
There are structural reasons why design is now enjoying a new and deserved renaissance. Used effectively, design and designers truly do have the power to transform nearly everything: concepts, brands, categories, markets, technologies, materials, logistics systems, experiences, industries, even governments. 3 We conclude that more sophisticated design goals, when executed effectively, yield bigger payoffs. A deeper piece of research was led by my colleague Brian Quinn as a part of our work to author Ten Types of Innovation, where he was able to definitively establish that among 138 publicly traded companies generally agreed by analysts to get a stock premium for innovation, there is a very strong correlation between the number of types of innovation they use in their most valuable platforms and their stock performance above the S&P. Of course, any good academic would note that these companies are likely to be good at many things besides design, so this correlation is not causation. 2 Used effectively, design and designers truly do have the power to transform nearly everything: concepts, brands, categories, markets, technologies, materials, logistics systems, experiences, industries, even governments. These companies, which use design strategically and integrate it through their business processes, tend to grow faster and have higher margins than their competitors-the identified companies’ returns were 2.28 times larger than the S&P’s returns over the previous decade. Those that made the cut include Apple Inc., Coca-Cola, Ford, IBM, Intuit, Procter & Gamble, Starbucks, Nike, and others. Last year the Design Management Institute rigorously selected 15 design-centric publicly traded companies. The savvy leader now seeks to do both, recursively, in integrated, even dazzling new ways. Design thinking without deep analysis is reckless. Put simply, analysis without synthesis is predictable and commonplace.
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This is especially true now because there is a parallel revolution in how to get new insights from analytic techniques-and no one should ever jump right into innovating without first producing some set of profound insights first that can be the basis for an innovation team to do the hard work of building a breakthrough. It can help firms build breakthroughs and change industries, but it has to be balanced and integrated with other skills and capabilities. The power of design is real and increasingly important. What great leaders should know and do now In the most egregious cases, advocates suggest design thinking can somehow replace nearly all other forms of analysis, planning, and strategy. Too often advocates of “design” overreach, regarding it as an elixir that can somehow transform conservative companies into creative ones. This is part of what it takes to help firms commit to building something bold and newsworthy, instead of only seeking the tactics needed to better sell what is already known. It helps firms develop the courage and use tradecraft that moves beyond analysis to embrace synthesis as well. During a time of intense change, this is a positive development. “Design thinking” has been increasingly embraced by the world of business and business education over the last decade. In the way “design thinking” is popularly described and delivered, it is too superficial to truly deliver on such grandiose expectations. It’s the other half where their enthusiasm can be overdone. In this assertion, the fans of design thinking are half right: Conventional approaches to planning are overdue for reinvention.


They think it “fixes” the dry, overly rational planning approaches that firms use to optimize their offerings around predetermined and deeply analyzed market segments. At that level, who could possibly disagree?īut often proponents of design thinking take it further. At its heart, design thinking seems self-evidently useful. It begins by imagining a solution that does not yet exist, and outlines a pathway to realize it-instead of beginning with an assessment of today’s problems and seeking corrections to them.

In popular constructs, design thinking approaches a problem to be solved from the opposite direction typically taken by analysts. 1 In this brief trend report the goal is to describe why design is in ascendance, with an emphasis on how to make it as powerful, effective, and transformational as it deserves to be. Now that many business schools and large corporations have grown enamored of “design thinking” perhaps it’s an important moment to examine this trend critically.

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