Innovation
December 03, 2024
In a world where businesses are realizing the importance of being customer-centric, there's a growing need for a guide that maps out the customer journey with empathy-led solutions at its core. To meet this demand, companies are identifying the innovative potential of their people and are tapping into it by building a culture of design thinking. It's become a go-to approach for many companies, helping them gain deep insights into their customers. And it’s not just about improving products and services anymore—it’s about transforming entire business models.
According to IBM reports [Link], design thinking can unlock incredible business results—bringing products to market twice as fast, boosting efficiency by 75%, and delivering over 300% ROI.
Do you know what lies at the heart of Netflix's enduring success? It's not just the exceptional content—it’s their innovative problem-solving approach rooted in design thinking. This strategy has empowered Netflix to adapt continuously, evolve, and remain at the forefront of a constantly changing industry. With this, Netflix has now transformed into a household name, reshaping the way we experience movies and shows by integrating design thinking.
Design thinking is essentially a methodology that offers a user-oriented approach to a problem. It is especially effective for addressing complex, poorly defined, or unknown issues, as it emphasizes understanding human needs, reframing problems from a human-centric perspective, generating numerous ideas through brainstorming, and adopting a hands-on approach to prototyping and testing.
Design thinking is essential for fostering innovation and developing solutions that genuinely address user needs. Embracing this approach enables businesses to unlock a variety of benefits, significantly boosting their potential for success. Here’s how design thinking has become important in today’s job market.
Gateway to Innovation: Design thinking drives innovation by deeply understanding user needs and fostering creative, unconventional ideas. It allows businesses to gain valuable insights into user preferences and challenges, allowing them to develop impactful products and services that effectively address these needs.
User-Centric Approach: By adopting a user-centric approach and gaining insights into user experiences and interactions, businesses can develop more effective, impactful solutions that increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Problem-Solving Framework: Design thinking provides a structured approach to tackle complex challenges, helping teams break down problems, identify root causes, and generate multiple solutions. It promotes systematic thinking and smart resource use, leading to more effective and successful outcomes.
Collaboration and Multidisciplinary Teams: Design thinking promotes collaboration and teamwork by bringing together individuals with diverse backgrounds and expertise, fostering an inclusive approach to problem-solving.
Iterative and Agile Process: Design thinking fosters an iterative process where solutions are continuously refined and improved through quick prototyping and user feedback. This approach allows for early adjustments, reducing the risk of unmet user needs and increasing the likelihood of delivering successful outcomes that exceed expectations.
Humanizing Technology: Design thinking brings a human touch to technology by ensuring it is intuitive, user-friendly, and centered around the needs of users. By focusing on creating accessible and enjoyable experiences, it humanizes technology, making it more meaningful and enhancing users' overall experiences.
Enhancing User Experience: Design thinking is key to creating memorable user experiences by focusing on every step of the journey. This holistic approach ensures each interaction is positive, meaningful, and emotionally resonant, leaving a lasting impact.
The primary value of design thinking lies in its structured approach to innovation. While trial and error can help test ideas, it is often time-consuming, costly, and inefficient. In contrast, design thinking provides a clear and efficient process for developing innovative solutions. Beyond facilitating strategic innovation, embracing design thinking can also lead to significant career growth and increased earning potential.
External forces have prodded businesses towards digital transformation of their business models, whether they do it by latching on to a multisided platform to connect with new customers or by accepting payments via smartphones. But how can a business owner or manager take the initiative to transform their business digitally instead of waiting for an external push? The answer lies in design thinking. Design thinking, as a method, is a potential enabler for digital transformation in companies of varying sizes.
The theory of disruptive innovation describes how new technologies, products, or services can begin on a small scale but ultimately surpass established market offerings.
Tesla Motors has become a leading name in the automotive industry, with innovation driven by design thinking as its key advantage. Elon Musk recognized that electric vehicles (EVs) were the future and focused on making them irresistible through cutting-edge design and features. This strategy wasn't just about making money; it was about capturing attention and channeling it toward future innovations.
Tesla's approach can be broken down into two key strategies:
Tesla’s philosophy is to pitch forward-thinking ideas, secure the necessary resources, and then commercialize these ideas to introduce the latest innovations to the market.
PepsiCo recently prioritized design as a core element of their business strategy, leading to the creation of their reimagined soda fountain, Spire. This innovation marks PepsiCo’s first venture using a design thinking approach.
The Spire soda fountain allows users to personalize their drinks by selecting and adding various flavors. Inspired by a similar product, the Coca-Cola Freestyle, which initially redefined the soda fountain experience, Spire took it a step further. PepsiCo improved on the Freestyle by designing a more compact and easier-to-maintain machine, making it more appealing to businesses. Spire also offers users the ability to create over a thousand different drink combinations. To further engage their audience, PepsiCo launched a competition centered around the unique beverage combinations created by users.
Looking ahead, PepsiCo plans to expand the Spire product line and integrate the design thinking process into more of their future offerings.
Design can revolutionize even the most traditional industries, like home cleaning. Despite being a market leader, P&G saw an opportunity to innovate. By partnering with a design firm, they adopted a design thinking approach, observing users as they cleaned their floors. They discovered that mopping was a cumbersome and unpleasant task, involving multiple steps and excessive effort. To address this, the team aimed to create a product that would simplify the process, leading to the development of the Swiffer Mop.
This innovation transformed floor cleaning into a quick and easy task, resulting in one of P&G's most successful product launches, with over $100 million in sales in its first year. By deeply understanding user needs, P&G not only helped customers but also revitalized the cleaning industry.
IBM, a global leader in software and hardware development, made a significant breakthrough in 2013 by launching a scalable and fast-paced IBM Design Thinking process. The initiative involved integrating over 750 designers, 10,000 employees, and multiple teams into a strategy aimed at embedding a user-centric culture within the company.
User-Centered Focus: IBM Design Thinking prioritizes user needs, ensuring all decisions are driven by user satisfaction and deep consumer empathy.
Collaborative Approach: The process emphasizes teamwork, bringing together teams, stakeholders, and users to meet complex challenges. IBM's model scales effectively through techniques like hills, playbacks, and sponsor users.
Co-founders Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky came up with the idea for Airbnb when they were trying to make some quick cash to cover their rent in San Francisco. After launching the initial version of their service, they were surprised by inquiries from people worldwide asking if Airbnb could list their homes for travellers.
Recognizing a potential revolution in hospitality, Gebbia and Chesky knew they needed to understand their users better. Through research, they discovered that their typical user was young, educated, financially stable, and preferred staying in a personal, comfortable home environment over a crowded hotel. The social and unique experiences these homes offered were especially appealing to affluent millennials seeking to immerse themselves in the cities they visited.
By focusing on these user needs, Airbnb's popularity soared, transforming the platform into a space where people could rent unique accommodations from strangers around the globe, effectively becoming their own travel agents.
According to McKinsey, design-led companies start with design-driven cultures. Since succeeding in business goes beyond just creating a profitable product or service. True success stems from empathy and purpose. Design thinking places customers, employees, and the planet at the heart of every solution.
Here are four steps to building success through the power of design:
Know Your Audience Inside Out: Design-driven companies don't just ask what customers and employees want—they dig deep to understand why. They often work with cultural anthropologists and ethnographers to explore how customers interact with products, uncovering motivations and pain points.
Take Sephora, for instance. By observing shoppers on their website, they noticed customers were leaving to watch product demos on YouTube before buying. Sephora responded by creating their own video tutorials, keeping shoppers on their site and boosting sales.
Elevate Design to the Executive Level: This leader, whether a Chief Design Officer, Chief Digital Officer, or Chief Marketing Officer, champions the voice of customers and employees. They ensure that the perspectives of people, the planet, and the company’s purpose are central to strategic decisions. Additionally, they unite different functions and stakeholders, integrating diverse viewpoints into the design process.
Embrace Real-Time Design: Organizations should adopt a three-pronged design-thinking model that blends design, business strategy, and technology to truly grasp how and why people—customers and employees—interact with their offerings. This approach helps leaders identify trends, co-create with feedback and data, prototype, validate, and establish governance for sustained growth.
Move with Speed and Precision: Great design thrives on agility—getting products to users quickly and refining them through feedback. In a design-driven culture, companies embrace the idea that perfection isn’t required at launch. Designers understand that the design process is ongoing, with the real power lying in adapting to changing needs.
These are the 5 stages of design thinking:
The first stage of design thinking is user-centric research, focusing on understanding the problem from the user's perspective. This involves consulting experts, observing users, and engaging with them to empathize with their experiences. Empathy is crucial, as it helps designers see the problem through the users' eyes, building a deep understanding of their needs and challenges to guide product development.
The Define stage in design thinking involves analyzing observations to clearly identify challenges from the user's perspective. This human-centered approach ensures the problem statement aligns with user needs, guiding the creation of relevant solutions. It sets the foundation for developing features and functions that address the problem or empower users to solve it with ease.
In the third stage of design thinking, it's time to generate ideas. With insights from the Empathize stage and a clear problem from the Define stage, your team can explore innovative solutions. Ideation techniques like Brainstorming, Brainwriting, Worst-Possible Idea, and SCAMPER help expand thinking and generate a wide range of ideas.
