Subject: Design Thinking (KMBN106)

Unit-1
Meaning of Innovation and Creativity
Creativity is about creation. It’s about harnessing the power of the mind to conceive new ideas, products
plans, thought experiments, tastes, sensations or art. Creativity can be a form of expression or a way of
solving problems. Anyone can be creative, and in any context. There’s creativity in the marketing
department, just as there can be creativity on a football pitch.

Creativity has traditionally been left to those ‘wacky’ companies that are deliberately trying to do things
differently, with the majority of businesses tending to favour a traditional and monotone approach to
running their organizations. However, the changing business landscape means that companies are
beginning to consider a more creative approach to working.

Need of creativity

Creativity can help a company manage tasks, improve staff performance and create quality products. It
is also vital in fostering a likeable and aspirational company image. With consumers now able to get a
snapshot of what company life is like, businesses need to be able to depict their inner culture in a way
that makes it seem appealing.

As new technologies continue to develop and become available, companies have to be flexible and able
to keep up to date. Creativity allows them to easily identify new ways in which technology can be
applied to help their businesses. Likewise, with social media and other interactive forms of marketing
now available, it’s never been more important for companies to be able to be creative.

Allowing employees to be more creative can inspire them to come up with more interesting ideas as
well as improve their overall output. Many of the world’s leading companies have started to adopt
unorthodox methods of encouraging maximum creativity from their employees, such as sleeping pods
and flexible working areas.
Types of Creativity

1. Deliberate and Cognitive creativity

People who possess deliberate and cognitive characteristics are purposeful. They have a great amount
of knowledge about a particular subject and combine their skills and capabilities to prepare a course of
action to achieve something. This type of creativity built when people work for a very long time in a
particular area.

People who fall under this type of category of creativity are usually proficient at research, problem-
solving, investigation and experimentation. This type of creativity is located in the brain’s prefrontal
cortex, which is at the front part of the brain. These types of creative people spend a great deal of time
every single day testing to develop new solutions.

Thomas Alva Edison is one prominent example of this type of creative people. He ran experiment after
experiment before inventing electricity, the light bulb, and telecommunication. Hence, deliberate and
cognitive creativity requires a great deal of time, dedication and abundance of knowledge about a
particular subject.

2. Deliberate and Emotional Creativity

People who are categorized as deliberate and emotional let their work influenced by their state of
emotions. These types of creative people are very emotional and sensitive in nature. These individuals
prefer relatively quiet and personal time to reflect and they usually have a habit of diary writing.
However, they are equally logical and rational in decision making.

Their creativity is always a balanced product of deliberate emotional thinking and logical actions. This
type of creativity is found in the amygdala and cingulate cortex parts of the human brain. Amygdala is
responsible for human emotions whereas cingulate cortex helps in learning and information processing.
This type of creativity happens to people at random moments. Those moments are usually referred to as
“a-ha!” moments when someone suddenly thinks of a solution to some problem or think of some
innovative idea.

For example, there are situations when you feel low and emotional which distracts you from your work.
In those kinds of situations, you should take 5 minutes and point out the things which are making you
sad and keep them aside and focus on the work in hand. It will help you to get improvised results and
you will get work done easily. One should seek “quiet time” for deliberate and emotional creativity to
happen to them.

3. Spontaneous and Cognitive creativity

There are times when you spend a long time to crack a problem but can’t think of any solution. For
example, when you want to make a schedule for a month to get a job done, but you can’t seem to think
of any possible way and when you are watching television and having your relaxed time and suddenly
you think of a solution and everything falls in place. The same case happened with the great scientist
Isaac Newton. He got the idea about the law of gravity when an apple hit his head while he was sitting
under a tree and relaxing.

This is the “Eureka!” moments for Newton and an excellent example of a spontaneous and cognitive
person. This type of creativity happens when one has the knowledge to get a particular job done, but he
requires inspiration and a hint to walk towards the right path. This type of creativity usually happens at
the most inconvenient time, such as, when you are in bed with your partner or having a shower.
Spontaneous and cognitive creativity takes place when the conscious mind stops working and go to relax
and unconscious mind gets a chance to work.

Mostly, this type of creative person stops conscious thinking when they need to do “out of the box”
thinking. By indulging in different and unrelated activities, the unconscious mind gets a chance to
connect information in new ways which provide solutions to the problems. Therefore, to let this type of
creativity happen one should take a break from the problem and get away to let conscious mind
overtake.

4. Spontaneous and Emotional Creativity

Spontaneous and emotional creativity takes place in the “amygdala” part of the human brain. Amygdala
is responsible for all emotional type of thinking in the human brain. Spontaneous ideas and creativity
happen when conscious and Prefrontal brain is resting. This type of creativity is mostly found in a great
artist such as musicians, painters, and writers etc. This type of creativity is also related to “epiphanies”.

Epiphany is a sudden realization of something. Spontaneous and emotional creativity is responsible for a
scientific breakthrough, religious and also philosophical discoveries. This allows the enlightened person
to look at a problem or situation with a different and deeper viewpoint.

Those moments are defined as rare moments when great discoveries take place. There is no need to
have specific knowledge for “spontaneous and emotional” creativity to happen but there should be a
skill such as writing, musical or artistic. This type of creativity can’t be obtained by working on it.

Innovation

Innovation, on the other hand, needs stability and establishment. It’s about changing a common or long-
standing process by improving it. It’s only by having a status quo in existence, that you can develop it in
order to innovate. So, while creativity and innovation share strong links, the processes are entirely
different.

Innovation is about taking newly created ideas and developing them into something useful and practical.
In many ways, innovation is the process of converting theory into action.

The most common type of innovation is evolutionary, which means finding ways of making incremental
improvements to your products and services. This type of innovation carries fewer risks, as it’s generally
easier to establish demand for these improvements and to calculate the likely return on investment.
However, it still requires a strategic, targeted approach – there’s little point in improving a product in a
way that customers don’t value.

The best way to identify opportunities for evolutionary innovation is to talk to existing customers and
find out what they value most about your products and services, and what aspects they’d like to see
improved. If longer battery life is their number one priority, then it probably should be your number one
target for innovation. However, if they also value the product’s easy portability, it’s probably not a good
idea for your new version to be much larger or heavier.

Need of innovation
Innovation is important because it’s the only way that you can differentiate your products and services
from those of your competitors. For customers and clients to choose your business, your offer needs to
be distinctive and valuable, and the only way to achieve this is through innovation.

It can be tempting to let your rivals do all the heavy lifting of creativity and innovation, with all the
investment, experimentation and risks that this entails. Then, when they come up with a dazzling new
product or improvement, you can simply copy what they’ve done at a fraction of the effort. However,
there are several pitfalls to this approach.

Most importantly, you’ll always be playing catch-up. However quickly you get your version to market,
your rivals will always have the lead on you and they’ll already be planning their next move. This means
customers will go to your rivals first, who will maintain a reputation for leading the pack. Your business
won’t stand out because there’ll always be someone else who’s already met the needs and desires of
your customers. You’ll harm your own brand, and could also risk infringing on your competitor’s
intellectual property rights.

However, innovation doesn’t have to be focused on changing a product or service. If you can find an
innovative new process that enables you to create a product more efficiently without compromising on
quality, you’ll be able to stand out from your rivals by undercutting their prices. Similarly, your
innovation could come in the form of a new distribution system, enabling you to stand out by offering
the fastest delivery to customers.

