The Explainer: What Is Design Thinking? | HBR

Reference: Harvard Business Review. (2019, July 23). The Explainer: What Is Design Thinking? [Video]. YouTube.

Earn Credentials for Upskilling Yourself with Videos from YouTube

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

or

Forgot Password?

At Accredicity, you can gamify your Lifelong Learning, with Cred, in order to earn Stackable Credentials and Undergraduate Certificates from Bite-Size Education.

We Make Your Education Count


Get the Credit You Deserve and Become the Most Attractive Job Candidate by Earning and Posting A+ Badges to Your Linkedin Profile.

Sign Up to Get Started at Accredicity

Discover how design thinking can revolutionize strategy-making and unlock new markets.

Design Thinking, popularized by David M. Kelley and Tim Brown of IDEO and Roger Martin of the Rotman School, is a strategy-making process that can help companies unlock new markets and identify new strategies, according to Harvard Business Review. It sets strategy by applying tools from the world of design and focusing on human behavior instead of backward-looking data or risky bets based on instinct. Design Thinking has three stages: invent a future, test ideas out, and bring the new product or service to life. For example, Procter & Gamble used Design Thinking to turn around the skin care brand Oil of Olay by observing shoppers, creating new formulations, and testing different prototypes, price points, and store displays.

Learning Outline

1. Formulate theories about what customers might want by immersing yourself in their lives instead of asking them about specific products/services.
2. Iteratively prototype with good enough products/services and conduct quick experiments to see how consumers respond.
3. Adjust the product, pricing, or positioning based on feedback.
4. Identify the activities, capabilities, and resources needed to produce, distribute, and sell a product or service.
5. Use imaginative, human-centered problem solving to unlock new markets and identify new strategies.
6. Popularized by David M. Kelley, Tim Brown, and Roger Martin.

Instructional Content

Design thinking is a powerful strategy-making process that can help companies avoid costly mistakes. This innovative approach to problem solving shifts the focus to human behavior and applies tools from the world of design. Popularized by David M. Kelley, Tim Brown of IDEO and Roger Martin of the Rotman School, design thinking has three major stages: inventing a future, testing ideas out, and bringing a product or service to life.

The first step involves immersing yourself in the lives of customers to form theories about what they might want but don't have. Instead of polling them about specific products or services, observe their behavior and ask questions. The second step is to use iterative prototyping and experimentation to test out different products, pricing, and positioning. Finally, when you've got a winner, identify the activities, capabilities, and resources your company will need to produce, distribute, and sell it.

A good example of this is Procter & Gamble's turnaround of the skin care brand Oil of Olay. By observing shoppers in both mass retail channels and high-end department stores, they realized that their industry had been mainly targeting older women worried about wrinkles. This sparked the idea for a series of new premium, yet broadly distributed products which were well-received by a wide range of consumers.

Design thinking is a valuable method for companies to unlock new markets and strategies. By applying creative problem solving to observe and understand customer behavior, companies can develop innovative products and services that meet their needs. This approach can provide a competitive advantage and help companies stay ahead of the curve.

Leadership

Unlock Creative Leadership

Design thinking is a valuable tool for developing leadership skills, particularly in the areas of creativity, innovation, strategic thinking, and customer service. It can help learners deepen their understanding of these topics, enabling them to become more effective problem solvers and leaders.

Design thinking is a process for solving complex problems in a way that focuses on the needs of the customer, rather than the existing market. It begins by having learners observe and ask questions about customer behavior, rather than polling them about specific products or services. Learners should also form theories about what customers might want but don’t have. This can help them develop an innovative and creative approach to problem solving.

The next step is to test out these ideas with prototypes and experiments, and then adjust accordingly. This helps learners develop strategic thinking skills, as they must consider the right product, pricing, and positioning. Finally, learners should identify the activities, capabilities, and resources needed to bring the new product or service to life. This helps them develop customer service skills, as they must consider how to best meet customer needs.

