Hasso
Plattner, cofounder of SAP AG, has made remarkable contributions in helping
organizations adopt design thinking. As mentioned earlier in this blog post
titled “Reengineering
Indian Academic Processes ”, he also cofounded the Institute of Design at
Stanford (with Professor Robert I. Sutton,
Professor of Management Science and Engineering).
These are commendable industry-institute initiatives meant to foster
epistemological pluralism. Indian Institutes, on the other hand, prefer to work
within their own narrow disciplinary domains. Most of them are grappling to develop
a shared understanding of the design thinking principles. Policy initiatives in
India, therefore, do not get the necessary stimulus and Indian education and
business continue to lag behind with a huge design deficit [see India
Inc’s Design Deficit].
Indian organizations, like the rest of the world, need to design for
the triple bottom line – people (society), planet (environment) and profit
(business). Further, India has its own developmental challenges and has
undertaken various inclusive growth initiatives. Hence, there is an urgent need
to embrace the conflicts imposed by these initiatives {see “going to the gemba”
{see HBR Jan 2004}.
Design thinking promotes a culture with a design attitude to solve
problems (however wicked they may be) with purposive application of creativity
throughout the process of innovation. Here are excerpts from the paper titled
“How tangible is your strategy? How design thinking can turn your strategy into
reality” by Matthew Holloway [in the Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 30, No.
2/3 2009 pp. 50-56]
- ‘‘ What if you could express your strategy not as numbers or frameworks or even a rhetorical narrative, but as something concrete? What if your strategy took shape as a prototype that shows your organization what success will look like when you have delivered against your goals? ’’
- ‘‘ The design thinking approach also encourages teams to create ‘project war rooms’ and to work visually using pictures, diagrams, sketches, video clips, photographs, and artifacts collected from their research. ’’
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