As this is a service design leadership and innovation PhD-blog, I’ll start my PhD blog life with an article from Harvard Business Review on Design Thinking by Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO. I believe design thinking is a way of thinking that has a lot to offer business leaders that strive to develop a more innovation minded culture in order to create value for both users and businesses. In his article Tim Brown focus on design thinking’s role within business with his definition:
”Design Thinking is a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity”. Tim Brown, IDEO. HBR June 2008
For part of the PhD, my approach will be to put on my business lenses to study what designerly ways of thinking and doing can bring to service innovation and how it differs (or not) from other ways of thinking within leadership and innovation. I shall also study how design is permeating and may be changing business/organizational cultures and practice of leadership in the service industry.
As a business thinking non-designer with a lot of experience working with design thinking designers, I have learned that the process and tools designers are using can efficiently be applied in businesses in team-based approaches to innovation. Therefore, I think it is most important that Design Thinking is being defined and explained in important business magazines such as Harvard Business Review.
Design thinkers are not necessarily created only by design schools, according to Brown. His experience is that many people outside the professional design have a natural attitude for design thinking, which the right development and experience can unlock….. Part of my research will be case studies on what working in teams with service designers can unlock of new ways of thinking in businesses and organizations. In “A Design Thinkers Personality Profile” Brown points out some of the characteristics to look for in design thinkers; Empathy, integrative thinking, optimism, experimentalism and collaboration.
As informed under “about”, my PhD is part of an ongoing research project: AT-ONE. The project aims to improve the early stages of service innovation, through the integration of design-thinking into a structured innovation process. The project is a collaboration between academia (both within business and design) and the industry. It is financed by The Research Council of Norway together with the industry and headed by AHO.
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