Creativity and innovation in the workplace

Exploiting both creativity and innovation in business can boost performance and the bottom line. But
first, you need to make space for both to happen.

Encouraging creativity can involve lots of different strategies, from enabling employees to work outside
the office to letting people come into and leave the office when they feel ready to, not when they’re
expected to. The office itself needs to be creativity-friendly and there are ways you can adapt the
working environment to support employees’ talents.

It’s important to let staff feel free when exploring new ideas – whether it’s tweaking your existing
product or developing a whole new concept. Involve the team, share accountability, reward good work
and be ready to respond to market feedback. Remember, your ideas and innovation, no matter how
amazing, still need to fulfil a need among customers.

There’s no guaranteed source of great ideas, but they do tend to be generated by the most engaged,
positive employees. They don’t come from staff who are bored or stressed. Great ideas sometimes
come from brainstorming sessions, but trying to force out ideas can be counterproductive. In reality,
great ideas are equally likely to occur when a particular problem occurs that requires a solution, or even
when an employee is on their way home, thinking about their day.

The key is to use your business’s culture and processes to capture these ideas when they happen,
wherever they come from. Staff suggestion boxes and allocated creative time can work well, but
sometimes all that’s required is a clear message from the boss that all ideas are welcome.

Difference between innovation and creativity

There’s a lot of confusion surrounding creativity and innovation. “Creative types,” in particular, claim
that creativity and innovation can’t be measured. Performance, however, demands measurement so
you can identify what success looks like. In a world that changes every second, it’s must be imperative
that companies figure out the difference between creativity and innovation.

Creativity and innovation are not one and the same, but they do complement one another. In fact, one
can’t function without the other.

The primary difference between creativity and innovation is that the former refers to conceiving a new
idea while the latter involves converting that idea into a marketable commodity.

Creativity is the act of conceiving something new, whether a variation on an existing theme or
something wholly original. Innovation is the act of putting that concept into practice. It’s the difference
between suggesting the idea that an aircraft could fly through space and actually building a rocket that
astronauts can use to get to the moon.

Creativity

Creativity is the characteristic of a person to generate new ideas, alternatives, solutions, and possibilities
in a unique and different way.

Creativity is the ability to conceive something unpredictable, original and unique. It must be expressive,
exciting and imaginative. It is the mirror of how beautifully a person can think in any given circumstance.

It is not genetic but can be developed if someone keeps on learning and comprehending things with a
rare and exclusive perception. Creativity is a brainstorming and mind-blogging activity in which a person
has to think beyond his imagination for bringing something worthwhile. It is an activity of unveiling
something which was previously hidden.
Innovation

Innovation is an act of application of new ideas to which creates some value for the business
organization, government, and society as well. Better and smarter way of doing anything is innovation. It
could be the introduction of:

 New technology.
 New product line or segment.
 A new method of production.
 An improvement in the existing product.

Creativity and Innovation

Innovation Creativity

Definition Innovation is the exercise to create Creativity is the capacity to make or

something new which already has a large think up something uncommon or
value to others. original.

Their actions Innovation acts by putting those new Creativity acts by delivering unique
ideas in reality. ideas.

Measurable Easy to measure. Hard to measure.

Liability Innovation can cause liability as the idea Creativity doesn’t carry liability as it
becomes reality. is just a thought or idea.

Expression Every innovation is a result of creativity. Not every creativity conforms to

innovation.

Process Productive Imaginative

Quantifiable Yes No

Related to Introducing something new Thinking something new

Money Yes No
Consumption

Risk Yes No

Role of innovation and creativity Industry and organizations

Innovation is the process of creating and implementing a new idea. It is the process of taking useful
ideas and converting them into useful products; services or processes or methods of operation. These
useful ideas are the result of creativity, which is the prerequisite for innovation. Creativity in the ability
to combine ideas in a unique way or to make useful association among ideas. Creativity provides new
ideas for quality improvement in organizations and innovation puts these ideas into action.

Depending on the nature of your business, you might already have a strong idea of how creativity and
innovation benefit your company. If you’re anything like TruScribe, the line is direct: our creative output
benefits our clients, which benefits us. However, maybe your company’s product isn’t as directly tied to
creativity as ours. You’ve likely heard that increasing creative and innovative work can give your
business a serious boost. Let’s explore how creativity and innovation can enhance business growth and
development, no matter what industry you’re in.

Creativity and innovation lead to higher overall success in organizations, even more so than raw
intelligence. Traditional companies and educational institutions tend to prize intelligence as the most
important factor in problem solving. However, this preference might have been born out of ease rather
than best practices.

After all, it is “easier to measure and manage” intelligence over creativity, which can be harder to
identify. When creative thinking is prioritized, positive feedback is received, and encouragement is
given to solve problems creatively, the company will see improvement.

Creativity and innovation within a well-run companies have always been recognized as a sure path to
success. Stimulating creativity and exploring completely new and unknown before territories lead as
result to increasing the productivity of the organisation. Encouraging the employees to think outside of
the box and giving them time and resources to explore new areas for innovative ideas is the key to cost-
effective business solutions.

Creativity improves the process of solving problems. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about developing
a new strategy or an innovative way to stay ahead of the competition. Creative problem solving gives
that competitive edge that any business is striving to achieve.
Strategic Importance of Innovation:

For both established organisations as well as new organisations, innovation and change become
important in a dynamic, changing environment. When a company fails to innovate and change as
needed, its customers, employees and the community at large can all suffer. The ability to manage
innovation and change is an essential part of a manager’s competencies.

Creative ideas and innovative approaches can come from almost anywhere- from your partners,
customers, target groups, employees. They can bring you fresh perspectives and ideas, so show them
that you’re listening and open to their feedback. That’s why it is important an open exchange of ideas to
be supported and encouraged by the company.

Types of Innovation:

(i) Technical,

(ii) Process and

(iii) Administrative.

Technical innovation involves creation of new goods and services. Many technical innovations occur
through research and development efforts intended to satisfy demanding customers who are always
seeking, new, better, faster and/or cheaper products.

Process innovation involves creating a new way of producing, selling or distributing an existing good or
service.

Administrative innovation occurs when creation of a new organisation design better supports the
creation, production and delivery of goods and services.

The various types of innovation often go hand in hand. For example, the rapid development of business-
to-business e-commerce represents process innovation. But this new process requires many technical
innovations in computer hardware and software. Also, as firms began to use business to business e-
commerce, administrative innovation soon followed. Further, implementation of process innovations
necessitated organisational change. “Doing something new means doing something differently”. Thus,
innovation and organisational change go hand in hand.

Create a Creative Workplace

Creative thinking can also lead to innovation that will grow your business through increased
productivity. When you “focus on what things you can streamline and what things you need to cut out”
while keeping the systems that perform well, you’ll build a simpler, more efficient workplace. Creative
thinking lets you come up with ideas that will excite and motivate your team.
Reach New Heights

Creativity and innovation can be the pathways for your business to reach new heights of product value,
process improvement, productivity, marketing success, and internal harmony. The creative process can
lead to novel ideas and concepts. This is especially true when the divergent thinking it requires is
complemented by conventional convergent thought,

When a diverse, cross-functional team looks to innovate through implementation of creative ideas,
they’ll work more effectively, flexibly, and with a greater sense of unity. From product designs that are
miles ahead of the competition to minor office changes, any new improvement to your business is an
innovation. This process doesn’t happen just once, either.

