7. December 2017

Why DESIGN THINKING is more than messing around

Design thinking offers a methodology that helps its practitioners repair, adapt, reinvent or develop innovative products and services. It provides users with a toolkit for dealing with so-called wicked problems - that is, challenges enmeshed within dynamic environments, for which there are no easy answers.

by Dr. Rachel Brooks

Being able to solve wicked problems is becoming a key necessity within organizations, and design thinking gives us real, tangible methods with which we can see, touch, and try out a high number of ideas an solutions. In short, design thinking supports in generating real impact by helping us develop solutions oriented to users’ needs.

When faced with challenges in the corporate world, we often choose to implement the most familiar solutions, even if we know what we’ve selected does not apply directly to the issue we’re facing. This approach, which we may think saves time in the short-term, often does not  produce the results we need for long-term success.

The road to new and better solutions – that is, innovation – can seem daunting, unruly and unstructured.

We are afraid we will waste our time. By relying on answers that don’t address the dynamic specificities of the problem we’re facing, we generate results that are not robust enough to ensure sustainability.

Design thinking deals with exactly this challenge. This approach to tackling problems looks above all at the needs of users and customers through “needfinding” (interviewing, observing, and more), prototyping and testing. In design thinking, a guiding principle is “fail early and often” to maximize learning.

About the author
Dr. Rachel Brooks Dr. Rachel Brooks is Head of Executive Education at the Competence Center for Social Innovation at the University of St.Gallen (CSI-HSG). Her research and teaching focus on supporting practitioners across government, private and social sectors in cultivating the mindset, skills and tools to nimbly take action towards impact in an environment of mounting complexity and uncertainty. Previously, she worked in Custom Programs at the Executive School at the University of St.Gallen, and in Latin America at the nexus of business, agricultural producers, government and non-profit organizations in the global food industry. Rachel holds a BA from Smith College in Latin American and Latino/a Studies and an MA from New York University in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, where she was awarded the Henry MacCracken Fellowship. At the University of St.Gallen, where she completed her doctoral work, she received a fellowship through the SNF-funded ProDoc in the "Dynamics of Transcultural Management and Governance in Latin America" at the Centro Latinoamericano-Suizo. She earned her PhD in Organization Studies and Cultural Theory in 2016.
More articles