Bill Breen’s new article on business design in Fast Company does a good job at bringing the topic down to a more concrete level than other articles to date.
The below quote resonated with me emotionally, as I encountered this situation exactly during a seminar I taught last week:
The trouble is, when confronted with a mystery, most linear business types resort to what they know best: They crunch the numbers, analyze, and ultimately redefine the problem “so it isn’t a mystery anymore; it’s something they’ve done 12 times before,” Martin says. Most don’t avail themselves of the designer’s tools — they don’t think like designers — and so they are ill-prepared for an economy where the winners are determined by design.
The link is courtesy Diego Rodriguez, whose blog entry has an interesting discussion of where the “good enough” in design thinking should be applied.
Victor, thanks for cluing us into that article! I am part of a business group trying to introduce design thinking into the business processes. This article is a great example of how the design community is starting to unravel the “mystery” of how to use our way of thinking to introduce less linearity into business. Now, let’s keep working how to illustrate this to everyone else.