In this stage, the design team creates low-cost prototypes to explore ideation solutions. These prototypes are tested within the team or with a small user group. The goal is to identify the most effective solutions. Based on feedback, prototypes are refined, accepted, or discarded. By the end, the team gains valuable insights into the product's limitations and potential user interactions, guiding further refinement before the final version.
In the final stage, designers rigorously test the complete product using the best solutions from the Prototype stage. Although it's the last step, design thinking is iterative, often leading to redefining problems or discovering new ones. This process deepens understanding of user interactions, potentially prompting a return to earlier stages for further refinement.
With the rapid progress of technology and societal changes, design thinking has become essential for developing 21st-century skills. The fusion of Artificial Intelligence and Design Thinking has emerged as a powerful catalyst for boundless creativity and innovation across various fields. By combining the human-centered problem-solving approach of Design Thinking with the computational capabilities of AI, new avenues for generating ideas, enhancing user experiences, and reimagining traditional processes have been unlocked.
This synergy marks a shift from mere automation to intelligent systems that truly understand human needs, preferences, and emotions. Leveraging vast amounts of data and advanced algorithms, designers can gain deeper insights into user behavior, while machine learning uncovers hidden patterns and supports the development of groundbreaking concepts.
Inclusive Design: Inclusive design focuses on creating products and services accessible to everyone, including those with disabilities. By considering diverse needs during the design process, designers make experiences more enjoyable and accessible for all users.
Sustainability: Designers are increasingly incorporating sustainable practices into their work due to climate concerns. They focus on reducing environmental impact by using eco-friendly materials, minimizing waste, and ensuring products are recyclable or reusable.
Design for Well-being: Designers are now prioritizing well-being by creating products that enhance mental, emotional, and physical health, as well as social connections. They incorporate elements like mindfulness, stress reduction, and social interaction to improve users' quality of life.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: As technology advances, designers are integrating AI and ML into the design thinking process. These technologies help analyze data, identify patterns, and generate insights, leading to more personalized and intuitive user experiences.
Designing for Virtual and Augmented Reality: VR and AR technologies are gaining popularity, and designers are exploring their potential for creating immersive experiences. They focus on designing for user interaction, spatial design, and user interface to optimize VR and AR applications.
Designing for the Internet of Things (IoT): The Internet of Things (IoT) connects devices to exchange data. Designers now focus on creating seamless, intuitive interactions for IoT, considering user experience, data privacy, and security.
Rapidly Turn Ideas into Real-World Solutions: Design Thinking accelerates product launch, cutting development time by 75%. With the right prompts and techniques, ideas flow quickly. It helps you identify viable concepts through brainstorming, collaboration, and testing with prototypes and user interviews, reducing risks and speeding up the path from idea to solution.
Enhance Efficiency and Team Productivity: Design Thinking empowers every team member to contribute, putting the user at the center and sparking better ideas for products and experiences. It also helps streamline meetings by setting clear expectations and outcomes, fostering team synergy, and creating a unified action plan.
Drive Sales, Strengthen Customer Loyalty, and Elevate Brand Equity: Consistently delivering what users want builds a strong industry reputation. Indra Nooyi, as CEO, revitalized PepsiCo with Design Thinking, reimagining everything from product creation to packaging. This user-focused approach not only improved customer interaction but also led to an 80% sales increase, solidifying the brand’s success.
Develop Superior Products, Solutions, and Experiences: Every phase of a customer’s journey shapes their perception of your business. From exploring solutions to resolving issues, each touchpoint matters. Design Thinking ensures positive experiences across these interactions, fast-tracking product launches by minimizing surprises and aligning with customer needs to boost adoption.
Mastering design thinking requires a perfect blend of practical concepts and real-world experience. The Indian Institute of Management Lucknow (IIML) is the fourth esteemed member of the prestigious IIM family of management schools and has introduced the Advanced Certification Programme in Design Thinking and Innovation Management for Leaders. This course is offered in collaboration with TalentSprint, an edtech company.
This 6-month design thinking course is crafted for ambitious professionals eager to master innovation and develop expertise leadership skills. It covers key concepts like prototyping and testing, team collaboration, and strategic decision-making in a VUCA world. The learners will experience a perfect blend of theory and practice, with a learning experience enriched by industry-preferred pedagogy, including live interactive sessions with IIM Lucknow faculty, case discussions, quizzes, simulations, assignments, and capstone projects.
The program culminates in a 2-day campus visit to IIM Lucknow, offering valuable in-person interaction with mentors and peers, further enhancing your learning journey.
