Co-creation and empathy are fundamental principles of design thinking that enable teams to collaborate and solve user problems at pace. Cross-functional collaboration and deep understanding of end-users help to break down barriers between organization silos, resulting in an aligned vision and more holistic, user-centered solutions. However, the geographically-dispersed nature of investment banks can make co-creation and empathy-building challenging.
Remote access to end-users makes it difficult to be immersed in their environment, and it is not always possible to instigate hands-on, face-to-face design workshops to foster co-creation. Leading design thinking projects in capital markets operations, we have observed that despite these constraints and limitations, the mindset and its application as a methodology to deliver solution definition can have significant benefits in an area of investment banking, which often lacks creativity, agility, and a user-centered mindset when defining strategic solutions.