This morning I found a quote from Mark Fishman, M.D., President of Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research that kind of sums up everything I’ve been posting on the topic of design thinking. He said, “If you’re leading a team or mapping out a strategy—if you’re trying to solve a problem— you’re engaged in design [thinking].”
Nicely put Mark!
At MFX Partners, we believe that no matter what industry you’re in—financial, engineering, sales, marketing—when design thinking principles are applied to your problem- solving processes, the success rate for innovation drastically improves.
This is because a design thinking mind-set is not problem-focused—it’s solution focused. It focuses on the action, the outcome, the solution, using both analytic (left brain) and imaginative (right brain) thinking. This is why design thinking can be applied to find:
* Order in chaos
* People-centered solutions
*Emotional/desired appeals
* Memorable, human experiences (scenarios/stories)
* Unseen/overlooked opportunities
* Possibilities for the future
* Prototypes for solutions
Henry Mintzberg, the internationally renowned academic and author on business and management who wrote the influential book, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, says, “Leaders and managers need to think like designers…Design and leadership are fundamentally about actively creating the future rather than reacting to the present.” And he points to companies like Apple, Starbucks, Sony, and Virgin, all large, successful companies that have applied designed thinking to the ways they lead, manage, market, create and innovate.
Is their success proof enough to make you a design thinking believer?