Planning By Design

A new way of thinking can make your company more accessible

- Anne-marie le Roux

CNN recently called Amazon ‘the most valuable company on the planet’. A big part of the goliath’s success comes down to design thinking and Jeff Bezos’ insistence on an ‘empty chair’.nds.

Bezos’ legendary empty chair is present in every meeting. It represents the customer. Whatever Amazon says or does must always be to its customers’ benefit. From an aesthetic point of view, Amazon’s website is neither simple nor beautiful – two things we expect of good design. Instead, it focuses on simplicity of experience, guided by customer empathy. It’s phenomenal to see a company prioritise design, systems, processes and technologies around the customer experience. It’s an outside-in, not an inside-out perspective.

Anyone aspiring to build the next Amazon needs to adopt a similar approach. Amazon’s ‘customer obsession’ is beautifully captured within its strategic framework. It embodies mature design thinking. Design thinking comprises three parts: empathy for the end user, creativity when solutioning, and rationality when making choices and trade-offs.

Embrace the theory