Feb/March 2006

Design Thinking

Design Thinking has become a hot topic in organizations recently. Last summer Fast Company wrote a feature on design, and more recently Fortune hosted an innovation forum centred around design which included debates about the difference between design and innovation: "Is design the same thing as innovation? Is design more important than innovation? Or is innovation more important than design?

Business schools at Stanford, Case Western, University of Toronto and INSEAD are teaming up with design schools. The Banff Centre Leadership Lab hosted a design forum last month for business leaders (I was invited to be one of the facilitators).

In this newsletter I’ll share with you some of my notes from the Leadership Lab, and highlights from the Innovation Forum.

Leader as Designer
Banff Centre Leadership Lab

Harold Nelson’s Design Way provided the context for design thinking in organizations. Here is a brief summary by Brian Woodward and Colin Funk from the Banff Centre:

Good leadership is expected to ‘get us somewhere’! They set direction, create vision statements and compelling goals and objectives. Once set, a clear vision and explicit goals represent a logical and rational movement from the present to a defined future. Implicit in this view of leadership is the idea that good leaders create the future or cause it to be created through others – leaders bring something new ‘into the world’. This leadership act of creation shapes the future.

Design also ‘brings something new into the world’ in the form of new products or services, new organizational systems, ( i.e. social systems, educational system, health care designs.)

Design – as a body of principles, actions and results – offers a compelling avenue for exploring the image of leadership as a design. The design world offers an enticing and distinct perspective as well as a number of practical operations. The design world explores extensively the concepts of will, intention, imagination, judgment, and composition within an eco-cultural context to create new realities.

Design and leadership are fundamentally about actively creating the future rather than reacting to the present. They both require the ability to imagine ‘that which does not yet exist’, to create new meaning, new realities, to find direction, to operate with intention and purpose, and to operate practically in the world under conditions of limited information.

Design is about “…human intention made visible and concrete through the instrumentality of design [that] enables us to create conditions, or artifacts, that facilitate the unfolding of human potential”

Design focuses on what can be done and on what ought to be done – mixing the hard practicality of science and technology with the ethics and values of human living.

Reference: Nelson, H.G. and Stolterman, E. (2003). The Design Way. Educational Technology Publications, New Jersey
---------------------------------------------------------

Distinctions between creative problem-solving and design

A design mindset is not problem-focused, it’s solution focused, and action oriented. As Harold Nelson said, description + explanation, does not prescribe action. The designer frames a desired outcome, through an inquiry that encompasses breadth and depth. Breadth is system interconnectedness, and depth is aim and intention. Nelson used the example of the Zen archer: Intention starts with drawing the bow. Aiming the bow leads to an outcome.

Focusing on problems is de-energizing. Focusing on desired outcomes inspires and energizes people.

Notes from the workshops:

Lance Carlson, CEO of the Alberta College of art and Design, reported that when Case Western University hired Frank Gehry to design their new building, they experienced a shift in thinking. They learned that leadership is about getting to a series of good options. Then decisions are easy to make. After working with Gehry, Case Western decided to add design thinking to their business school program and created an alliance with the Alberta College of Art and Design.

Participants in the leadership lab were given the challenge to work in teams of four, and design an enterprise for the 21st C. Prior to launching into the design, each group explored design issues and opportunities through arts-based activities that included painting/drawing, theatre improv, and clay/sculpture.

What I found fascinating in my painting workshops, was that people didn’t immediately launch into brainstorming ideas for their challenge after painting activities. Instead they discussed the meaning and values associated with the images they created. The art processes helped uncover shared values, which later informed their enterprise design.

One group examined protocols – rules for relationships—and how you can intentionally create protocols to produce desired behaviours. (Dee Hock for example, designed Visa using protocols or working agreements that didn’t require policing hierarchies.) Improv has protocols, such as “Yes, and..” in which participants add to each other’s ideas, rather than diminishing them with “yes, but…” responses. David Bohm, in his book “Many to One,” said protocols develop from conversation. You have to establish a common belief, common ground, before you move to new ground.

Another group played with clay while they conversed with each other. When they finished talking, they realized they had unconsciously formed the concept of their enterprise through the clay structures they had created.

Lessons from the Leadership Lab

Art-based processes help people be comfortable with uncertainty, ambiguity, and paradox. The roots of innovation lie in values, protocols and aesthetics. These create the crucible that holds the heat when creating new ground.

We need time to reflect, a safe space for experimentation, and meaningful dialogue. Breakthroughs didn’t always happen in the first encounter with an art process. Sometimes the first encounter resulted in resistance and frustration. It wasn’t until the third round, that a breakthrough occurred. Learning comes from repetition.

Innovators need access to multiple ways for knowing, which art and science provide. Design/innovation teams need to be composed of people from different disciplines to access wisdom and knowledge, question assumptions, re-frame perspectives and positions, and enhance creativity.

Design thinking can help organizations manage the innovation process and overcome some of the barriers that prevent leaders from being effective innovators.

Highlights from the "Design Matters" roundtable discussion at the FORTUNE Innovation Forum:

Chris Bangle: (BMW Group Design) Everyone in the future will be a designer. If they are not, they will not be literate in their world. Everyone being a designer will put pressure on what designers will do. With rapid prototyping, people will create their own products.

A number of different ideas and perspectives came out of the discussion, including the fact that nations like Denmark and even China appear to be well ahead of the USA when it comes to thinking about design. In Denmark, the royal family is even involved in spearheading design initiatives, going so far as to create a new award billed as "the Nobel Prize for design." In China, over 700 design schools have been created.

There was also significant discussion about future trends. The consensus opinion was that, in the future, design would become just as important as literacy. Chris Bangle of BMW predicted that, "In the future, everyone will be a designer." Sites like Kinko's would become mini-factories of rapid prototyping, where people could go in, design the latest cell phone - and then "print it out." That's the future!
Source: www.businessinnovation2005.com/archives/2005/12/design_matters.htm
-------------------------------------------------------------

Design Thinking: Workshop

The revolution taking place in design — as it emerges from its traditional role of serving commerce — to a role of leading, shaping and directing the way we live and work, presents tremendous opportunities for business.

Explore the strategic dimensions of design in leadership and management practices. Learn how to use "design thinking" as a problem-solving/opportunity-realizing tool, to improve performance, differentiate yourself in the marketplace and add value to your customers.

This workshop was a hit at the Buildex / Design Northwest Conference in Vancouver last fall. Please contact me about delivering this workshop to your organization.

Happy creating,
Linda Naiman