By utilizing design thinking in the development of leadership skills, learners can become more effective problem solvers and leaders. It encourages them to think outside the box and come up with creative solutions to complex problems. It also helps them develop the strategic thinking, customer service, and innovation skills needed to succeed in the modern workplace.

Creativity and Innovation

How Boosts Creativity?

Design thinking is a powerful tool that can be used to upskill and empower individuals in both their personal and professional growth. The Explainer: What Is Design Thinking? video provides a clear overview of the three-stage process, which involves forming theories about customer needs, testing ideas, and bringing the new product or service to life. This process can be applied to any area of life, from learning a new language to developing a new product.

It begins with forming theories and immersing oneself in the customer experience. By taking the time to observe and ask questions about customer behavior, individuals can gain a better understanding of the challenges and needs of their target audience. This is exemplified by the Procter & Gamble case, in which senior managers took time to observe the shopping behaviors of customers in both mass retail and department stores. They realized that their products were not meeting the needs of their customers and were able to develop products that were well-received by a broad range of customers.

The second step of the process is to test one's ideas. This can be done through iterative prototyping and quick experiments to assess customer feedback. This is an excellent opportunity to refine and adjust a product, service, or idea based on customer responses.

Finally, the process involves bringing the new product or service to life. This requires identifying the resources, activities, and capabilities needed to produce, distribute, and sell the product.

Upskilling oneself with design thinking is an invaluable tool that can help individuals unlock new markets and develop innovative strategies. By taking the time to understand customer needs and testing one's ideas, individuals can maximize their success in personal growth and professional development.

Strategic Thinking

Can Design Thinking Lead to Strategy?

Design thinking is an invaluable tool for upskilling yourself and driving personal growth and professional development. By taking an iterative approach to problem solving, design thinking can help you gain insight into customer behavior and identify new opportunities for growth. This video demonstrates how David M. Kelley, Tim Brown, and Roger Martin of IDEO and the Rotman School popularized design thinking and the three main stages of the process: invent a future, test ideas, and bring a new product to life.

Take the example of Procter & Gamble's success in turning around the skin care brand Oil of Olay. By observing shoppers in both mass retail and high-end department stores, they identified a huge new market of customers in their 30s and 40s who were being ignored by the industry. Then they experimented with new formulations, tested different prototypes, price points, and store displays, and finally launched a series of new products that were well-received by a wide range of consumers.

Upskilling yourself with design thinking can be a powerful way to develop your personal growth and professional development. By understanding customer behavior, experimenting with different prototypes, and testing out your ideas, you can gain insight into new markets and develop innovative strategies to achieve success. With design thinking, you can unlock new opportunities and achieve greater success.

Customer Service

Transform Customer Service?

Design thinking is an important tool for upskilling yourself for personal and professional growth. It is a strategy-making process that involves immersing yourself in the lives of customers and observing their behavior, in order to come up with creative ideas for products or services. By using this approach, companies like Procter & Gamble have been able to capture new markets and identify new strategies.

It is important to note that design thinking is not simply about collecting data and making risky bets based on instinct. Instead, it is a much more focused, thoughtful approach to understanding the needs and wants of customers. This process involves inventing a future and developing theories about what customers might want, then testing out your ideas through iterative prototyping.

The benefits of upskilling yourself with design thinking are clear. It helps you to come up with innovative new products and services that are tailored to what your customers want. It also helps you to anticipate consumer trends before your competitors, allowing you to stay ahead of the curve. In addition, it helps you to identify new strategies that can lead to increased revenues and market share.

By upskilling yourself with design thinking, you can maximize your potential for personal and professional growth. It is a powerful tool that can help you to create new products and services that meet the needs of customers, while also positioning your company to stay ahead of the competition.

For Learners

Watching this video on design thinking is a key part of being a life-long learner. By understanding the principles of design thinking, you can gain insight into how companies can set better strategies and avoid costly mistakes. The video explains the three major stages in design thinking: invent a future, test out ideas, and bring a new product or service to life. Being able to understand and apply these strategies to your own life and work can help you unlock opportunities to create better products and services, as well as help you identify new strategies.

