Design Thinking?

From concept to capability: Developingdesign thinking within a professionalservices firm

Introduction

Corporate business and management are embracing design thinking for its potential todeliver competitive advantage through helping them be more innovative, differentiate their brands, and bring more customer centric products and services to market (Brown, 2008). As consumers continue to expect more personalisation and customisation from their service providers, the use of design thinking for innovation within organisations is alogical progression. Boland and Collopy (2004, p.xi) describe design thinking as cruciallyimportant for organisational leaders to create a ‘humanly satisfying and sustainablefuture’ for their business.To date however, there is little empirical literature discussinghow organisations are setting about integrating design thinking into their culture andinnovation practices. This paper explores the questions of:

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How is design thinking capability developed both individually and organisationallywithin a large complex organisation? and

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How is design thinking practice integrated into organisational work practices?

This is a first step in initiating a scholarly discussion on the integration of design thinkingwithin organisational practice and culture.This paper presents preliminary findings from a case study of Deloitte Australia’s(Deloitte) adoption of the concept.It is generally accepted by Deloitte leadership that twobasic levels of design thinking knowledge are required to commence the organisationaltransformation: an awareness and understanding of the concept; and first levelcapabilities to start applying design thinking to appropriate problems and projects.Capability development recognises the need to understand the complexity and holisticapproach of design thinking, as well as the specific methods and skills required for successful execution. This paper will discuss some of the challenges and successesexperienced at Deloitte in building awareness and developing capability programsamongst their professional staff that are primarily non design trained.

Design thinking in organisations

Design thinking emerged from the design methods movement (Jones, 1970; Buchanan,1992), a stream of research focused on understanding the thought processes andmethods behind design practice. Buchanan (1992) shifted the concept of design thinkingfrom understanding how designers think, make decisions and solve problems to a moregeneralised concept where design thinking can be applied to anything, tangible object or intangible system (Kimbell, 2009). This moved the concept from a cognitive style towardan intellectual approach of problem framing and solving that acknowledged the socialaspects of design work (Kimbell, 2009). While design thinking can be applied to anycontext, it is primarily associated with ‘complex systems and environments for living,working, playing and learning’ (Buchanan, 1992, p.10).In the early 21stcentury, through proponents such as Brown (2008; Brown & Katz, 2009),and Martin (2009; Dunne & Martin, 2006), design thinking became situated in businessand in particular in terms of a designerly approach to solve the challenges businesses arefacing (Brown, 2008; Kimbell, 2011). From this the concept was adopted withinmanagement discourse and business schools (Kimbell, 2011). Martin (Dunne & Martin,2006, p.512) describes it as ‘approaching management problems as designers approachdesign problems’. In particular, corporate business and management began embracingdesign thinking for its potential to deliver competitive advantage through aidinginnovation, differentiating their brand, and bringing products and services to market faster (Brown, 2008; Kimbell, 2011).

From concept to capability: Developing design thinking within a professional services firm

More recently, design thinking has begun to emphasise intangible design work outside of the ‘traditional preoccupations of designers’ (Kimbell, 2011, p.285) and it is increasinglygaining attention across a broad variety of contexts to resolve problems and makechange happen. It is being used in business for strategy (Golsby-Smith, 2007; Holloway,2009) and organisation redesign (Banathy, 1996; Georges & Romme, 2003; Jenkins,2008); healthcare (Brown, 2008; Duncan & Breslin, 2009), social innovation (Bell, 2008;Brown & Wyatt, 2010) and education (IDEO & Riverdale Country School, 2011) for thepurpose of fully understanding users and their problems before considering possiblecreative solutions.

Challenges of integrating design thinking in organisations

Brown & Wyatt (2010) position design thinking as an opportunity for organisations tocreate better outcomes for the people they serve. Within an organisation, design thinkingrecognizes that all employees, not just managers, co-create the social and collaborativeprocesses that shape organisational systems and in so doing all have an equal stake inthe organisation design (Banathy, 1996; Georges & Romme, 2003).Brown & Wyatt (2010) admit there are many impediments to the adoption of designthinking within environments including take up by a select few; resistance to the humancentred approach; or a failure to balance the perspectives of all stakeholders. Jenkinsagrees discussing that in order for the successful integration of design thinking theunderlying cultural values on which the organisation is based need to be reshaped andidentifies the potential challenge of rebuilding some of the major organisational systemsand corporate processes (Jenkins, 2008, p.20). This is not dissimilar to attempts tointegrate other large scale concepts such as total quality management, agiledevelopment, or business process re-engineering into organisational work practiceswhich are significant change initiatives and often take years to permeate companies. Inregard to design thinking, there are few empirically documented cases of it beingintegrated into an organisation’s practices and culture however it is increasinglyrecognised as being valuable at this level of complexity due to its human centred-nessand inbuilt engagement and participation.