Dynamics of Creative Thinking

Creative thinking means thinking outside the box. Often, creativity involves lateral thinking, which is the
ability to perceive patterns that are not obvious.

Creative thinking might mean devising new ways to carry out tasks, solve problems, and meet
challenges. It means bringing a fresh, and sometimes unorthodox, perspective to your work. This way of
thinking can help departments and organizations be more productive.

Evolution, synthesis, revolution, reapplication, changing direction. Many classic creative thinking
techniques make use of one or more of these methods. Note in this section that the goal is to produce a
good quantity and a good quality of new ideas and solutions so that the best ones may be chosen.
Exactly how those ideas are generated is less important than the ideas themselves. Remember, the goal
is more important than the path.

Creativity = surprise + originality + beauty + utility

Brainstorming

Alex Osborn, advertising writer of the fifties and sixties, has contributed many very powerful creative
thinking techniques. Brainstorming is probably the best known and certainly one of the most powerful.
For a fuller treatment, see his book, Applied Imagination.

Brainstorming is an idea generating technique. Its main goals are:

(1) to break us out of our habit-bound thinking:

(2) to produce a set of ideas from which we can choose. (No one wants to have a choice of only one
product when buying laundry detergent or cars, so why have a choice of only one solution when working
on a problem?)
Convergent thinking is measured by tests like remote associations test or insight problems. These
problems are solved when you apply one of the methods below:

1. Make a unique association between parts of the problem. This looks again similar to flexibility or
how fluid is your categorisation schema enabling you to think out of the box and not be limited
by typical categories or associations.
2. Take a novel approach (and not the typical approach) to problem-solving. To me, this again
looks similar to originality.
3. See the problem from a different perspective. To me, this looks like how quickly you can adopt
multiple perspectives the speed with which you can take alternate perspectives and is similar to
fluency.

Formal Creative Thinking

It is possible to think creatively all the time. There are some people who simply fizz with new ideas and
seem to see everything slightly differently from those around them.

These are the people who are always asking ‘Why?’, and ‘Why not?’.

They are natural problem-solvers and innovators.

However, for most people, creative thinking requires more effort. They prefer to save their creative
thinking for when it is really necessary.

Typical examples of times when you might take the time to use creative thinking techniques include:

 When you are facing a major problem or issue, and you cannot see an obvious way forward.
 At times of change, when it is hard to see what might lie ahead, and you want to think about
possible scenarios.
 When there is a lot of disagreement about what needs to happen next, and no compromise
seems possible without a lot of effort.
 When you need something new, that hasn’t been tried before, but you are not sure what.
Dynamics of Creative Thinking

Creative thinking is expressed in several ways. Here are some of the types of creative thinking you might
see in the workplace.

Analysis

Before thinking creatively about something, you first have to be able to understand it. This requires the
ability to examine things carefully to know what they mean. Whether you are looking at a text, a data
set, a lesson plan, or an equation, you need to be able to analyze it first.

Open-Mindedness

To think creatively, set aside any assumptions or biases you may have, and look at things in a completely
new way. By coming to a problem with an open mind, you allow yourself the chance to think creatively.

Problem-Solving

Employers want creative employees who will help them to solve work-related issues. When faced with a
problem, consider ways that you can solve it before asking for help. If you need the input of a manager,
suggest solutions rather than just presenting problems.

Organization

This might seem counterintuitive: Aren’t creative people known for being somewhat disorganized?
Actually, organization is an essential part of creativity. While you might need to get a bit messy when
trying out a new idea, you need to organize your ideas so others will understand and follow through
with your vision.

Communication

People will only appreciate your creative idea or solution if you communicate it effectively. You need to
have strong written and oral communication skills.

Also need to be able to understand a situation fully before thinking creatively about it. That means you
also need to be a good listener. You may come up with a unique solution by asking the right questions
and listening to the answers.
Process of Design Thinking
Design thinking is a popular methodology that inspires a human-centered approach to design. It is used
by many design teams at some of the world’s most successful tech companies. Design thinking is a non-
linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems
and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. The design thinking process is broken up into five
specific design thinking stages: empathy, definition, ideation, prototyping, and testing.

Empathy

At this stage in the design thinking methodology, designers sit down with real people and absorb their
points of view, world, and introspections without bias.

Without attempting to master empathy, designers face an uphill climb when solving human-centric
problems. When designing a product or service, empathy in design thinking builds a crucial and
necessary bridge between the target user or audience and the product, project, or service being
designed.

Some steps that are often taken during this stage of the design thinking methodology are:

 Consulting subject matter experts about their insights

 Engaging more personally with an issue to gain a better understanding of a user’s POV
 Having in-depth conversations about the topic with other designers
 Immersing oneself in a physical environment

Define: State Your Users’ Needs and Problems

It’s time to accumulate the information gathered during the Empathize stage. You then analyze your
observations and synthesize them to define the core problems you and your team have identified. These
definitions are called problem statements. You can create personas to help keep your efforts human-
centered before proceeding to ideation.

Ideation

The ideation stage leans heavily on the ability to invent. Designers who have captured the human
experience fully during the empathy stage set out to ideate around creative solutions for solving the
defined problem. Thinking outside the box is the name of the game, as, during this stage, designers
often don’t worry about budget or scalability.

At this point, designers should have a workable understanding of their user base, so this is an excellent
time to get creative and not dwell too much on limitations. An example of a popular technique in the
ideation phase is an exercise called “worst possible idea.” By inverting the search for a solution into a
brainstorm of what would not work, this process sets the design team up for success by helping build up
trust and confidence. Since no idea can technically be “wrong” in this process, designers build up good
practices of sharing their thoughts with confidence.
Prototype: Start to Create Solutions

This is an experimental phase. The aim is to identify the best possible solution for each problem found.
Your team should produce some inexpensive, scaled-down versions of the product (or specific features
found within the product) to investigate the ideas you’ve generated. This could involve simply paper
prototyping.

Test

he testing stage of the design thinking process requires real users to generate real data. However, the
final stage of design thinking is not necessarily the last thing designers will do. Remember, design
thinking is built upon a foundation of iteration, so many designers roll out multiple prototypes to test
different change factors within their idea. Without a comprehensive testing stage, user experiences and
solutions have difficulty scaling.

Testing is often an iterative process. Designers can expect to go through a series of changes, edits, and
refinements during the testing stage. For this reason, it’s not uncommon for the testing phase to
“restart” some other design thinking processes such as ideation or testing, as newfound ideas might
spark additional potential solutions that require an entirely fresh approach.

Implementing the process in driving innovation

Innovation Capabilities

We have identified four key capabilities that truly innovative organisations do well.

Strategy: A clearly defined innovation strategy which guides decisions, and an explicit innovation
ambition from the Board and Top Management.

People: People are innovative, have a strong capability to innovate, and have innovation tools and
innovation metrics.

Process: Deep market and customer insights, constantly uncovering and understanding today’s and
tomorrow’s customer needs, collaborate well with partners and leading-edge customers.

Culture: Encouraged to think big, dream big and take calculated strategic risks. Great at making
innovation investments, funding is easily available for new innovative projects, and have the time and
freedom to innovate.
Innovation as a Strategy

Innovation means different things to different people and is industry and sector context specific. For
example, an innovation in the health sector will differ from an innovation that relates to the use of solar
technology. In the former, people’s health is at risk if the innovation’s downstream impacts are poorly
understood, while in the latter, failure would be an inconvenience, or even seen as a major political
issue in the rapidly evolving industry.

