Successful Design Thinking operates based on a check and balance system between Rules of Engagement (ROE) and DT Forensics.
Design Thinking Forensics traces, identifies and documents the footprints of DT applications in order to determine the scope, execution, and subsequently the value of its deliverables. One of its main objectives is to identify design-thinking processes, applications and methodologies that cannot be found, performed or attributed to any other intelligence, field or domain.
The acceptance of design as a powerful, new tool, by some important and influential publications, corporations and visionaries from the business sector and their interpretation of design thinking has alienated many members from the design community and created two very distinctive, and at times, polarizing camps.
Design Thinking is in a dilemma: In order for DT to be taken seriously by the business sector it must show how it can deliver quantifiable value. In order for the design community to embrace DT, it must show how design is accepted as a serious part of the business strategy, without taking a subservient role or sacrificing its integrity.
About a year ago, when I started to think seriously about a blog on Design Thinking, I accidentally stumbled over a paper that instantly grabbed my attention. The author: MP Ranjan. Within a few minutes I realized that I had red the most beautiful and most eloquent paper on Design Thinking.
An Open letter to Bruce Nussbaum
Initially, I wanted to write about a different subject, but three Twitter RT’s from our distinguished Design Thinking illuminati, Bruce Nussbaum from BusinessWeek, derailed my thought process. Instead, I decided to respond to his remarks in an open letter.
The list includes thinkers who have provided major theoretical contributions to the profession, or have successfully executed products, services and strategies that incorporate the philosophies and principles of Design Thinking. Pioneers like; Buckminster Fuller. Charles and Ray Eames, Dieter Rams, and many more will be honored in another post.
Last month, in preparation for the launch of the DTX-blog, I comprised a variety of lists, including one, on the top b&d-schools and institutions in the world. I was completely shocked to see that BusinessWeek’s list of the best design and business schools left out a considerable number of schools, that in my opinion, not only belong on the list, but some of them are among the top ten institutions in the world. Here are four that did not make the list.
1.Design Thinking is mining and extracting the essence of all key Design disciplines.
2. It uses its inherent process of thinking and solving as a conscious tool to teach how to innovate.
At this point it is a losing battle trying to find a unified voice about what Design Thinking does, or means. Most definitions are confusing, cumbersome, incomplete, make little sense, or have purely and simply nothing to do with Design Thinking. There is a big disconnect between the way the design community feels and interprets DT and the way business strategists define it.