Design thinking as a competency

Buchanan (1992) describes design thinking as a liberal art shared and used by all humanbeings in their daily lives but to varying degrees. This is echoed by Simon (1996, p.111)who believes design is a core human activity: ‘Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones’. While all humans sharethis design capacity it is often overlooked for more conventional and traditional problemsolving practices (Brown & Wyatt, 2010).

While often overlooked design thinking is also considered by some to be complementaryto traditional decision making or analytical thinking. As Martin (Dunne & Martin, 2006)argues, while contemporary management education focuses on more traditional decisionmaking and analytical thinking skills, adding design attitudes enhances innovativeness.Boland and Collopy (2004) agree where the design attitude is able to deal withuncertainty and ambiguity within problems, and a business attitude is suited for knownstable problems. Owen (2007, p.22) discusses the value of this combination of a designattitude with a traditional business attitude as the ‘best of skeptical inquiry into balancewith imaginative application’. Leaders then need to be both designers and decisionmakers (Boland & Collopy, 2004; Kimbell, 2009).While literature discusses the innate design capabilities and benefits of design thinkingcompetencies there is little outside of higher education (for example Melles, 2010)

discussing how to learn or be trained in design thinking skills and practices. This paper seeks to act as a starting conversation for understanding how an organisation isintroducing design thinking practices to the firm and building design thinking capabilitiesin non design trained professional staff.

Deloitte case study

Deloitte is a large professional services firm employing over 5700 staff in 12 officesacross Australia. The company provides a range of services to clients in the areas of audit, tax, financial advisory and consulting. Design thinking was mentioned in variousorganisational documents, presentations and forums in late 2010. In early 2011 Deloittemade a strategic commitment to integrating design thinking into the organisation’s workpractices. While the organisation has a strong innovation culture, it has largely beenoperating within an analytical business environment that is now moving toward a cultureof design thinking.Deloitte views design thinking as an opportunity to reconceptualise the organisation as aflexible structure able to adapt to changing requirements – both internally for employeesand externally with changing client expectations. In so doing their vision and strategiccommitment is to redesign the experience of professional services for clients.Michael Barry of Stanford University and Sarah Beckman from the Haas School of Business at Berkeley were engaged to commence introducing design thinking andbuilding capability in the area. This resulted in a one week immersion program held inSydney in April 2011, which consisted of a two day training boot camp for 120 staff followed by a three day intensive workshop for a subset of participants focusing on usinga design thinking approach for six strategic projects. These three days essentially actedas a project kick off for these initiatives. This experience and Beckman and Barry’sresources have formed the foundation for design thinking at Deloitte (for exampleBeckman & Barry, 2007). For the majority of Deloitte staff in attendance, whichrepresents approximately just 2% of Deloitte’s staff, this intensive one week immersionwas their first exposure to and experience of design thinking. As a follow on to the designthinking immersion program, approximately 80 people have been using a design thinkingapproach to continue the work commenced in the immersion program on the six strategicinitiatives. These internal projects range from redesigning internal processes, programsand communications to designing new business opportunities. Outside of these strategicinitiatives, most notable were several projects in various service lines focused on how tobuild design thinking capability across teams and business units. Within these projects,immersion program participants took on champion roles, further developing designthinking understanding and capability within their respective service lines.It should be noted that Deloitte has areas of its business, such as the Online and DeloitteDigital practices, where design thinking has implicitly been the dominant work practice for some time. With design thinking now at the fore, these teams have acted as championsfor design thinking and provided springboards for further learning and adoption as other parts of the organisation became aware of their design practices and reach out for support and knowledge transfer.

Methodology

Data was collected from June to September 2011, commencing just two months after theimmersion program while the company was still in its earliest initial stages of introducing