Turning Big Ideas into Business
ASK ANY LEADER TODAY, and they will tell you that innovation is a top priority for their enterprise. In the words of Cisco’s John Chambers: “Disrupt yourself, or be disrupted.”
To quote from PwC’s 2017 CEO Survey report, innovation is the most direct path to keeping an organization’s offerings fresh and disrupting the status quo. And as that report notes, innovation thrives when exploration is stimulated, rather than suppressed. Enter Design Thinking — today’s popular route to exploring new humancentered offerings.
The concept of Design Thinking is not new — and it wasn’t invented by design firms. Pioneers like Herbert Simon, Robert McKim and Brian Lawson explored this topic as early as 1969. In the last two decades, Design Thinking has been resurgent, popularized by thought leaders like [former Rotman School Dean] Roger Martin, who advocate Design Thinking as a source of competitive advantage.
At its best, Design Thinking can help you find creative solutions to virtually any problem; at its worst, it becomes the ‘fast food of innovation’. Millions of dollars are being spent on design ‘boot camps’ and simplified playbooks. While this approach can produce a surge of ideas, in too many cases, no one knows what to do with the blizzard of ideas, and they are left