People

Innovation requires individuals who have a mindset which is comfortable dealing with uncertainty and
ambiguity. These individuals love to explore, learn, create and test opportunities. They view roadblocks
as learning opportunities to reshape or pivot their innovation.

Highly-innovative organisations are encouraging their people to innovation, without implementing

disruptive change programs. The practical starting point to improve an organisation’s chances of
stimulating and sustaining innovation is amongst the organisation’s people.

The leadership team is ultimately responsible for driving innovation and manage it formally as part of
the organisation’s strategy. Holding the leadership team accountable for encouraging innovation makes
a big difference through formal innovation targets or metrics. In this way, innovation can be not only be
encouraged but can also be managed, tracked and measured as a core element in an organisation’s
strategic initiatives.

The four Innovation Phases are:

 Opportunity Identification: Ideation, finding great ideas, concept development;

 Opportunity Development: Market research, strategy development, developing, testing and
piloting those ideas into the new product, service, program or business;
 Scaling Up: Launching the innovation, testing and validating that systems and processes are
ready to scale;
 Growth: Delivering the innovation at scale, driving growth so that the innovation is sustainable
and merges successfully into the organisation.

Culture

The cultural part of innovation is key. Innovation results from iterative experimental learning. Innovation
requires an empowering work environment. To facilitate increased innovation, one needs to enable and
drive innovative behaviours by aligning culture, structure, leadership behaviours, measurements and
rewards.
Implementation Process

1. Create dedicated innovation teams

It is important to remember that there may be employees in your company who have the best ideas but
are not good at communicating them. Therefore, it is important to have a team to help support and
encourage idea sharing. If your company does not have the resource for a dedicated team this can be
made up of members from different areas in your business.

2. Introduce an idea sharing platform

You need to bring employees together to share and collaboratively generate ideas, whether in-person or
virtually, the right platform is important.

For example, Dell IdeaStorm (www.ideastorm.com) provides a platform for anyone to submit their
ideas, and to comment and vote on ideas from other people whereas HP organizes brown bag lunches
for their employees to encourage them to discuss their ideas.

3. Create a screening process for all the ideas

You need to have an idea screening processes in place so your employees know that their ideas are
being considered. This can be done in different ways.

At Electrolux, cross-functional team consisting of design, research and development, and marketing
professionals are involved in the screening process which involves ideas being tested with focus groups.
Any design failing to achieve a 70% approval rating from the focus group is eliminated automatically.
Whereas Google simply collects ideas from employees through emails at a company-wide suggestion
box, and make the ideas available for all other employees to rate and comment on.

4. Employ innovation advocates

Have a team of advocates on board who support the idea generation and innovation process. This group
will inspire change throughout the organization by asking questions, supporting ideas, and demanding
radical changes.

For example, at Boeing, a ‘Phantom Works’ group was created which supported the idea generation and
innovation process by communicating between departments and sought ideas and technologies that
could be applied in newly identified areas of the organization.
 5. Encourage collaborative experimentation

Organizations should employ collaborative experimentation to improve the chance of success at

innovation. Communicating with stakeholders brings new ideas, corrects problems, addresses market
needs, and speeds up the innovation process.

An example of this is when Google made prototypes of products such as Gmail and Google Earth
available for existing users which helped with developments.

6. Communicate with your employees

It is important for your employees to ‘buy in’ to your ideas and know as much as they can about the
development of them.

For example, HP Labs uses electronic newsletters, informal coffee talks, and peer reviews to convey its
latest innovation developments to employees. Having several venues for sharing information increases
the likelihood that every employee will find a useful source for information about innovation and new
ideas in the organization. This decreases uncertainty and negativity and helps people to be open to new
ideas.

7. Be specific with your communication

Beyond communicating to your employees, you need to let them know how the innovation affects them
and the positive outcomes it could bring. For example, at PNC Bank, online learning courses for
employees were tied to specific job skills so each employee could tailor their online learning to meet
their objectives. In this way, employees could see how the innovative course offerings applied directly to
their situation and could then decide how to invest their time.
Individual Creativity: Roles and Process
Creativity fills one gaping hole: our need to communicate and to create new ideas and new
knowledge. The term knowledge is used here in its broadest sense, to encompass what we call
knowledge, expertise, skills and information (Faulkner, 1994: 426).

However, my main concern in this article is narrowly focused, on the cognitive features of
knowledge generated by creative processes. This knowledge is intimately related to questions
of who has particular knowledge and how easily it is to make use of this knowledge in an
organization laden with instantaneous demand and response times. Are individuals defined by
their knowledge rather than how they apply it? Are we finding a new pace, time, space and
depth to how we innovate?

Individual Creativity
As old products are replaced by new, creativity is the identifying factor changing the way we do
things? Creativity drives entrepreneurship at all levels anticipating profits through early product
innovation. Whether radical or incremental innovation, creative dynamism at the individual
level has a cumulative effect on the innovation process.

A pervasive image of innovation casts a scenario centering on the individual innovator.

Indeed, as authors Cameron Ford and Dennis Gioia, emphasize in their book of collected
essays, Creative Action in Organizations (1995) those searching for the fountain of creativity
have traditionally focused on the solitary inventor. A single person-centered view has outlived
its usefulness. Even the most legendary inventor, such as Thomas Edison, is often a team in
disguise (Kelley, 2001). The idea of a lone genius distracts us from the more useful focus on the
higher potential source of creativity: the organization as a collective of creative people working
as a team. To promote organizational creativity among individuals attempt to remove barriers
and obstacles that hinder creativity and denote the lone inventor as a myth.

Creativity does not just happen. It is a cognitive process that produces new ideas or transforms
old ideas into updated concepts, according to Brussels Free University psychology professor
Liane Gabora. Scientists such as Jacques Hadamard and Henri Poincaré studied the creative
process and contributed to the Creative Process Model, which explains how an individual can
form seemingly random thoughts into an ideal combination or solution, according to the
website The Information Philosopher.

The Preparation Step of the Creative Process Model

During the preparation step of the creative process model, an individual becomes curious after
encountering a problem. Examples of problems can include an artistic challenge or an
assignment to write a paper. During this stage, she may perform research, creates goals,
organize thoughts and brainstorm as different ideas formulate. For example, a marketing
professional may prepare for a marketing campaign by conducting market research and
formulating different advertisement ideas.

The Incubation Step of the Creative Process Model

While the individual begins to process her ideas, he begins to synthesize them using his
imagination and begins to construct a creation. Gabora states that during this step, the
individual does not actively try a find a solution, but continues to mull over the idea in the back
of his head.

The Illumination Step of the Creative Process Model

As ideas begin to mature, the individual has an epiphany regarding how to piece her thoughts
together in a manner that makes sense. The moment of illumination can happen unexpectedly.
For example, an individual with the task of putting together an office party may have an idea
for a theme while driving home from work.

The Evaluation Step of the Creative Process Model

After a solution reveals itself in an epiphany, the individual then evaluates whether the insight
is worth the pursuit. He may make changes to his solution so it is clearer. He may consult with
peers or supervisors regarding his insights during this step before pursuing it further. If he
works with clients, he may seek a client’s input and approval before moving on to the next step.

