Tim Brown wrote an interesting article in the June 2008 Harvard Buisness Review on “Design Thinking”. Design thinking is a method of meeting people’s needs and desires in a technologically feasible and strategically viable way.
Thomas Edison created the electric lightbulb and then wrapped an entire industry around it. Edison’s genius lay in his ability to conceive of a fully developed marketplace, not simply a discrete device. He was able to envision how people would want to use what he made, and he engineered toward that insight. He wasn’t always prescient, but he invariably gave great consideration to users’ needs and preferences.
Edison’s approach was an early example of what is now called “design thinking”—a methodology that imbues the full spectrum of innovation activities with a human-centered design ethos. By this I mean that innovation is powered by a thorough understanding, through direct observation, of what people want and need in their lives and what they like or dislike about the way particular products are made, packaged, marketed, sold, and supported. His approach was intended not to validate preconceived hypotheses but to help experimenters learn something new from each iterative stab. Innovation is hard work; Edison made it a profession that blended art, craft, science, business savvy, and an astute understanding of customers and markets.
Design thinking is a lineal descendant of that tradition. Put simply:
« it is a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity »