Surviving The Age Of Disruption With Design Thinking

A powerful new trend in the business world follows the idea that innovation isn’t about technology, but about design. And it puts the needs of the customer first.

- Jessica Hubbard

In a world in which ambitious new businesses come and go within months, and long-established corporate bigwigs are toppled by nimble start-ups within a year, the blueprint for business success no longer exists. Entrepreneurs cannot simply depend on a healthy dose of start-up capital and market research, and big corporates are discovering that a “business as usual” approach is likely to be fatal. As a result, new and somewhat “unconventional” approaches to business development and strategy are being pioneered and adopted around the world.

One of the most impactful of these ideas is the concept of design thinking, which has been made popular by companies, predominantly in the US, which have become synonymous with innovation. A favoured example is IDEO, an international design and consulting firm founded in Palo Alto, California. Tim Brown, president and CEO of IDEO, defines design thinking as follows: “Design thinking is a human-centred approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”

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