My first “design” post from London. Just two hours off the plane and we found ourselves at the Rotman School Design Thinking Experts Series. The topic: “Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitve Advantage.”
The panelists were:
Lucy Kimbell: Clark Fellow in Design Leadership, Said Business School, University of Oxford
Roger Martin: Dean, Rotman School of Management and author of “The Design of Business”
Tyler Brule: Editor of Monocle Magazine and columnist in the Financial Times.
Design of Business Summary
Roger started off by providing us with a summary of his new book, the Design of Business. There are two major concepts in the book:
1. How knowledge advances or the stages of knowledge going from mystery to heuristics (rules of thumb) to algorithms (precise formulae). His point is that businesses proliferate on the basis of algorithms (he uses McDonalds Restaurant as an example) and then they stop advancing knowledge or innovating.
2. Reliability vs. Validity. Reliability being when the outcome is consistent and replicable – validity being an outcome that you actually want. Businesses, in Roger’s opinion, are stuck in the quantifiable because they seek “reliability”. In fact for businesses to innovate, they need validity – which often requires the passage of time. His point is that when we say “prove” a concept we are basically destroying innovation.
Thus – businesses need to be able to imagine the future, to apply intuition and to supplement existing approaches with design thinking. For Roger:
Design thinking = Analytical Thinking + Intuitive Thinking.
Panel
Tyler was asked about the design inspiration behind Monocle. For those who haven’t followed Tyler’s career – he is from Winnipeg (hurrah), founded Wallpaper Magazine, is still a columnist with the Financial Times (the “Fast Lane” column) and 3 years ago founded Monocle Magazine. His response was that the world has become more and more globalized – and that for him it was the opportunity of delivering a global, geo-political point of view – something more bookish, more collectable – that smells great and delivers other stories.
And this is true for me – I keep all my Monocles, I like the feel of the paper (not sure about smell) and I read them from cover to cover. I also like the fact that it is the same edition globally – not catering to one country for one version as The Economist does.
Tyler then asked Lucy and Roger – how do students and colleagues open their minds to the idea of design? Lucy responded that it is really about the experiential learning – not through the case method. Students have to try things out. In her courses, business students and design students collaborate to the benefit of both. It is about learning to explore and not commit.
Lucy also talked about service designers – moving from “user-centred” design to the idea of “service design”. Where user-centred design is about how we can design something better (an object or a process), service design is exploring what meaning and value an object or process might have. More about Lucy (deep thinker about design + business) in later blogs.
Roger opened up the discussion to the audience. My notes are a bit sketchy here – but there was a reference to a book by Elliot W. Eisner — The Enlightened Eye: Qualitative Inquiry and the Enhancement of Educational Practice. Roger, I think, suggested it was an important read. And then said: The CEO’s job is to develop an enlightened eye.
Someone asked about a “critique” of the design thinking phenomena. Comments included:
• The definition is still primitive
• We need to make it more teachable
• The concept is like an unfinished product
Another audience member asked: why call it design thinking? And followed up with a comment that designers don’t seem to think analytically (this shocked me) so why would design thinking be something to emulate if in fact we want to balance analytical and intuitive thinking.
Good questions. My next blog will include some thoughts stimulated by the Rotman event — and the question — is design thinking really the next competitive advantage?