This study provides many avenues for future research in the area of design thinking for organizations. Firstly, the survey developed can be used again with more respondents. The survey can also be tested in different types of organizations. The comparisons of these results would be very interesting. Would the survey be received differently in a private SME or manufacturing company? It is possible that using this survey for different sample groups may shed some light on the first organization and answer some of the questions about this study‘s results.
Furthermore, design thinking is being adopted in organizations around the world with different cultural environments. The United States, Canada, Europe, Singapore, and Australia are a few of the nation‘s advocating design thinking. The cultural context may have an effect on the design thinking process or abilities. We must also take into consideration the cultural context the design thinking is taking place in. If the culture supports creativity or challenging the norms than it will be a positive influence; however, a culture with collectivism may take away from design thinking.
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Conducting this research in another culture and comparing results would be an ideal future study. Another suggestion for future research is modifications to the framework. The workplace atmosphere is very similar to the workplace innovative opportunity questions. Combining these two constructs could reveal more consistent results. As previously mentioned, another suggestion is to make the WIO measure an independent variable because it displayed such significant results in this study. A study using a simplified version of the framework can also contribute to our understanding of design thinking. This framework would remove the moderators and look at IEC to DTWS to PDT.
In the limitations section it was discussed that the culture of the organization may have had an impact on the respondents‘ answers in a way that made them not answer honestly. To possibly avoid this, a suggestion for future research is to have an outside party conduct the survey at the organization so it is seen as more neutral by staff. Do not have management send out the survey as it may create hesitance in the employees.
Another way that may avoid this is personal interviews with staff. They may be more inclined to open up if they trust the interviewer. It is very easy to lie on surveys, especially online versions.
A method to improve the practiced design thinking (PDT) measure is to measure the employees‘ use of design thinking from actual results instead of their self-perception. Some studies have done this by interviewing their direct supervisors and having them rate the employees. Another direction could be to assess the results of the employees work such as patents, commercialized concepts, or team feedback.
This study showed that the DTWS measures are significant with a supported hypothesis of increasing PDT. Further research can be done using these measures.
One method is to test different groups or types of employees to compare the differences. For example, do employees who have received training in design thinking
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have higher scores than non-trained staff? Are DTWS items originally within the individual or enhanced by training? Future research can also modify the items to create an improved measure—this was the first academic measurement created for design thinking in the workplace, found to date.
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