Design Thinking

Tim Brown believes the techniques and strategies of design belong at every level of business. As the CEO of the innovation and design firm IDEO and author of Change By Design, he is considered a thought leader in the field of Design Thinking. Brown defines DT as “a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.”In this module,...

Creative thinking can be mysterious, but it’s not a complete mystery. Tim Brown, whose career at IDEO has been based on leading a team of innovators who can reliably design at the very top of their field, has developed a few consistent techniques for fueling collaborative creativity.

At this point in history, all businesses want to be more innovative. Every CEO understands that constant innovation is the key to success in most industries in the global economy. The pressure to innovate, however, often produces policies and corporate structures that backfire, adding layers of bureaucracy at best, stifling innovation at worst.Tim Brown says there’s a better, less complicated way. Innovative companies are those whose leaders are personally involved and invested in innovation. ...

Design intersects and interacts with almost every industry, helping us to make sense of new ideas and technologies as they emerge. IDEO remains on the cutting edge of the design world by keeping its finger firmly on the pulse of new markets and the fast-changing professional world. In this early part of the 21st century, what skills are most valuable to companies? IDEO’s experience is a powerful bellwether.

At a historical moment when the pace of change is accelerating exponentially and we face greater challenges than ever before, we need new approaches to problem solving. This is true at every level of human experience––the personal, the organizational, the national, and the global. The landscape is shifting, and we need a better lens through which to make sense of it.

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of design is the balance it needs to strike between three (sometimes competing) criteria: The client’s need, the available technology, and what’s sustainable from a business standpoint. Balancing them effectively requires as much––if not more––creativity than any other aspect of design. In fact, these constraints often inspire brilliant innovation.

Divergent thinking gives designers and their clients many prototypes to choose from, many possible directions for the project. But even when they’ve selected one, the creative process is far from over. Iterative design means building, observing, rebuilding and refining until you’ve got a final product everyone is happy with.

Many business leaders today are stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, an increasingly competitive, rapidly changing economy are driving the belief that the only way to create more growth is by tapping exponentially bigger markets and consuming resources on a bigger scale than ever before. On the other hand, the planet is rapidly running out of even the resources needed to sustain life. What to do?Tim Brown of IDEO points out that the problem may be that we’re simply not askin...

One of the great advantages of design thinking––its human-centeredness––seems painfully obvious upon reflection. Of course, anyone creating a product or service should begin with the experience of the end-user. But especially in high-stakes projects with multiple competing priorities, it’s easy to lose sight of this simple fact.Human-centered design is powerful not only because it’s more likely to please the humans interacting with it, but also because it reveals problems and opportunitie...

Tim Brown, CEO and President of IDEO, explains why Design Thinking is such an innovative and transformational approach to problem-solving, and offers suggestions as to how we can incorporate design thinking into our everyday lives.

Divergent thinking often results in a stronger final design because it gives everyone involved the breathing room to experiment before they’re corralled into a particular vision. It also communicates that feedback and experimental ideas are welcome from all quarters, rather than the sole property of the design team. This often sparks “outsider innovation” from team members who can see the forest for the trees because they’re not so immersed in the design process.