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Solving Problems with Design Thinking: Ten Stories of What Works Page xi (12 of 233)
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Preface
about how design thinking was in fact permeating new spaces in
organizations, helping designers and managers work together in
new ways, nor confirmation of the competing hypothesis, that
design thinking was mostly smoke and mirrors with little output
resulting from it.
As researchers we were perplexed by what we heard in these
initial interviews and unsure of what made sense for the next stage
of the study. What we were learning might make for some great
business school cases about how organizational structure and pol-
itics challenge the introduction of new approaches to business, but
we didn’t think it would help practicing designers or managers on
the front lines figure out how to work together to meet the chal-
lenges they faced more creatively and successfully. However, as
educators we saw an opportunity to help organizations and indi-
viduals sort this all out. Our feeling was that we could do more
to aid managers interested in learning about how to use design
thinking by profiling success stories than by detailing political
battles. We hoped that by gathering examples of the adoption
of design approaches to solve problems in various kinds of orga-
nizations, we could identify the ways in which it was enhancing
organizational performance beyond traditional incremental prod-
uct development.
So we wrote to a wide range of DMI and Darden stakeholders
to ask for their help in identifying examples in which design think-
ing was affecting organizational performance in ways not tradi-
tionally seen as “design.” We wanted to explore the adoption of
design thinking across a range of organizations and geographies
through interviews with those involved in pioneering efforts to
extend the influence of design beyond formal, established design
groups or traditional research and development (R&D) functions.
We created a website that made it easy for people to nominate
organizations they knew about.
The response to our request exceeded our best hopes. The sto-
ries that people sent us were truly inspirational. The breadth and
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