The Implementation Step of the Creative Process Model

The implementation of an idea or solution in the creative process model is when an individual
begins the process of transforming her thoughts into a final product. For example, during this
step, a painter may begin outlining shapes on a canvas with charcoal before applying oil paints
to the medium. According to Gabora, an individual may begin this step more than once in order
to reach the desired outcome.
 Unit-2

Process of Design Thinking

Design thinking is a popular methodology that inspires a human-centered approach to design. It is used
by many design teams at some of the world’s most successful tech companies. Design thinking is a non-
linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems
and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. The design thinking process is broken up into five
specific design thinking stages: empathy, definition, ideation, prototyping, and testing.

Empathy

At this stage in the design thinking methodology, designers sit down with real people and absorb their
points of view, world, and introspections without bias.

Without attempting to master empathy, designers face an uphill climb when solving human-centric
problems. When designing a product or service, empathy in design thinking builds a crucial and
necessary bridge between the target user or audience and the product, project, or service being
designed.

Some steps that are often taken during this stage of the design thinking methodology are:

 Consulting subject matter experts about their insights

 Engaging more personally with an issue to gain a better understanding of a user’s POV
 Having in-depth conversations about the topic with other designers
 Immersing oneself in a physical environment

Define: State Your Users’ Needs and Problems

It’s time to accumulate the information gathered during the Empathize stage. You then analyze your
observations and synthesize them to define the core problems you and your team have identified. These
definitions are called problem statements. You can create personas to help keep your efforts human-
centered before proceeding to ideation.

Ideation

The ideation stage leans heavily on the ability to invent. Designers who have captured the human
experience fully during the empathy stage set out to ideate around creative solutions for solving the
defined problem. Thinking outside the box is the name of the game, as, during this stage, designers
often don’t worry about budget or scalability.
At this point, designers should have a workable understanding of their user base, so this is an excellent
time to get creative and not dwell too much on limitations. An example of a popular technique in the
ideation phase is an exercise called “worst possible idea.” By inverting the search for a solution into a
brainstorm of what would not work, this process sets the design team up for success by helping build up
trust and confidence. Since no idea can technically be “wrong” in this process, designers build up good
practices of sharing their thoughts with confidence.

Prototype: Start to Create Solutions

This is an experimental phase. The aim is to identify the best possible solution for each problem found.
Your team should produce some inexpensive, scaled-down versions of the product (or specific features
found within the product) to investigate the ideas you’ve generated. This could involve simply paper
prototyping.

Test

he testing stage of the design thinking process requires real users to generate real data. However, the
final stage of design thinking is not necessarily the last thing designers will do. Remember, design
thinking is built upon a foundation of iteration, so many designers roll out multiple prototypes to test
different change factors within their idea. Without a comprehensive testing stage, user experiences and
solutions have difficulty scaling.

Testing is often an iterative process. Designers can expect to go through a series of changes, edits, and
refinements during the testing stage. For this reason, it’s not uncommon for the testing phase to
“restart” some other design thinking processes such as ideation or testing, as newfound ideas might
spark additional potential solutions that require an entirely fresh approach.
 Unit-3

Design Thinking in Health Sector

 Design thinking is an approach to innovation that produces more-
comprehensive solutions than other process-improvement strategies.
 Design thinking involves four main components: empathy, multidisciplinary
thinking, rapid solutions deployment and continual improvement.
 Health plans and other healthcare organizations can apply design thinking to
solve some of the industry’s most urgent challenges, such as improving the
customer experience.

Many leading hospitals are starting to focus more on understanding the patient experience to
solve these kinds of problems, as well as to improve overall patient experience and to lower
costs. Yet it’s not always easy to get key stakeholders to consider nonclinical aspects of this
type of work.

One of the most promising approaches for understanding patients’ experiences has been
design thinking, a creative, human-centered problem-solving approach that leverages empathy,
collective idea generation, rapid prototyping, and continuous testing to tackle complex
challenges. Unlike traditional approaches to problem solving, design thinkers take great efforts
to understand patients and their experiences before coming up with solutions. This thorough
understanding of patients (for example, those who regularly miss appointments) is what guides
the rest of the process. And because design thinking involves continuously testing and refining
ideas, feedback is sought early and often, especially from patients.

Design thinking has already taken hold in health care, leading to the development of new
products and the improved design of spaces. Yet it remains underused in addressing other
important challenges, such as patient transportation, communication issues between clinicians
and patients, and differential treatment of patients due to implicit bias, to name just a few. If
more leaders embrace design thinking, they can leverage a deeper understanding of patients to
solve such problems, achieving better clinical outcomes, improved patient experience, and
lower costs along the way.
Designing a Patient-Centered Experience

How might design thinking be applied to the persistent and costly problem of no-shows? In
Mary’s case, she couldn’t explain her concerns through the standard patient experience survey,
which is initiated after an appointment and which comprises general questions focused on the
medical visit. Were it not for the hospital administrator’s initiative to ask Mary what was going
on, her concerns may have gone both unnoticed and unaddressed.

This tailored, human-centered approach of problem solving is the foundation of design

thinking. Hospitals versed in design thinking would identify this general challenge and then
assign a team or task force (ideally a multidisciplinary one) to spend weeks or even a few
months studying the patients it affects. The team would use qualitative research methods, such
as surveys, focus groups, and observations, to better understand people’s experiences. They
would seek out patterns and aim to define the real problem at hand. For instance, a team
investigating several no-shows would quickly see that many cases do not necessarily involve a
patient’s forgetfulness or time management. They’d find that the issue faced by patients like
Mary is often more socioemotional than organizational.

After this phase, the team would brainstorm possible solutions, and then begin rapid
prototyping to test them. Depending on the proposed solution, a prototype could be anything
from a physical mock-up to a skit or a flowchart. For example, if the team wanted to design a
screening process to identify individuals with transport-related concerns, they could design a
simple computerized simulation that illustrates how that process might look and feel to both
patients and staff. Once created, this prototype would be tested by relevant stakeholders and
perhaps even outside parties to collect critical feedback. Often, the feedback indicates when or
how to modify solutions, or whether to go back and gather more information. The result is a
solution focused on what will most help the patient.

Addressing a Broader Spectrum of Patient Challenges

There are already a few promising examples of design thinking being used to create a better
experience for patients. For instance, the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Mayo
Clinic used design thinking to reimagine prenatal care. They wanted to better meet the
expectations and needs of expectant mothers, who desired a greater emphasis on the
emotional experience of pregnancy, rather than just the clinical side of it. Through interviews
with and observations of local expectant mothers, the design thinking team learned that it was
extremely important for these women to have a sense of community. So, the department
created online care communities, facilitated by nurses and other pregnancy advisers. The result
was an overall improvement in how prepared and empowered these expectant mothers felt.

Design thinking can be used to address challenges in a variety of domains related to the patient
experience. Consider reimagining the emergency-room waiting experience. Because care is
prioritized based on the severity of a patient’s condition, wait times are difficult to predict.
Patients and their families often spend hours waiting to be seen and treated. Design thinking
may uncover new ways of helping patients feel comfortable and safe during such long waits. An
approach that starts with investigating the patients’ perspectives, including their greatest pain
points, may give administrators ideas for how to make the emergency room experience more
bearable.

The benefits the Design thinking vision can bring to healthcare are many, but the benefits
related to patients are probably those that cause more social concern, precisely because it is
something that affects us all, because at some point in our life will have to go through that.