Click here to learn more about the course to thrive in a world that demands innovation!
The design thinking process aims to create solutions, products, or services that hit the sweet spot: they delight users, make business sense, and are technologically achievable.
Design thinking boosts product success by aligning teams with real users to solve their problems. Advanced AI tools enhance this process by providing insights and automating tasks, letting teams focus on strategy and creativity.
A dedicated program sharpens design thinking skills through hands-on learning, real-world projects, and expert guidance, empowering you to innovate, empathize, and solve problems with confidence.
TalentSprint
TalentSprint is a leading deep-tech education company. It partners with esteemed academic institutions and global corporations to offer advanced learning programs in deep-tech, management, and emerging technologies. Known for its high-impact programs co-created with think tanks and experts, TalentSprint blends academic expertise with practical industry experience.
Advance your career with the right program
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And herein lies the key conundrum in leadership learning today. While domain and functional skills are crafted over years of experience, technology knowledge is not an innate skill for many leaders. Accenture, in a report titled “Let there be change”, revealed that 65% of executives admit they lack the necessary technology expertise for a successful AI-led transformation. This gap underscores the critical need for continuous learning and adaptation among leaders to stay competitive and drive innovation within their organizations.
Which brings us to the next question. What should leaders prioritize in this learning journey and how can they choose the right learning paths?
Leaders need to choose programs that provide both individualized learning as well as the right mix of peer leaders to help augment their learning.
For emerging leaders who are stepping up to critical leadership roles, it is critical to start thinking and planning of technology initiatives that are outcome driven. As a part of that, user research and user centric design thinking are important to plan the right and targeted innovations that can drive outsized impact.
Keeping this goal in mind, we have designed our Advanced Certification Programme in Design thinking and Innovation Management for Leaders with Indian Institute of Management Lucknow to get a practical experience of thinking of technology innovations from first principles. Coupled with that, a specially curated Senior Management Program from Indian Institute of Management Udaipur helps them to align with the key outcomes and performance indicators they would be enabling in their expanded roles.
Leaders attending these programs get to meet other leaders at similar trajectories, combining the course learning with powerful peer learning as well.
Each sector today is at the cusp of a big leap with technology. If the Financial Services industry is today enabling digital lending, payment and savings opportunities, the Edtech sector is assessing how to enable the right student learning outcomes. The sectors are vast and varied and within that, there are specific audience group needs and possible technology led solutions for each of these.
To help emerging and existing leaders design the best-in-class technology solutions for their specific sectors, we have enabled our techno-functional learning modules.
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Chipping at emerging skills, semiconductor edition
From the backlight of our phones to the home automation in our homes, semiconductors are often the invisible superpower behind our digital world of innovation today fuelled by AI, IoT, 5G and other emerging technologies.
In fact, for every AI innovation that the world is waking up to today, there is an advanced processor in the background, a semiconductor, that is powering that technology. Be it in transportation or in healthcare diagnostics, or in smart manufacturing, the role of semiconductors in powering our modern world is explosive.
The semiconductor industry could also help India create a leadership position in hardware just as the early growth of the IT Services industry did, in software services. It can reduce import dependence and build on our qualified pool of professionals in Math, Engineering and Science disciplines to drive self-reliance in tech and electronics innovation.
Three aspects need to be in place for this to happen, sustainably, and at scale.
A) The consistent rise in demand
B) The underlying government support
C) The Skills of the professionals entering/in the sector.
Let us examine each:
The current and emerging chip demand, per McKinsey estimates, is propelling the industry to a trillion dollar one by the year 2030. Meanwhile, the production has been increasingly shifting to Asia and India is poised to become a leader and a global hub for semiconductor growth. Part of this has been a reaction to the shift in demand from China. And India is increasingly positioned as a strategic destination for this. While this demand is across sectors, a recent McKinsey report highlighted that 70% of semiconductor growth will be in automotive, data storage and wireless industries.
The Government has been proactive in supporting the required infrastructure required to drive this growth. The Semiconductor Mission is providing a significant boost to the ecosystem. Electronics manufacturing is set to pick up with more chip fabrication units being set up in the country.
What does this mean for employment and skilling? Data from Randstad shows that just in 2024, there could be a demand for 40,000 to 50,000 employees in the sector. And over the next five years that demand is expected to reach over 1 million job postings.
While that augurs well for people looking to work in this dynamic sector, the type of roles that are being created are varied and hence a generic training on semiconductors does not help.
IISc, in partnership with Talentsprint has created specific programs to address this niche for different specialized roles that the industry professionals can aspire to. Each program focuses on specific skill sets and allied roles that the industry would be in need of as it grows further.
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