to promote creative thinking and team building.
The key points are: (1) workspace design impacts collaboration and creativity; (2) LEGO’s philosophy and new HQ reflect the importance of community, play, and imagination; (3) creative spaces and visual tools unlock innovation; and (4) LEGO itself inspires creativity.

The key things people do when collaborating in open spaces is start playing with ideas, collaborating with one another, and manifesting new ideas by sharing pieces of ideas with each other.

According to LEGO, open-ended play helps children develop important skills like social-emotional skills, reasoning, and creativity. These are skills that organizations want in their employees and leaders. LEGO’s office is designed like LEGO bricks to reflect their culture of play and creativity.

Cultural artifacts in workspaces are important because they show what the organization has accomplished, reflect the organization’s purpose and mission, and evoke emotional connections. For example, LEGO’s office, 3M’s innovation center, and GE’s Menlo Lab are filled with artifacts reflecting their history of innovation. These artifacts represent solutions to problems and connect people to the organization’s culture.

Examples of open, innovative workspaces include:

Visa’s innovation centers where customers can experience the innovation process
AMP, an Australian insurance company, created open workspaces and trained employees in design thinking, resulting in the CEO converting his boardroom into an open workspace
The Hunger Project created experiences reflecting the cultures of their donors to build emotional commitment
Virtual reality can create virtual open workspaces for global collaboration and design thinking

The key point is that any organization can develop the capability to create open, innovative workspaces, whether physical or virtual. Creating these spaces often leads to change and innovation. Bringing people together in an intentional way that enables design thinking, especially in open spaces, usually results in higher innovation.

Here is a summary of the key ideas and innovative solutions discussed:

•Open space: Providing open, collaborative spaces with comfortable and flexible furnishings, natural light, and an innovative environment can spur new ideas and solutions. An open space audit and checklist is provided to help evaluate and improve open spaces.

•Whole communication: Innovative organizations utilize a broad range of communication methods, including visuals, stories, acting, and more. They understand that innovation requires empathy, creating with emotion, and communicating in ways that resonate emotionally.

•Transforming the MRI experience: By observing a scary experience for a child in an MRI machine, an employee was able to empathize and work with a team to design a completely new, adventurous MRI experience for children. This transformed the experience, reduced sedation rates, increased patient satisfaction, and improved business outcomes. This demonstrates the power of empathy, design thinking, and innovation.

•Storytelling: Telling stories is a natural part of design thinking and helps to communicate ideas in an impactful, emotive way. Stories give meaning, context, and help others experience what it’s like to walk in another’s shoes. Innovative organizations use storytelling to share ideas, spark new ideas, and motivate teams. Stories are a powerful way to spread new mindsets and behaviors.

•LEGO Serious Play: LEGO can be used as a creative tool for problem solving, storytelling, and team building. By building LEGO models, people can express ideas, thoughts, and feelings to gain new insights. This innovative approach has been used by companies to solve complex business problems.

•Improvisation: Applying improv techniques, like “yes, and…,” can help foster innovation. When people riff off of each other’s ideas, it leads to new combinations and breakthroughs. Innovative organizations are experimenting with improv to spark creativity.

Does this summary accurately reflect the key ideas and innovative solutions discussed? Let me know if you would like me to clarify or expand on any part of the summary.

The five key elements of design thinking—empathy, define, ideate, prototype, and test—are present in the frameworks and models used by the organizations.
Empathy, aimed at understanding the customer experience, is the starting point. It provides insight into the emotional aspects of the customer experience and leads to understanding the importance of the human experience.
Every customer experience has five main elements: theme, context, characters, conflict, and resolution. Understanding these elements allows for empathy.
Stories connect people through a shared emotional experience. They can be used to understand purpose, change perspectives, and drive innovation. Visualization and storytelling are key to design thinking.
Whole communication, using various methods to connect emotionally, helps engage stakeholders and solve problems. Organizations traditionally relied on data and logic but now recognize the importance of emotion.
Design thinking connects analytical and creative thinking. It uses various forms of communication and art to emotionally connect with others and drive innovation.
Leaders who support design thinking empower others in the organization to use it. An aligned leadership committed to design thinking seems important for its success. Leaders may need to relinquish some control to allow others to create strategies, make decisions, and shape the organization.
No one leadership style seems best for design thinking, but leadership behaviors that empower, align, and commit to design thinking appear essential for its success. Leaders create more leaders, not followers.

