globe and mail_ harnessing the power of design thinking

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May 6, 2010

Harnessing the power of design thinkingBy Rasha Mourtada

Globe and Mail Update

Start by forgetting everything you know. Experts advise small businesses to get creative and

explore the possibilities

If you're looking for the secret to business success, some suggest you should start by forgetting everything you know.

Approaching problems without preconceived ideas of solutions is one aspect of "design thinking," a term that refers to

applying design principles to business.

"It's about the way designers look at opportunities and problems," says Heather Fraser, business design professor

and director of DesignWorks, the centre for design-based innovation and education at the University of Toronto's

Rotman School of Management.

"They approach things more holistically, with more intuition and more of a human dimension. They're willing to take

risks and be more exploratory. This is inherent to the way designers work - engineers, industrial designers, architects,

graphic designers. It's about the act of creating something new and original."

And creating new and original things is precisely what can make businesses successful.

If you're leading a company that's growing, you're probably using design thinking on some level whether you know it

or not, she adds.

But there are ways to be more aware of design thinking in business, and the first is simply to allow yourself to

experiment more.

"If you think of the past 50 years, the MBA has very much been about analytical problem solving," says PaddyHarrington, creative director at Bruce Mau Designs. "And that education becomes more about maintaining and

protecting what's there, as opposed to venturing out."

Letting go of analytics isn't always easy. But putting the emphasis on intuition is key to design thinking. "If you trust

your intuition, you can think through things faster and more effectively," Prof. Fraser says.

That willingness to explore the unknown is perhaps the most consistent quality among designers, regardless of

discipline.

"If you ask people what they want, they can only tell you what they know," says Luigi Ferrara, an architect and


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designer who is director of both Toronto's George Brown College School of Design and the Institute Without

Boundaries, a Toronto-based studio that works toward collaborative design action. "But design thinking actually

imagines what people might want and concretizes it."

He gives the example of residential lofts in Toronto. "Before someone created a loft space, everyone wanted eight-foot

ceilings. But when this other option was introduced, people gravitated to it. The power of design thinking is introducing

these new paradigms."

Instead of approaching the design of a product - or a customer-service experience, or a workflow or any other aspectof business - with the idea of improving something that already exists, put the original idea aside for a moment and

start with a clean slate.

Imagining the possibilities is one thing. But how does that translate into doing?

To make the idea more tangible - and see results - you have to apply the design thinking concept to the entire

business model, Prof. Fraser says, rather than to ideas in isolation.

Mr. Ferrara agrees, saying that design thinking reaches its potential only when it applies to every part of a business.

Products, store layouts, websites, marketing campaigns - even offices and workflows all benefit from design.

"You need to look at a design strategy that cuts across all the touch points of your business," he says. A restaurant, for

example, should think about the food itself, how customers order that food, what the eating experience in therestaurant is like - and that's just to start

The effect of a cohesive design translates into a top-notch customer experience, Prof. Fraser says, pointing to the

iconic example of design thinking: Apple.

"In their case, Apple doesn't actually have a lot of patents. They have a great brand and parts that come from other

manufacturers. But they put them all together in a beautifully designed product that's part of a whole eco-system. It's

all integrated. You need to think about your business model like a rain forest that is so intrinsically connected, you

can't pull parts out of it."

Does all this mean that entrepreneurs should be shelling out cash to professional designers? Not necessarily. "People

are inherently creative," Prof. Fraser says.

"The best entrepreneurs do this instinctively," Mr. Ferrara agrees.

Tapping into design thinking may simply mean looking at your business and thinking about your customer and their

experience. "You can do that just by coming up with lots of ideas and saying, 'I'm just going to let go and explore,' "

she says. "And if you do that, you will find that you will question your business model and ask, is this the only way this

can be done?"

If you do team up with a design agency, do it early in the process, Mr. Ferrara says.

"The biggest mistake I see is people work everything out and then go to a designer afterwards and ask them to

design," Mr. Ferrara says. "But the best ideas come from imagining the possibilities. Otherwise, you'll just get more of

the same."

"Look at Blockbuster," Mr. Ferrara adds. "They realized they had to switch to DVD. But did they switch to distribution

by Internet? No. And what happened? Netflix emerged. Blockbuster was not looking at designing a new experience.

But Netflix was," he says, referring to the Internet-based company that invites customers to order DVDs by mail or

stream them onto their computers.

Perhaps the biggest advantage design thinking can give a company is a competitive edge, Mr. Ferrara says.

"Companies are facing competition from people around the world who are designing to a higher standard. If Canadian

companies don't start to use design, they will get squeezed out of the global marketplace."

Canadian design at its best


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Umbra: The Canadian duo who started this home decor design business in 1979 has grown their company to more

than 200 employees, with products sold in 75 countries. "These two guys identified a gap in the market and addressed

it with design thinking," Mr. Ferrera says. "At first they started making garbage cans to fill that gap, and then curtain

rods, and it just grew from there."

Loblaws: "Don Watt was not just a business story," says Mr. Ferrara, referring to the man who revitalized the grocery

store chain by overhauling its store-brand retailing . "He was a design story, too."

Four Seasons: The chain has become synonymous with hotel luxury. "They kept trying different ways of deliveringpersonalized luxury," Prof. Fraser says. "And they ended up at a model that is quite different, which is hotel

management, not ownership."

Indigo: "Heather Riesman is a natural design thinker," Prof. Fraser says. Ms. Riesman changed the face of the book

industry in Canada when she merged the sale of items such as wrapping paper and home decor accessories with

books.

globe and mail_ harnessing the power of design thinking

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