Could this be the First Document that References Design Thinking in Context to Design Thinking?

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.

Everything that most people in the field of DT had difficulties in explaining was in front of me in form of a simple, elegant, unpretentious piece of copy, designed to appeal to the most sophisticated design purist and simultaneously enlighten to the most left brained business strategist.

Something however seemed unusual. I remember, it had to do with title “Visualization…” which seamed a little too narrow to me. I scrolled back and about lost It. The date: OCTOBER 16TH 1997.

M P Ranjan not only predicted the arrival of Design Thinking, but he also explained in detail the climate and the circumstances.

His paper provided the framework for what we now call Design Thinking and included a detailed analysis of the discipline itself. Every word, every sentence, every assertion in his paper can reside in real time, and without editing, on any influential bog or magazine on design and innovation today. Except it was written twelve years ago. Try to remember when was the first time you heard these terms in context to Design Thinking: “User Centered Design, Complex iterations,Designer generating visible and tangible scenarios” etc…etc..The entire paper is loaded with our current vocabulary on DT. But here is one paragraph that is interesting to research:

“Design Thinking is distinctly different from scientific and management thinking, in that the designer and the design team are willing to cope with a great deal of ambiguity while the boundaries of the design opportunity are gradually brought into focus.”

Is this the first reference to Design Thinking  in context to Design Thinking?

I think many of us owe Professor Ranjan an apology because, intentionally or not, in one way or another, most of us  have plagiarized his work.  There was never any doubt in my mind that M P Ranjan had to be included in the  list of  the Top Twenty of the most important thought leaders on the subject of Design Thinking.

Here is the original paper:  M P Ranjan Design Visual is at Ion 1997

MP Ranjan is teaching design at the National Institute of Design in Ahmebadad, India. He is currently spearheading the efforts to create the  “Bamboo Institute”, a new design school, anchored in the principles of Design Thinking.

Here is a link to Professor Ranjan’s papers.