The summary highlights the key role that emotion, empathy, storytelling, visualization, whole communication, and empowering and aligned leadership play in design thinking and its success within organizations. A human-centered, creative, and collaborative approach supported from the top down appears most conducive to design thinking. Logic and data alone are not enough; emotion and empowerment also matter.

Here’s a summary of the key points:

• The success of design thinking organizations depends heavily on the commitment and support of senior leadership. Leaders must champion design thinking and empower others to drive it.

• IBM is an example of an organization with a long history of design leadership and commitment. Successive CEOs have supported design and now design thinking. IBM established a large-scale design thinking initiative focused on people, places, and practices. They have trained over 50,000 employees in design thinking.

• 3M also has a history of supporting innovation, including the 15% rule allowing employees to spend time on independent projects. 3M recently appointed their first chief design officer, Eric Quint, who is using design thinking to further transform the culture to be more collaborative and creative.

• Successful design thinking leaders role model the right behaviors and mindsets. They are open to change and receptive to new ideas. They align their leadership style with the organizational culture.

• Design thinking is a tool for cultural transformation. It stimulates inclusion, collaboration, and new ways of thinking to solve complex problems. But design thinking is distinct from design itself. Creativity exists throughout organizations, not just in the design function.

• Adding design leadership, like a chief design officer, aims to enrich innovation and the customer experience. But it requires alignment with senior executives and a commitment to transformation. Design thinking can be a catalyst for that change.

• Empathy, curiosity, and observing people are key attributes of successful design leaders and important to design thinking. They fuel relevant innovation and great experiences.

That covers the essence of what the summary conveys about design thinking organizations and leadership. Please let me know if you would like me to clarify or expand on any part of the summary.

Eric’s approach aligns with John Maeda’s quote that “Inclusiveness isn’t about you, it’s about making space for others to be themselves.” Eric’s challenge to the world is: “What country will be the first to have a Chief Design Officer?”

The key lessons show the importance of leadership alignment and commitment to design thinking. Simple and direct strategies, like those of IBM and 3M, can work for organizations of any size.

Role-modeling alignment is critical. Leaders demonstrate commitment through direct involvement in and support of design thinking. Their leadership style and behaviors must align with the organization’s culture. Successful leaders gain influence by acting consistently with the company’s purpose and beliefs. They expect other leaders to do the same.

Leadership style matters, but mainly in how well it fits the organization’s culture. Leaders must understand the culture intimately and choose behaviors that align with its expectations. If a leader’s style conflicts with the culture, they will struggle, no matter their intentions or abilities. The leaders studied tailored their styles to their company cultures, helping to sustain long-term innovation.

The attributes of design thinking leaders include:

•Using empathy to understand others’ experiences

•Focusing on customer benefit

•Listening with mutual respect and openness

•Framing problems as opportunities

•Embracing experimentation and learning

•Challenging assumptions and perceived constraints

•Seeking diverse perspectives

• role-modeling desired behaviors

•Investing in developing aligned leaders at all levels

•Being open to change, new ideas, and challenging conversations

•Viewing “failure” as learning

•Taking on difficult challenges and ambiguities

The summary highlights how design thinking leaders align their leadership style and actions with the cultures and purposes of their organizations. They model and spread key attributes like empathy, openness to change, and learning through experimentation. By investing in aligned leadership at all levels, they enable sustainable innovation.

