CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Research Background.
In today‘s economy corporations and businesses face many challenges as they struggle to transform from an Industrial Economy to the new Creative Economy or Innovation Economy. Attributes that made businesses successful in the 20th century, such as manufacturing, could be their downfall today. So organizations whether they are product-based or service-based must change—dramatically and quickly.
One of the buzzwords in the business community is innovation. The term is frequently being used in business journals, business conferences, annual reports, and in classrooms. There is a general agreement and understanding that businesses must continuously innovate in order to survive, especially in this time of rapidly changing market conditions (Siau, 1996). Innovation is defined as the process of going from an idea to the introduction of a novelty into the market (Mumford, 2000). Creativity is defined as the consolidation of idea generation and idea validation which is essential to the innovation process (Burbiel, 2009). Both the Innovation and Creative Economy heavily rely on people to generate new, unique solutions for profit (Wongtada & Rice, 2008). Organizations are turning to their employees to increase innovation and in turn ensure their survival. However, many organizations struggle to increase innovative activity in their employees and to create novel solutions to their challenges.
A method gaining popularity in the business world to generate successful, innovative solutions is design and designer techniques. If you study the bestseller lists
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of books or magazines over the past years you would notice that design is another market buzzword. Design has been moving away from being specific skills of professionals, which are mainly associated with industrialized economies, to becoming something that everyone can, or can try to, practice. Design offers ways to create solutions for everything from daily tasks or decorating your house to business solutions. The methods, processes, and even the ways of thinking like designers have been promoted for increasing innovation.
The material on design in the market often uses the term design thinking. This topic has been gaining force over the past five to ten years and gaining attention from both designers and forward thinking business executives. Walters (2009) says that design thinking promises to unite the left and right brains of individuals and organizations. It is a method for solving problems using designer processes and techniques. Advocates say businesses can create successful innovations using principles and tools of the design trade. These advocates, including Walters, are not merely designers advertising the benefits of their processes but also prominent members of the business community. Business Week has a section on their website and in their magazine dedicated to design thinking on their website with 387 news articles and 336 blog items.1
Recently, there have been many conferences, symposiums and workshops on design thinking. Furthermore, many business schools are also changing their curriculum to include design thinking. Stanford University has opened an Institute of
1 http://bx.businessweek.com/design-thinking/
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Design, called the d.school. On the Stanford d.school website2 they promote that they
“...believe great innovators and leaders need to be great design thinkers.” Stanford believes that the use of design thinking is not merely a trend, but a global movement that they want to be a part of. They see design as the catalyst for innovation, helping businesses transform in today‘s new economies. Furthermore, other prominent schools around the world are also adopting design thinking methods. Some examples are Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto, Singapore Polytechnic, INSEAD, HPI School of Design Thinking and Harvard Business School.
Large corporations, such as Procter & Gamble, Hewlett-Packard and Apple, have adopted design thinking principles and promote these methods as being keys to success (Walters, 2009). Design and strategy consultancies such as IDEO, Continuum, and Ziba Design have positioned themselves as ideal business consulting partners.
IDEO, Design and Innovation Firm in the United States, is an award-winning global design firm, with clients such as RIM, GE, and Ford. They are one of the top advocates for design thinking. The CEO and president of IDEO, Tim Brown is one of the leading voices for design thinking. Brown (2008) defines design thinking as “a methodology that imbues the full spectrum of innovation activities with a human-centered design ethos” (p. 1). Brown also describes it as an approach that uses the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success to create innovative solutions to any
2http://dschool.stanford.edu/big_picture/our_vision.php
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problem. Design thinking is a creative method or process for creating innovations that fulfill real human needs and are viable business solutions.
However, the term design thinking is still confusing. Researchers to those practicing, still argue over what exactly it means and whether other terms such as creativity, invention and innovation are more helpful (Kimbell, 2009). Yet, it still remains true that techniques used by designers to develop solutions to complex problems are gaining in popularity. This is a new area of academic research so there are many questions that still remain unanswered. What exactly is design thinking?
What factors support or hinder the adoption of design thinking practices by employees? Are certain people more likely to be successful at design thinking? These are some of the questions that this study seeks to discover.