Among the benefits design thinking application has brought to healthcare, we can highlight the
user experience improvement when interacting with machines (reducing anxiety and fear), the
improvement of the professional-user communication (the doctor-patient communication or
pharmacist-consumer) or the increase of comfort and mobility of patients.

Shift

1. Shifts to Value-based Care

Healthcare is moving beyond the walls of hospitals and into communities and the role of
healthcare providers is shifting. We’re seeing new questions like, what do we do about
loneliness; as it turns out loneliness is as much of a killer as smoking and diabetes. These types
of questions lead to a better understanding of patients and creating whole ecosystems of care.

2. Shift from Being Reactive to Proactive

Everyone is empowered to get to know their bodies and their health before anything is wrong
with them. Health is becoming this process of self-exploration, which creates entry points for
people into healthcare offerings. We’re seeing a shift from healthcare to consumer products
that can help us better understand who we are.

3. Balance High Regulation with Experimentation

Privacy and risk committees often block tools out of security controls. But there’s opportunity
to invite people to be fully informed about the choices they make in terms of the technology
they use and give them the choice to opt into the tools. We should have high standards of
privacy and make sure our tools are secure, but there’s still room to experiment and use
informed consent to prototype tools that may not be ready for primetime yet.
Design Thinking in Finance
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 by making more desirable solutions for clients.

Corporate finance and financial services, disrupted by technology and endangered by the
FinTech firms, are in unprecedented need of Design Thinkers able to anticipate customer
preference shifts and innovate to respond to the ever-changing industry needs. This course will
help to understand the importance of Design Thinking in finance, teach the frameworks,
techniques and how to apply them in the daily practice.

Traditionally, finance transformation initiatives are driven by cost reduction strategies. The
focus is on squeezing out as much fat as possible and achieve efficiency. Take adoption of new
finance software as an example. Rather than view the adoption as an opportunity to relieve
finance teams of rudimentary tasks and focus on initiatives that require critical thinking, CFOs
view this as an opportunity get rid of employees and cut costs.

If a business is heavily dependent on analytical thinking, especially where performance and

rewards are budget and or forecast driven, maintaining the status quo often prevails. The
organization finds itself operating as it always has and is reluctant to design and redesign itself
dynamically over time.

When faced with a decision about investing in a new product, market or something new and
promising, but not in the current budget, the answer is always no. Many at times the argument
is that if something cannot be planned and budgeted for in advance, it is not worth pursuing.
This ultimately breeds conformity and stifles innovation as resources are allocated to business
units based on past performance.

The financial services industry is a good example of this hesitancy. Part of the problem here is
that while design thinking emphasizes understanding and empathizing with the user and then
building products and services around their needs, financial institutions tend to operate in the
reverse. Rather than focusing on customer experience, they develop products and services that
meet their own needs and then expect users to adapt accordingly.

Although banks, credit card companies, and credit unions have made a genuine effort to
provide a better user experience for their customers, they often suffer from the problem of
top-down thinking. The key decision makers behind their product and service strategy have a
strong understanding of the organization’s operations and possess financial knowledge that’s
much better than the average user. As a result, they end up designing products and services
that may be well-suited for someone who knows how the company does business, but are
bewildering and downright unfriendly to customers.
Even worse, they don’t put much thought into how to integrate the disparate elements of the
customer experience into a cohesive whole, which only leads to more frustration for users.
Take, for example, a typical bank. The key touchpoint for the interaction comes from the bank’s
mobile app, the bank’s website, a phone representative, and the tellers at the local branch.
These services each developed organically over time as new technologies changed the way
people interacted with their bank; in many cases, they are still organized and operated
independently. Some services can be completed over the phone, but not on the mobile app.
Other services require customers to physically visit a local branch office. For the average user,
using the bank can be a confusing and frustrating experience.

Finding a balance between exploration and exploitation

Balancing innovation and efficiency demands the organization’s resource allocation not to be
based entirely on past performance. Rather, a portion of the resources should be distributed
based on the unproved ideas and projects each business unit presents for the coming year.

One of the reasons why a number of promising projects fail to see the light of the day is
because management have created a culture that first seeks a predictable outcome before
paving way for the project. They seek reliability, which is in direct contrast to a designer’s
mindset.

A designer seeks validity over reliability with the goal of producing outcomes that meet a
desired objective. The end result is shown to be correct through the passage of time.

The current business environment is awash with mysteries, which take an infinite variety of
forms. For example, we don’t know how our product and market segments will continue to
perform in future. We are not certain which technologies will have an immediate impact on our
business. Or we might explore the mysteries of competition and geopolitical tension.

Data on past performance might help us extrapolate future performance but the future is no
guarantee.

Given that the future is a mystery, the business should embrace a new way of thinking that
provides a simplified understanding of the mystery and in turn help devise an explicit, step-by-
step procedure for solving the problem.

An organization may decide to focus on exploration, which involves a search for new knowledge
and the reinvention of the business, or exploitation which focuses on business administration
and seeks to increase payoff from existing knowledge.

Intuition, originality and hypotheses about the future are often the driving forces behind
exploration. On the other hand, analysis, reasoning, historical data and mastery are the forces
behind exploitation. Both approaches can create significant value, and both are important to
the success of any business organization. However, organizations struggle to pursue both
approaches simultaneously.

More often, an organization chooses to focus on exploitation, to the exclusion of exploration

and to its own disadvantage. The solution is not to embrace the randomness of intuitive
thinking and avoid analytical thinking completely. The solution lies in the organization
embracing both approaches, turn away from the false certainty of the past, and instead peer
into a mystery to ask what could be.

In other words, balance exploration and exploitation, invention of business and business
administration, and originality and mastery.

Finance plays a critical role in helping the business achieve efficiencies, redeploy the savings
and redirect freed-up resources towards exploration of new opportunities.

Building design into finance

As design thinking is frequently associated with marketing and product development, finance is
deemed an unlikely place to apply design thinking principles. However, design thinking can be
applied to the finance function in every organization. The key is to identify and define the
customers clearly and approach their needs empathetically.

Unlike the marketing function which focuses its efforts on external customers, finance’s efforts
are focused on meeting the needs of its internal customers. To elevate design thinking in
finance, the function should think differently about its structures, its processes, and its cultural
norms.

Quite a number of finance organizations are organized around ongoing, permanent tasks. Roles
are firmly defined, with clear responsibilities and reward incentives linked tightly to those
individual responsibilities. The problem with such a structure is that it discourages employees
to see the bigger picture. Individuals employees see their work as own territory to be protected
by all means.

There is little to none collaboration. It’s all about “my responsibilities,” not “our
responsibilities.” As a result, individuals limit their focus to those individual responsibilities,
refining and perfecting outputs before sharing a complete final product with others. This can be
routine production of monthly reports.

In contrast, designers are accustomed to working collaboratively with adhoc teams and clearly
defined goals in a projected-oriented environment. Rather than waiting until the outcome is
right, designers expose their clients to a series of prototypes that improve with each iteration.
Considering that finance business partnering extends beyond traditional month-end reporting
tasks and involves working on various business related projects, sharing performance insights
and creating value, CFOs should therefore foster a culture that supports project-based work
and explicitly make it clear that working on a project is no less important or rewarded than
running a business segment.

