SPOTLIGHT ON THE EVOLUTION OF DESIGNTHINKING
Design thinking isn’t just for productdevelopers anymore. The approach is being used to support change management,strategic reinvention, and complex problem solving at the highest levels.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Design for Action
Tim Brown and Roger Martin |page 54
CEver since it became clear that smartdesign led to the success of many products, companies have been employing it inother areas, from customer experiences, to strategy, to business ecosystems.But as design is used in increasingly complex contexts, a new hurdle hasemerged: gaining acceptance of the “designed artifact” into the status quo. Infact, the more innovative a new design is, the more resistance it’s likely tomeet. The solution, say the CEO of IDEO and the Rotman School’s former dean, isto also apply design thinking to the introduction of the innovation itself.
This process, intervention design, greworganically out of the iterative prototyping that designers did to helpunderstand customers’ reactions to new products. Not only did iterativeprototyping create better offerings, but it was a great way to getorganizational funding and commitment, because it improved the chances ofsuccess and reduced fear of the unknown. Intervention design uses iterativeprototyping to get buy-in too, but extends it to interactions with all theprincipal stakeholders—not just customers.
When Intercorp Group devised arevolutionary concept for Peru’s schools, it needed to win acceptance forcorporate-run education and for a very different role for teachers. Thanks tointervention design, it now has 29 schools in operation and is rapidly growing.
HBR Reprint R1509C