1 of 2

Write now Article Tools

Design thinking is only the first step in developing creative business practices. Once a company has realized current practices are archaic, product is dated and sales have dropped, an assessment of marketing and design management must be addressed.

Designers or other professionals from a design background with experience in creative business practices must conduct design thinking not marketing engineering, or sales. There has to be an inter-discipline team relationship working in parallel, in order to attain maximum creative production from individuals. When designers try to be salespeople and marketing people play the frustrated designer role, it causes friction and lack of productivity.

As an industrial designer, I think creative design thinking and innovation in business are often dismissed as something that can be learned in a two or three day seminar. I feel a seminar is fine, but the resource is in-house. They are called designers and they have been "trained" to optimizing their talent in an accredited college. Designers should have an arsenal of creative techniques for design thinking to share with the company.

Design thinking entails creatively brainstorming opportunities for your brand from an evolutionary and revolutionary perspective. In design, nothing is set in stone, until an expansion and compression of opportunities have been absolved.

Predictable marketing briefs should be merged with creative design briefs resulting in a "product" brief. This should produce a highly innovative, yet commercial product. After the brief is finalized, product-design should be managed by design in collaboration with engineering. There is always the possibility that the brief will change due to further investigation and research. When there is a prototype on the table, a design, marketing and product manager on equal level must decide the direction. Emotional designers and type-A marketing people should be left out of this process.

This may sound like fantasyland to some, but it is the most directly efficient way of attaining a successful design thinking approach to business. Eliminating old views and egos can change a dinosaur environment into a creative environment overnight. Take a que from Apple or Nike. They do this everyday.

Learn more about this author, Salvatore Oliva.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

Add your voice

Know something about Design thinking: Creative ways forward in business?
We want to hear your view. Write now!