Some business strategists,and even members of the d-community, are accusing designers of not getting Design Thinking: “Design it is too important to be left only to designers.” Designers: “What in the name of god gives you the arrogance to imply all of a sudden that you understand the inner workings of my mind, if for years you did not give me the time of day?”

I believe both camps are right, but their approaches are misguided.In my opinion in order for DT to reach its potential, it is imperative to establish a proper relationship between Design and Business. But how?

The answer came to me a few years ago when the “Zollverein,” a business school focusing on DT, was founded in Essen, Germany. One of the first paragraphs stating the objectives of the school still resonates in my mind: “mutual respect between logic and intuition.” Those words were instantly adopted by my unfinished manifesto. I believe that sentence should be engraved on the walls of all business and learning institutions regardless of whether they even know anything about DT. Once that fundamental principle is adopted by both sectors, everything is possible and doable.

Common Objectives in B-schools and D-schools.

• Both schools operate in context to an eco system.
  
• Both programs need to be developed to fit both mindsets.
  
• D-schools and B-schools must adopt different curricula and learning strategies that don’t overlap but complement.
  
• Both schools need to design new programs that are very much anchored in the NATURAL DNA of their discipline.
  
• Both schools need to develop protocols and strategies, and find tools that bridge the mindsets between them, and simultaneously help to cross-pollinate their creative outputs.
  
• Both schools need to develop new platforms that create contextual clarity between left and right brain thinking.

DT objectives in D-schools

• Design schools focus on mining the essence of the design mind, exploring new potentials and exposing and exploring new applications.
  
• Design schools need to learn how to operate in business settings.
  
• Design schools need to teach how to harvest, document and communicate the “Thinking” behind the “Doing.”
  
• D-schools should disassemble existing design disciplines and develop novel fields based on interdisciplinary interaction within its own domain and non-related sectors.

DT objectives for B-schools

• Business needs to understand design.
  
• B-schools need to expose students to design.
  
• B-schools need to teach design literacy.
  
• Business schools need to develop new subjects that interpret data from D-schools or simply have brand new relevant applications.
  
• It is not in the interest of b-schools to copy design; it is in its interest to understand it. Understanding design is the foundation of practicing and applying Design Thinking.
  

One of the objectives of the DTX blog is to “deep dive” into these subjects in more detail and study their merits and shortcomings.

Because DT is operating within interdisciplinary territories, and some of these disciplines depend entirely on metrics, DT must also learn how to deliver measurable results. These quantifiable measurements however are not always in the form of Dollars, Yen or Euros; they are new, evolved value systems that are starting to penetrate even the hardcore left-brain disciplines like finance and banking.

DT has to be able to participate and deliver quantifiable measurements, or more importantly, participate in re-designing new value systems: financial systems, social systems, organizational systems, that eventually can be adopted by other industries or disciplines, “The Reformulation of Value.” Without metrics and benchmarks, in my opinion, DT will not be able to grow, or become an integral part of the business architecture. It will remain a small boutique strategy and remain part of the subconscious mind of the design culture.

The challenge now is to search for new value factors, with new norms, new benchmarks and metrics, that can eventually be shared with the disciplines with which it interacts. DT must establish close and collaborative relationships with left-directed systems of thinking, without sacrificing its integrity. It must search for common thought processes, which have been proven successful within the industry where they primarily reside, but they must be easily understood and applied within right-brain governed systems.

A great example is the QFD system (Quality Function Deployment), one of the closest benchmark systems with both, left & right brain characteristics.

QFD is a methodology that transforms user needs, wants and demands into a deliverable based on design, quality and metrics. QFD puts the emphasis on the customer, therefore adapting instantly to one of the main principles of DT: consumer-centric innovation.

Professor Hugh Claire: “QFD identifies the functions forming quality, and deploys methods for achieving the design quality into subsystems and component parts.”

Once DT value metric systems withstand the scrutiny, they become a permanent and integral part of the DT-strategy toolbox and subsequently subject to DT-Forensics.

2. It uses its inherent process of thinking and solving as a conscious tool to teach how to innovate.

3. Induces and elicits cross-pollination of creativities from different disciplines with different objectives.

4. Interprets and displays data, information and knowledge generated through Integrative Thinking.

5. Designs platforms that allow for the creation of contextual clarity between left and right-brain thinking. The results generate communal sense making.

6. It calibrates the level of understanding between participants from similar or opposing disciplines.

7. It manages the creative capital of ALL disciplines under one governing intelligence.

Design Thinking, the Intelligence:
Design Thinking is governed by the logic of the design mind.
DT operates ONLY in context with the principles of CREATIVITY.
DT induces, manages, and pollinates the creative capital of artistic, economic and technological creativity.
DT is designed to take into consideration all five senses.
DT without Design Doing is operating at below average capacity.
DT can be optimized only through interdisciplinary collaboration from related or opposite domains.
DT has infinite applications, business being just one of them.
DT interacts and connects complex nested networks with constant references to a holistic system.
In DT sometimes it is more important to ask the right questions vs having the right answers.
DT is in a constant interplay and dialogue between “consumer centric innovation ” and “design driven innovation.”
In Design Thinking the word “Rules” has a different meaning.

Design Thinker, the Practitioner:

One does not need to be a designer to practice Design Thinking but one needs to know, and understand, more about design than most designers do.
The Minimum Requirement to practice Design Thinking is to understand the design domain in its entirety, (graphics, product, architecture, fashion, etc.)
Not every designer is a Design Thinker. And not every Design Thinker is a designer.
D-Thinkers design systems that help to make sense of unstructured data.
D-Thinkers develop protocols that help facilitate the distribution of data, information and knowledge.
D-Thinkers manage to induce and distribute artistic economic and technological creative capital.
D-Thinkers curate and choreograph creativity.

Please let me know which other schools and institutions have DT intensive programs and should be included. 

Thank you.