Industry Needs Design Thinking

Design thinking can help resolve this problem by focusing less on how the financial institution
thinks its products and services should work and more on what its customers need those
products and services to do for them. The distinction here is critically important. Nobody wants
to use a banking mobile app just for the sake of using it; the bank is a means to an end. To put it
another way, people don’t want to use a bank; they want to manage their money effectively to
meet other needs in their life.

In fairness to the financial services industry, it faces many constraints that other businesses do
not have to take into account. Government regulations limit how much they can do with their
products and services, and security concerns make it difficult to provide the usability customers
want while still protecting their money and data. Despite these challenges, financial institutions
cannot afford to use them as an excuse for standing still. Amazon recently announced its
intention to provide its own current account service, which would allow people to make
payments without going through banks or credit card companies. Given Amazon’s success in
building a compelling customer experience that consistently keeps its users engaged, financial
institutions need to move quickly to keep ahead of a new generation of competitors.

Even working within the constraints of the industry, design thinking can still uncover new ways
of delivering products and services that empower users and meet their needs. The financial
services industry needs to move away from a model in which it dictates the terms of the
customer experience to one that’s catered to what the customer wants. Reframing their design
methodology to a more “bottom-up” model will help financial institutions to better understand
their users. But simply knowing what people want is only the first step. After identifying key
pain points and needs, design teams can get to work iterating products and services for testing.
This process must be every bit as responsive to users as the initial research. Simply designing a
solution from start to finish based on what users say they want often misses the mark. People
may think they know what they want until they have a solution in their hand that doesn’t feel
right. Through continuous iterative testing, design teams can be sure that they’re adapting their
solutions to the needs of intended users.

Although the financial services industry faces a number of challenges in implementing design
thinking practices, shifting customer expectations are making it more difficult for them to avoid
doing so. As newer, less rigid companies begin to offer their own financial products and
services, the competition promises to become more heated. Existing financial institutions have
a legacy advantage for the time being, but if they can’t find a way to adapt to the disruptions
beginning to shake up the industry, they may quickly discover that their customers are no
longer willing to tolerate a subpar user experience when they have alternatives.

Design Thinking in Education

Design Thinking is a mindset and approach to learning, collaboration, and problem solving. In
practice, the design process is a structured framework for identifying challenges, gathering
information, generating potential solutions, refining ideas, and testing solutions. Design
Thinking can be flexibly implemented; serving equally well as a framework for a course design
or a roadmap for an activity or group project.

Classrooms and schools across the world are facing design challenges every single day, from
teacher feedback systems to daily schedules. Wherever they fall on the spectrum of scale the
challenges educators are confronted with are real, complex, and varied. And as such, they
require new perspectives, new tools, and new approaches. Design thinking is one of them.

Design Support

Design Consultation for projects, session, and courses, including active learning and facilitation
strategies.

Brainstorming Kits including Post-it notes, Sharpie markers, and stickable chart paper.

Physical Prototyping Cart with dozens of creative, constructivist supplies, including felt, yarn,
foil, craft sticks, rubber bands, Play-Doh, Legos, and more.

Prototyping. Design Thinking use cases, collated workbooks, and curated research.

To Do:

 Developing and agreeing on criteria for their designs.

 Selecting tools and materials in this case, Makers Empire and 3D printing.
 Supporting each other to learn how to use the new tools.
 Producing a working prototype.
 The testing process for our first graders involved:
 Giving each other feedback
 Assessing their designs against the previous agreed criteria
 Making modifications and improvements to their designs
 Testing their designs in the context they would be used.
 Reflecting on their problem-solving processes and learning outcomes.
Think about projects you can do with your own students that will help enhance and deepen
their learning. How might you support your students to:

 Develop empathy, insights and understandings.

 Define a problem as an actionable question.
 Generate and visualise ideas.
 Develop prototypes; and
 Evaluate and test their designed solutions.

Design Thinking in Infrastructure

Design thinking refers to the application of a discipline that tries to understand human
behaviour in order to develop or improve products or services. As opposed to customary
approaches that rely excessively on analyzing and answering questions by working out the last
detail, the design thinking paradigm is centered on collaborative experimentation and rapid
prototyping.

Traditional planning methodologies rely heavily on top-down approaches the plans are first
made and strategized, and only then are the citizens informed about it. These plans are usually
made without involving the citizens in the process, and as a result, often fail to reflect the
problems faced by citizens on the ground. Consequently, citizens naturally have a lesser degree
of ownership of these top-down plans and responsibility towards maintenance of public
infrastructure. While participatory planning approaches seek to address these gaps by working
with the citizens in understanding their problems, they rarely ‘close the loop’ by seeking
feedback from the citizens after the plan is prepared. Thus, the ownership of the plan by the
citizens is not guaranteed. Additionally, this also precludes any further refinement of the
existing plan.

Design Thinking provides us a framework to overcome the flaws of the traditional participatory
planning approaches in the following ways- first, design thinking enables the creation of an
infrastructure plan that places citizens at the heart of the process. A process of deep
empathizing (through household surveys, interviews, and charettes) will enable the
development of a granular understanding of the problems faced by citizens. Second, the design
thinking method also facilitates a process of refinement of the plan through continuous
prototyping and testing.

It is hard to get excited about infrastructure, but it is crying out for a more holistic, multi-
disciplinary, innovative and longer-term perspective, one that can evolve and meet our needs
rather than the current band-aid approach that has resulted in a crippled infrastructure not
much evolved from the last great build period between the 1940s and 1960s. What is missing is
strategic innovation: consider, for example, the impact of intermodal freight transport and how
that revolutionized the movement of goods; or the development of the electric power grid, and
how it revolutionized energy provision and use. What new systems are required today? What
new systems will be required for tomorrow? Infrastructure also needs to be looked at in the
context of some important related issues such as sustainability, climate change (concrete
production produces significant greenhouse gases), migration (new centers of population,
urban blight, etc.) and local natural resource availability.

Design Thinking in Retail

Design Thinking, which is used by top brands such as Apple, Google and Samsung, focuses on
the human aspect of the user when ideating, creating and applying technology. It’s an approach
to innovation that any consumer-related industry Chief Marketing Officer would embrace.

With Design Thinking, smart digital-led technologies are just the starting point. Human
emotions and conduct are priorities. The Design Thinking process is highly iterative, with
experiments and continuous revisions to challenge assumptions and redefine problems. It’s
about discovering innovative solutions to better the customer experience.

Success stories from Design Thinking include smart user interfaces that give customers the
power to personalize their experience as per their preferences. Or automated chatbots/voice
agents that can understand voice or text and respond humanly.

A good example close to you would be Google Assistant, it actively provides contextual
notifications about flight status, traffic, product deliveries and more all without being asked.

Creating optimal customer experiences not only makes people feel good but also has true
business benefits.

Customer Satisfaction should be seen as a Profit Center

When technology decisions flow from a human-centered Design Thinking approach, consumers
will always have a superior experience. An experience in which the technology is an enabler
rather than a distraction. The information about customers that flows naturally from their
interactions with the products and services will provide valuable data insights. These insights
can make marketing leaders learn quickly from changing consumer habits and respond faster.
Or even to anticipate consumer needs and drive innovations to meet them.

As businesses and brands are rethinking how they offer value beyond product benefits, design
thinking methods continue to help bring fresh perspectives and new ways of doing things. It
allows them to consider innovation not just for the sake of creating a new product, but to solve
real problems or open new avenues of engagement:

 Serving greater needs (that could be social or environmental)

 Enabling individual involvement & participation, not just consumption
 Building experiences and communities

Colgate-Palmolive: Human-Centered Commerce Hub

The Insight

The new generation of professionals and family heads are increasingly conscious consumers
interested in “do-good” enterprises. They are also tech-savvy multitaskers using a wide variety
of digital platforms.