Exploration to understand others involves:

Openly expressing ideas, thoughts and feelings
Demonstrating curiosity by asking questions
Accepting vulnerability and mistakes
Coaching instead of competing
Valuing others’ knowledge and insight
Pursuing self-knowledge and choice
Managing disagreement through curious confrontation
Aligning personal purpose with organization mission

Additional attributes include passion, caring deeply about something and taking action.

Organizations with a sense of purpose bring value to the world by focusing externally on customers and internally on culture. Employees are more engaged and motivated when aligned with the organization’s purpose. Customers want to engage with and contribute to organizations with a clear purpose that matters to them.

Design thinking provides a process for open exploration and creation of a shared future through innovation. It expresses human needs and values. Organizations like Johnson & Johnson use design thinking to deliver on purpose. Their “Care-Centered Design” approach shows deep empathy for people. They use design thinking to address challenges, encourage divergence and find innovative solutions. Over 20 years, J&J’s purpose (“help people live longer, happier and healthier lives”) has remained the same while how they deliver on purpose has changed. They trained 700 people in design thinking and will train 20,000 more.

Restaurateurs Daniel Humm and Will Guidara adopted characteristics of Miles Davis like “cool,” “endless reinvention” and “collaborative” to become “the most delicious and gracious restaurant in the world.” They achieved #50 then #1 in the world by focusing on purpose, collaboration and the customer experience.

In summary, understanding others through exploration, having a sense of purpose, using design thinking and customer focus can lead to success and innovation. Vulnerability, curiosity, collaboration and alignment around purpose motivate people and contribute to creating value.

Eleven Madison Park (EMP) was named the #1 restaurant in the world by World’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2017. Being on this list is considered a higher achievement than earning 3 Michelin stars, which EMP has also done. EMP is only the 2nd American restaurant to be named #1.
Unlike most top restaurants, EMP changes its menu 4 times a year to match the seasons. It takes 3 months to develop a new menu. They are constantly innovating.
The culture at EMP is extremely collaborative. They hold all-employee meetings and retreats to get input and buy-in from staff. This is unusual for top restaurants which are typically “chef-driven.” The collaboration between the dining room and kitchen is key to their success.
The leaders, Will and Chef Daniel, are equal partners which helps facilitate the collaborative culture. The food has to reflect Chef Daniel, and the service has to reflect Will, but they work together closely. They are role models for collaboration at the restaurant.
Chef Daniel described the restaurant as having “a single point of view” that integrates creativity, collaboration, and perfectionism. They aim to deliver on four fundamentals in everything they do: deliciousness, aesthetics, creativity, and intention.
Although not explicitly using design thinking, EMP demonstrates many of the attributes such as: embracing the pull factor, solving the right problems, cultural awareness, curious confrontation, co-creation, whole communication, aligned leadership, and purpose. Their simple brand promise is: “Make it nice.”
Having a strong sense of purpose and promise is key for companies today as customers want to feel engaged and involved. EMP’s purpose and promise revolve around providing a perfect, artistic dining experience.
In conclusion, design thinking methods work and lead to innovation. The cases studied, like EMP, show how design thinking can help build relationships and cultures of innovation to solve important problems. The future will likely see more widespread use of design thinking.
Design thinking is a significant emerging business practice that will drive innovation in many organizations. It leads to economic, social and environmental value.
Design thinking works for many types of organizations and problems. It is enhancing customer experience and digital transformation. Results can be measured and it can be applied broadly in an organization.
Design thinking links to basic human needs and helps address gaps in education. It teaches skills that are transferable across jobs and organizations. However, design thinking is not yet formally taught in many schools and degrees. It can be hard to measure and master the soft skills it develops like empathy, collaboration and curiosity.
The Millennial generation values the attributes of design thinking organizations like engagement, authenticity and transparency. As people move between organizations and jobs more, design thinking skills will be increasingly useful.
Design thinking could fade away if it is not adopted in education, lacks accreditation, is hard to implement, challenges the status quo or loses executive support. However, many large companies have invested in widescale design thinking training, indicating it is an emerging trend.
Design thinking could help improve education by fostering creativity, passion and human flourishing. Education could also help spread design thinking by incorporating it into curricula and degree programs. However, design thinking is hard to measure and does not fit the typical model of education.
An ‘awareness’ of human motivation and needs is key to implementing the highest levels of design thinking that impact social systems and organizational cultures. Design thinking itself is a learning process that could help develop ‘learning organizations.’ However, human awareness and innovation are constantly evolving.
In summary, design thinking is an important new way of working that is likely to last and spread, though it faces some significant challenges around adoption in education, measurement and changing ingrained practices. With the right support and awareness, design thinking can have a hugely positive impact on organizations, education and society. But it will require continuous learning and evolution to keep up with human progress.
We already have living examples of the Fifth Order of design. Rather than defining success through an end goal, people feel success through exploration, testing, learning, creating, and challenging themselves. They actively participate as creative, thoughtful human beings.
Through designing systems, people design bigger changes. Through designing awareness, the learning is holistic and the results are a mega change. This includes further evolving critical thinking about design and design thinking to include the broader human impact—further evolving the triple bottom line and the effects of innovation on the full wellness of humanity.
The consideration of the Fifth Order will bring about human-centered changes and trends of the future. Part of the current evidence is the megatrend of design thinking. More than any other process, design thinking offers the greatest opportunity to confront and innovate in response to humanity’s greatest challenges.
We have learned a lot through researching and interviewing experts. We tested hypotheses, gained insights, learned tips and secrets, found tools and methods, saw what works and doesn’t, made friendships, and developed our point of view on building cultures of innovation.
We aimed to share as much as possible within the constraints of our study sample and book length. There is still much more to explore. We developed new models, tools, and techniques, like the Design Thinking at Scale Framework, Cultural Innovation Readiness Framework, and Design Thinking Maturity Model. We will continue to explore innovation and creativity, test and iterate, and improve what we offer.
We hope this book empowers others to scale design thinking, drive new ideas, and deliver meaningful solutions. Design thinking offers the opportunity to confront humanity’s greatest challenges.

