Design Thinking – do repeatable processes curtail Creativity & Innovation?

There are many Design Thinking superstar institutions all over the world. They usually are the last word on the methodologies of Design Thinking, and rightly so. The minds supporting these institutions in Potsdam, Germany and Palo Alto to name just two of the many, many brilliant schools all over the world; are minds that truly engage with the human spirit and achieve crazy levels of success with their work. They also are the businesses that are solutions providers, and also conduct training in Design Thinking – Ideo comes to mind – but we are looking at one particular idea.

Does a methodology that provides a fixed framework for innovation, actually plug the creative juices that fuel innovation?

“It is not the process itself. It is the money minded trainers who are trying to exploit it”

“The process works. It is just that businesses do not know how to implement it.”

“Businesses will pay for anything, as long as it is the next training trend, and their profits go up. That is not what Design Thinking is about.”

“When the world perceives a process of being used in the right or wrong way, then the beginning of the end is neigh. It is about finding the best solutions, and mistakes help the process.”

All these are some of the truckload of excuses that have been used to explain situations when Design Thinking seems to be sitting on its thinking head and nothing seems to work. I may be extremely naïve to say this, but Design Thinkers have a responsibility to ensure these excuses do not have an excuse to be used. Of course there are drawbacks and fail points for every damn thing on the planet. But should even one person in the Design Industry sit back and say, “It is not my problem,” then the whole Design Thinking industry will fail. We have a responsibility and a commitment to ensuring that it is “trained contextually” and used properly everywhere, and not just look at financial returns when supporting practitioners who have trodden the wrong path. Or in helping businesses who are viewing and using Design Thinking the wrong way.

We all know what has always happened when processes such as Six Sigma, ISO certifications and all kinds on Martial arts like-named processes become flavours of the month. Industry quickly get involved and for a short time, rave reviews and proud displays of certifications become the talk of parties and the pride of place in offices. The standards and ways of doing change (for better or for worse?) but the products remain the same. In fact, Innovation seems to be happening more and more in basements and hardworking start-ups with no financing, and these become adopted by industry.

A very big part of the blame has to come from us Design Thinkers who train practitioners to think that this is a step-by-step process where the light lies at the end of the tunnel – well, it could not be more wrong. Design Thinking, by its very nature of gaining empathy, contextual research, cultural instruments; ensure that answers can pop out any part of the process. Mistakes suddenly lead to insights and innovations, and perhaps people who have successfully innovated and produces products and solutions that communities, markets and industry want, will know this most of all.

But Design Consultants go in to in-house training programs often giving perceptions that it is a training process where every step must be achieved in order for answers to be generated. So, where is the mistake, the problem that is causing so many to reject Design Thinking and leaving innovation to “all those others who have always innovated and will continue to do so”?

I do have this general belief that the whole purpose of Design Thinking is to CREATE chaos with lots of valuable data, especially form mistakes, floating around. With the Design Thinking process mapped out in our heads, we know what to watch out for at every step of the way, and we who truly believe and have practised Design Thinking, form this crucial skill to get light bulbs to go off in our heads without having to really think about it.

That is for me what Design Thinking methodology should be about. Anyone can learn it, and it trains you to recognise the signboards along the way, pointing in the direction of innovation, just around the corner. The process is a catalyst for the generation of ideas and insights, an art form that brings intuition to the fore and makes those eureka moments happen, and then more and more frequently.

The last thing that it is, is a methodical process that must always be carried out end to end.

So many other things must happen for the Design Thinking ecosystem to take effect in an organisation, the risk taking behaviours, the willingness to allow mistakes to happen (hopefully early and cheaply) and to give employees the space and the environment that stimulates creativity and provide ownership of their work.

I hope this is not perceived as an attack on Design Thinking – I hate shooting myself in the foot. But if we are to convince the world that Design Thinking is the pathway to innovation, then we need to be the ones who show the world what a true Design Thinking experience and training should be like. And be willing to help anyone who needs help. Innovation is about sharing and helping, not about getting involved in rat races in red oceans.

Come on-lah, as we Malaysians would say. We help ourselves by helping everyone to innovate. But please do leave those people alone who already have tried and tested methods to make the same old things they have been making for the past 200 years.

It IS true that sometimes old IS gold.