How Do Design Thinking And Innovation Relate To Each Other?

Design thinking is a way to accelerate innovation in organizations. To come up with creative solutions to the problems of the present and the challenges of the future.

Design thinking is an innovation method

In a world in which digital revolutions follow each other in rapid succession, a new way of thinking is needed in which speed, creativity, and strength are central. If you look at healthcare, the challenge is to continue to provide high-quality care with scarce resources. Before you think (too) quickly in solutions, consider key questions such as ‘why’ and ‘for whom? With design thinking, you think from the essence.”

How does Design Thinking and innovation relate to one another?

As an organization, you are constantly on the move. You are looking for new ways to address your audience, develop new products and services, or manage change.

With Design thinking, you give structure and direction to your innovation process.

Many companies try to manage innovation in a planned and tightly phased manner, but the real innovation is often the accidental outcome of a process of trying new things. Innovation through experimentation is also known as design thinking. In most organizations, 30% of the time is used for analytics, 30–40% for realization, 10% for testing, and 10–20% for project management and decision making. This method exposes the crucial fallacy that one must think before doing something. First, make a plan, and only then executing is the opposite of what innovation stands for.

Design thinking is a creative way to look at innovation. To respond to a volatile and unpredictable market, organizations must constantly test their strategy against reality in order to make immediate adjustments. Design thinking is a thinking pattern for innovating, in which an iterative search is made in collaboration with all those involved to find a balance between the needs of those involved, the technical possibilities, and the economically viable.

The Design Thinking process stimulates values and behavior that are important for innovative organizations. You are forced to collaborate in a multidisciplinary way, to experiment, to learn, and to take risks. Moreover, the decision to work according to a Design Thinking process indicates that an organization makes the necessary resources available for innovation.

Design Thinking, therefore, stimulates both the building blocks for creativity and innovation in a structured way.