Talking and Thinking about Design Thinking.
On Wednesday night I attended an event at the Thomson Reuters center in NY featuring Roger Martin, the dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto; Tim Brown, the CEO of IDEO; and Will Setliff, VP of Strategy, Insights and Innovation at Target. The three panelists were joined by Bruce Nussbaum, from BusinessWeek – who helped moderate the conversation, often making it more interesting through humor and memorable anecdotes.

The conversation centered around the topic of “Design Thinking” - which is also the subject of a new book by Roger Martin, titled “The Design of Business”, and also another book by Tim Brown titled “Change by Design”. I have not yet read the books, but look forward to doing so, and I will share my thoughts about them. For those not familiar with the term, design thinking are the words used to describe a process that balances the exploration of new ideas with current knowledge to drive innovation and generate value for companies.

Here are a few insights from the panel discussion.

Today’s business practices are too “scientific”.
Some of the discussion hovered around the notion that today’s business models are “too scientific”, according to Mr. Martin, who suggested that the need to “prove in advance” the success of an idea makes it practically impossible to innovate. Companies that are driven by analytical thinking strive to create predictable results based on past experience and rigorous quantitative analysis. These companies typically fail to support the kind of innovation that – by definition – introduces whole new ways of solving existing challenges. Design thinking is advocated as the practice enabling business to strike a balance between analytical thinking and innovation – which, the panelists argued, is essential to create a sustainable competitive advantage

Design thinking has many challenges to overcome.
According to the panelists, design thinking is already embraced by innovative companies (like Apple, Google, Target, Toyota, etc.) however these companies are the outliers in corporate America. Part of this is due to the fact that design thinking is not what is taught at most universities, and the tens of thousands of MBAs that enter the business sector annually are trained to use analytical thinking and scrutinize data to arrive at decisions….ultimately killing ideas that could make a big difference if they were explored further before being dismissed because they are “unproven”. Mr. Martin reminded the audience that if Steve Jobs had run Apple as an analytical company, such innovations as the iPod and iPhone would have never seen the light of day.

The current business climate is another challenge – as many companies will choose to “re-trench” instead of “re-think” - and according to the panelists this creates opportunities for those companies willing to apply design thinking to explore new, innovative processes, products, markets, distribution channels, etc.,

We need to question the question.
One of the most interesting topics of the evening was posed by Tim Brown, who suggested that not enough emphasis is placed on the question that initiates the design process. Being a designer, Tim has been trained to start with a “brief” - a document that outlines the objectives, audiences, requirements, etc. Designers are often handed the brief as a way to begin the design exploration. Tim not only suggested that designers should write the brief instead of the client, but should question the intent and need that necessitated the brief to begin with….he referred to it as the need to “question the question”. These comments made me think about the fact that we are in fact trained to strive for the answer…and perhaps generating more questions will lead to more interesting ideas.

Where does design thinking start?
Mr. Nussbaum asked “where and how do we start incorporating design thinking into a business?”. Will Setliff of Target said that it is important to find what he called the “locus” or central place where to start incorporating design thinking into a company. He said that it is important to change processes and not just products and services. Target of course, is a company that has become synonymous with design and innovation – and this is true not just in terms of the products they sell or how they operate their stores, but how they run their business. One example that Will shared with the audience is that at Target they take new hires and immediately put them through a process designed to reinvigorate their sense of creativity and set aside some of the stuff they learned in business school. This indoctrination into design thinking can be very impactful and invigorating for many of the business people – who, according to the panelists – often will resist going back to the old analytical approaches. Personally, I think that change must be championed at the top – and I am willing to bet that most organizations that embrace design thinking are led by CEOs who are visionary, independent thinkers who cherish innovation and who constantly challenge the status quo.

What does this mean for agencies like ours?
Creative agencies are typically started by designers – people who are trained to solve problems using a process that includes defining the problem, exploring a variety of different solutions, prototyping, testing, and adjusting to ensure that the final result solves the problem in an innovative manner. However, most agencies have not been very innovative in designing their own businesses. Most agencies have become victims of the pressures placed upon them by corporate America and as a result they don’t “question the question” - to borrow Tim Brown’s terminology – and they churn out advertising that is uninspired (both in terms of the creative or the media that is being used), branding programs that are developed in silos (packaging teams don’t talk to digital teams) and use processes that seem a bit antiquated (brand platforms that assume the company owns the brand in a world when consumers shape brands more than ever). It is time for agencies to re-think their business models. I feel that Liquid is in this category…however, we are painfully aware of it, and are hard at work, changing what we do and how we do it. That is one of the reasons for the merger with Neutron, and one of the benefits of having Marty Neumeier on our executive team. He’s constantly challenging us to think ahead of the curve and focus on innovative solutions.

Thanks for the inspiration to make some changes.
I left the conference rejuvenated and inspired. I would like to thank Roger Martin, Tim Brown, Will Setliff and Bruce Nussbaum for delivering an engaging and stimulating discussion. I also would like to thank Sandra Blevins of the Brand Collaborative for inviting me to attend. I returned to my hotel room with my head buzzing with ideas, anxious to work on the transformation that will help us deliver better work for our clients and create a better firm for all that work at Liquid. As I’ve said before….expect big changes.

Author: Alfredo Muccino
Category: Brand Management, Brand Relevance, Brand Strategy, Brands in general, Reading List