Riassunto Design Strategy

Evolution of the design management field

Creativity

Today, creativity is a fundamental asset exactly as the other, or maybe even more. In fact, we cannot count only on our company to be successful; we should leverage on open innovation (look for employee or new ideas from non-employee outside the company and collaborate with them).

The boom of design thinking and M&A

It’s possible to identify a trend of a lot of important companies which are more and more acquiring design companies. We should ask ourselves why. The reason is that they, with an open innovation system, want to look from another perspective at how to connect themselves with the customer. The reason is that now the customer is not looking for a quick convenient activity, but is looking for a pleasant experience. So, this is the reason why we need in the company a group of designers, in order to view problems from another perspective. But not only this, it could also be a new way in which the company should approach daily bases activity, so how they daily behave.

Design as a tool

So designing should be seen as a tool like the others, but is not an object but more as an approach, looking at the problem in a different non-systematic way.

Old approach

Was based on emphasis on planning, with a linear and rational development starting directly to find a solution. This solution was functional and with no risk.

Design thinking

Means looking at a new approach, maybe not looking for a solution, but looking at the problem from another perspective could bring us to a totally different solution. That’s why we should give a lot of importance to the phase of understanding the problem. Design thinking is human-centered; it is about understanding culture and people. There are skills that are more and more required and are:

• Emotional Intelligence: Because being human-centered means also having empathy, so being connected with the users in order to understand the real needs.
• Creativity: As I introduced before, it is becoming more and more important in order to look at the problem from a different point of view.
• Critical Thinking: Is the most important one, is the ability to critically discuss and reframe the problem that is coming from the market. This means that we should not jump to the solution, but we should analyze and reframe the problem and maybe look for a different approach, and here the designer could help us.

Creative problem solving: double diamond

There are 4 phases: the first one, the green one, where the first diamond (Problem space) diverges. Here we analyze the problem and look at it from different points of view, and then the purple one, where we choose which problem to address and in which way, and the diamond converges. Then another diamond (Solution space) where there is another green one, where the dia