Here are summaries of the requested sources:

www.3m.com/3M/en_US/design-us/: Eric Quint, 3M’s Design Director, discusses 3M’s design philosophy and approach. Key points:

•3M pursues “design that matters” - design that solves customer problems and improves lives.

•3M’s design process is collaborative, cross-functional, and global. Designers work with business units and customers worldwide.

•3M focuses on developing deep customer empathy and insights. Designers observe customers in their own environments.

•3M takes an iterative approach to design, using rapid prototyping and testing with customers. Designs evolve based on feedback.

•3M’s design vision is to produce innovative and sustainable solutions that provide superior user experiences. Design is a key competitive advantage.

Edgar Papke, True Alignment: This book proposes a framework called “True Alignment” which refers to the alignment of leadership, systems, strategy, and culture within an organization. Key points:

•True Alignment leads to high performance, innovation, and sustained success. Lack of alignment results in damage, waste, and lost opportunity.

•There are four elements of True Alignment: Aligned Leadership, Aligned Systems and Processes, Aligned Strategy, and Aligned Values and Culture.

•Aligned Leadership means leaders share a vision and common purpose, communicate openly, and model aligned behavior.

•Aligned Systems and Processes facilitate cross-functional collaboration and an optimal customer experience.

•Aligned Strategy means shared strategic priorities guide decision making at all levels.

•Aligned Values and Culture refers to shared assumptions, values, and behaviors throughout the organization. Culture shapes everything.

•Achieving True Alignment is challenging and requires ongoing effort and commitment. But the rewards are substantial.

•The book offers a practical framework, examples, and advice for developing and sustaining True Alignment. With alignment, ordinary organizations can achieve extraordinary things.

Here is a summary of the information provided:

mashita, Keith, 187

Zuber, Christi, 119

#book-summary

Innovation by Design - Thomas Lockwood