The Opportunity

Colgate-Palmolive (CP) is strategically positioned to leverage these behaviors:

 Industry leader with a caring reputation

 Social responsibility trajectory in place
 Well-established online presence supported by e-commerce partnerships

The Solution

A human-centered commerce hub bringing together e-commerce, social responsibility, and

brand loyalty translates into a digital service that invites consumers to be a part of something
bigger, bringing to life Colgate’s caring mission.

How It Works

Consumers purchasing products via this commerce hub, a digital retail partner, or in-store will
have the option to donate to one of the 3 featured social initiatives they care about. The
customer journey will be one of convenience and social responsibility, allowing them more
engagement with the Colgate-Palmolive brand while also actively involving them as conscious
consumers.
Design Thinking Case studies in Banking
The banking industry in India doesn’t usually consider the human factor while developing
products and services. But several financial institutions are now starting to understand how
important it is. They are using proven business strategies to foster creativity and innovation.
This is called Design Thinking.

People mistakenly believe that design thinking is all about aesthetics a philosophy only limited
to creative types of people, who specialize in design. But that’s not at all the case. It does not
mean that you can ignore aesthetics, but a good-looking design that does nothing for consumer
needs or does not solve any consumer problems has zero chance at success.

Design thinking is about applying the design principles to the way people interact with the
world, rather than focusing solely on aesthetics. An iterative process in which you try to
understand the user, challenge your assumptions and redefine problems in an attempt to
identify different solutions that might not be easily apparent using conventional methods.
Design thinking revolves around developing a deep interest in understanding users of products
and services. This helps you develop empathy with the target user.

This is the complete opposite of how the banking industry in India and the credit institutions
traditionally design products and services. Financial institutions tend to develop products based
on their internal processes and operational efficiencies, instead of focusing on the consumers.
Finishing up the product with a pretty wrapper and calling it a day.

Financial institutions then wonder why consumers get frustrated with their products and
services. For example, a customer abandoning the online account, opening half-way through
the process. The process doesn’t meet the user’s need or address their problem; to open an
account without having to go to a branch. Design thinking, in theory, can help solve that
problem.

Design thinking is growing in popularity, but not a new phenomenon

It is not a new concept. It’s been around in some form or the other since the 1960s. Today, it
will be difficult to find a Fortune 100 company that does not incorporate Design Thinking or at
least some aspects of design thinking in how they get products and services to market.

The banking industry in India and Financial services organizations are laggards in adopting
laggards, but there are some exceptions. For Example, BBVA launched a program “Design
Thinking for Leaders”, to help the bank innovate and design for its customers.
Rob Brown, Head of Marketing, Design and Responsible Business at BBVA, believes that “All
employees, regardless of their role, should begin to see themselves as a designer that
contributes to improving the customer experience” giving the bank an edge over its
competitors.

Design thinking is big with technology companies that focus on the consumer experience first.
Making it likely that more financial institutions will turn to design thinking since they
increasingly find themselves competing against both mega-tech and fin-tech firms.

Empathize digital banking users

At the Empathize stage, we collect a large amount of data about business goals, customer
needs and pain points, and product features, thus researching the wire context around the
product. Our aim is to feel and emphasize with the problem we are trying to solve. To achieve
this, we need to step into the shoes of the customer and business owner.

Define core user problems and value

At the Define stage, we analyze and synthesize collected data to define the core problems and
prioritize key data. The main purpose is to understand what value we could bring to customers
and why they would prefer it over other solutions. To achieve this, we need to approach data
analysis from these different angles: business, psychology, user behavior, competitors,
marketing, technology, etc.

Ideate digital banking solution

At the Ideate stage, we start to generate multiple hypotheses about what our solution could be.
Our main goal is to uncover the best way to solve the previously defined problems. To achieve
this, we need to step out of the box and create dozens of potential solutions.

Prototype digital banking product

At the Prototype stage, we take dozens of previously generated ideas about how our end
solution could look and work, moving toward designing the final version. We check all the
solutions based on previously generated user scenarios, business goals, etc. at the Synthesis
stage. In this way, we narrow down multiple solutions into one or more that are delivered as
visual prototypes and could be tested by users and business owners.
Test banking prototype

The final Test stage is needed to ensure that our visual prototype provides the needed solution
according to the previously defined problem. If it is not, we then return to the first stage and
repeat the process.

Design Thinking in finance determines success in digital age

Design and Design Thinking have never before played a more influential role in determining the
success of any business in any industry. This fact is well supported by the Design Value Index
(DVI), a summary of the market performance of 15 design-driven companies including Apple,
IBM, Nike, and SAP. Those companies share a high level of design strategy implementation
across their organizations. Their executives practice design in everyday work, and they have
design positions at the management levels. In the period from 2005 to 2015, design-driven
companies outperformed the S&P 500 by 211%.

Impacting customers

Bank is using design thinking to address big, knotty internal issues, like centralizing multiple
back-offices into one, to serve customers better. The big question is what impact have they
seen on customers?

Bank was able to see first-hand how design thinking can address such a question through its
work with its customers in the education space. Banks are governed and Bank is no exception
by Basel 3 rules, a regulatory framework intended to strengthen bank capital requirements by
increasing bank liquidity. Schools are liquidity-rich, yet they don’t need cash on site, so helping
them to reduce their cash on site and improve their overall liquidity, while getting more funding
onto the bank’s balance sheet, enables a bank to lend more. Sounds like a win-win proposition.
Wrong.

Using design thinking to uncover the real need, bank included teachers and educators their
customers in the process, in pursuit of radical collaboration. By doing this, they quickly
discovered that holding cash on school premises (parents pay a lot of cash into schools for trips
and other school services) is a risk, as it attracts thieves. But the real pain point for teachers is
the administrative overhead of collecting all the money for school trips, remembering who has
paid, who is going, and which parents still need to be chased. School outings enrich pupils’ lives,
but the administrative burden on teachers reduces time invested in lesson planning their core
job of teaching.

Once it understood the real pain point, bank collaborated with an tech partner to create a
school app, similar to Uber. This is how it works. The parents associated with a class will receive
a notice via the app and can sign up directly no more need for signing attendance sheets.
Parents’ bank accounts or credit cards are linked to the app just like paying for an Uber cab so
the financial transaction takes place without cash. The app is also linked to Outlook, providing
diary management for everyone.

The more perspectives that are included in the initial design thinking stages, the easier it is to
commercialize the outcome, because you are uncovering real demand.

The greater good

Anything that reduces risk on school premises and increases the time teachers spend on
teaching rather than on administration has to be a good thing. But there’s more. Bank is already
contemplating the wider ecosystem of the desperate need for free education in South Africa.

“Design thinking helps us to solve problems at a higher level of thinking it makes you think
wider and bigger,” says du Plessis. “This is a thin wedge strategy. It opens our minds to how an
app like this might be used to offer free education in the future, especially to children in remote
areas.”

Giving back and nation building are the next steps on the agenda.

Design thinking is a powerful tool. Used properly, it opens the gateway to innovation that really
works for customers. But it also seems to be a recipe for cultural change changing the way a
business thinks about and manages itself.