If you solve a problem or meet a customers need, you have a viable idea for a business or non-profit.
Design Thinking is a creative approach to problem solving.
Do you need creative problem solving in your organization? How important is design thinking and the creativity it brings to the success of your organization?
There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that CEO's need design (creative) thinking and solutions in their organizations to become successful and that it is the most important factor for success as times become more complex, ambiguous and the solutions to problems less certain.
The IBM 2010 Global CEO Study: Creativity Selected as Most Crucial Factor for Future Success of more than 1,500 chief executive officers showed consensus: Creativity was ranked as the number one factor for future business success—above management discipline, integrity, and even vision. One reason for that is: Creative leaders are more comfortable with ambiguity.
This result is backed up by a research of the stock prices of design led companies versus non design led corporations in Europe ( Design Index: The impact of Design on Stock Market Performance ) and in America ( 2015 DMI Design Value Index ). The conclusion from both is that design led companies outperform non-design lead companies over a 10 year period by over 200%.
So why don't all CEO's implement Design Thinking and bring creative problem solving methodologies and techniques into their organizations and improve their shareholder value by over 200%?
The simple answer is that it needs different conditions to those that are normal in most corporations today. Design thinking and creative problem solving, while simple to explain in a process diagram is anything but simple and definitely not a linear process. It requires the right conditions to thrive in.
In an interview with Jacob Morgan when talking about clients that ask how they can become more creative Tim Brown of IDEO said "They want to be more creative, they want to be more innovative. However, the first thing we notice, which is obvious, is that their existing organizations, which are all focused on efficiency are not well set up to deal with innovation so there has to be something new happen at an organizational level in order to create space for creativity and innovation to happen. Sometimes it literally is a space, these (creative) labs that I was talking about earlier, but it's also who reports to who and certain skills you need to have in the organization and the way you put teams together. All of these things have to change in order for Innovation to succeed."
This observation was backed up in the 2020 Design Thinking Association survey. When asked what was the most difficult part of design thinking the number one response was convincing the C suite to support design thinking and getting them to understand the value of design thinking. No surprise as most CEO's are trying to manage risk and reduce it wherever possible. Introducing a creative more free thinking culture seems to go against all they know and how their organization is set up. Successful companies figure this out and make the space and conditions for creativity because of the results that it can deliver over time.
It can be difficult for CEO's to visualize how design thinking would fit into their present organization. A.G. Laffley, past CEO of P&G, who was responsible for bringing design into the organization, gave a powerful insight into how he became a champion of design in an insightful interview with Roger Martin at the Institute of DEsign's Strategy Conference in 2008. He spoke about how he would go to stores to see how P&G was looking on the shelves and would often take designers along with him. He said that they would observe the shelf in a very different way and helped him see how the customers see the products as opposed to how he saw the shelves as a businessman. This convinced him that design had a lot to offer the company that marketing does not supply. Once convinced, he set about creating the internal conditions for design to thrive within P&G.
The trick, it seems, is to introduce controlled risk taking in order to make bigger steps forward in creating value while not risking the entire enterprise. To make that fine balance, the CEO has to be involved and become the champion supporting design thinking and the development of creativity in the organization.
In a Northeastern Universities article The Importance of Creativity in Business Tucker Marion, an associate professor in Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business and director of the Master of Science in Innovation program says “Creativity is essential in business because it’s a differentiator”.
Creativity has helped Apple top the Boston Consulting Group’s list of “The Most Innovative Companies” for 11 years in a row, and grow a brand that speaks to more than its technology, but to design and innovation as well.
Creativity has given Apple its competitive edge, and inspired an unparalleled end-to-end user experience; Apple’s brick-and-mortar stores are as clean and modern as the products it sells. The brand has become one other companies mirror their strategy after. Rather than try to replicate Apple, however, business leaders should focus on how they can foster creativity within their own organization.
Why? Because, “Companies who are creative are more successful,” Marion says. The article concludes with 5 steps for CEO's to implement creativity in their organizations.
- Reward creativity
- Hire the right people
- Try the "yes, and..." approach
- Try Flexible work hours
- Give employees time to recharge
In another article by Tim Brown Why is Design a CEO Matter he states that: "It’s clear that a design mindset is important, but does it ladder up to the CEO level? It does. And that’s because the organization itself is a design project. CEOs are charged with setting up a design-friendly culture in which the very metabolism of the organization runs faster. That means giving all levels of the company, from interns to managers to VPs, empowerment and autonomy—the permission to shift when they can see farther than you can. It means creating a safe environment in which they can fail without fear. It means telling them a compelling story about the purpose of your company and getting them invested in that story. You are working together to create something magnificent, and will walk into an unknown future side by side, together." Clearly this sort of permission and changed circumstances within an organization will need the CEO's support. It is also why so few companies really succeed in implementing a design led culture.
Steve Jobs laid out the reason a CEO should support design in the clearest, simplest statement: "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." Meaning how it works for people, not technologists, product managers, sales teams or marketing, engineering development, production or any other internal stakeholder.
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Further reading:
The Value of Design Factfinder Report (Design Council UK)
The Design Economy 2018. The Design Council UK.
Design In Tech: John Maeda's reports on the impact of design in Tech companies.
The Economic Effects of Design by the Danish Design Council: Design Delivers, how design accelerates your organization and the outcome of the report: The Design Value Ladder.