The positive benefits of watching this video include gaining an understanding of design thinking principles and strategies, as well as learning how to apply these strategies in different contexts. Additionally, the video provides a great example of how Procter & Gamble was able to turn around their skin care brand Oil of Olay. This provides insight into how design thinking can be used to help unlock new markets and identify new strategies.

The negative detriment of not watching this video is that you will miss out on the opportunity to understand how design thinking can be used to create better products and services. Additionally, you will miss out on a great example of how Procter & Gamble was able to use design thinking to turn around their skin care brand Oil of Olay.

Ultimately, the ‘what’s in it for me’, ‘what’s in it for them’, ‘what’s in it for us’, and ‘what’s in it for the world’ approach to learning the content of this video will benefit you as a learner for personal growth and professional development. By understanding the principles of design thinking and applying them to your own life and work, you can unlock opportunities for creating better products and services, as well as identify new strategies.

For Employers

Design thinking is a powerful tool for employers to create strategies that anticipate and exceed the needs of their customers. By learning the principles and processes from the video, “The Explainer: What Is Design Thinking?”, employers can differentiate themselves from the competition and create strategies that are rooted in evidence, rather than instinct.

Design thinking focuses on the human behavior of customers and takes the time to understand their needs and motivations. By immersing themselves in the customer's life and testing out ideas, employers are able to create and launch products and services that are well-received by a wide variety of consumers. For example, when Procter & Gamble observed shoppers in both mass retail channels and high-end department stores, they identified a huge market to be captured.

By using design thinking, employers can unlock new markets and identify new strategies that will be successful in the future. Employers can also use these skills to create products and services that are tailored to their customers’ needs and wants. This not only helps them stand out from their competition, but also helps them build a more trusting and successful relationship with their customers and clients.

In conclusion, design thinking is a powerful tool for employers who are looking to create strategies that are rooted in evidence and anticipate the needs of their customers. By learning the principles and processes from the video, employers can differentiate themselves from their competitors and create products and services that their customers will love.

Career Path

Completing a course in Leadership based on the competencies of Creativity and Innovation, Strategic Thinking, and Customer Service can help an individual's career path in many ways. It can help them better understand the way organizations work and how the right leadership can make a huge difference in the development of a business.

For example, creativity and innovation can help an individual to think outside the box and come up with innovative solutions to address organizational challenges. Strategic thinking skills can help them develop more effective plans and strategies to achieve desired goals. Customer service skills can help them understand the customer needs better and come up with solutions that can be beneficial to the customers.

One way to level up and gain these income-producing skills is by watching the video "The Explainer: What Is Design Thinking?" and reading its transcript. This video and transcript provides a great overview of design thinking and how it can be used in the development of new products and services. It provides a step by step process for developing innovative solutions and strategies that can help an individual become more employable and promotable.

By taking the time to watch this video and read its transcript, an individual can gain a better understanding of design thinking and how it can be used to their advantage. This can help to bridge the Skills Gap and provide them with meaningful work in the future. This can be a career-defining credential and can help an individual become more employable, promotable and purposeful.

Meaning

"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten." - Henry Ford

This famous quote offers a simple and timeless reminder to think beyond our usual habits and biases. This is the core idea behind design thinking. As seen in the video, design thinking is a problem solving process that encourages us to go beyond the traditional methods of data collection and instinctual decision making. Instead, designers use techniques such as immersive observation and rapid prototyping to gain a better understanding of customer behavior and needs. By doing this, companies can create products and services that are tailored to the true needs of the customer, rather than relying on assumptions.

Design thinking is a powerful approach for companies to create strategies that are informed by customer feedback, rather than relying on outdated ideas. It is also an important skill for learners and employers to understand, as it can help them to develop innovative and creative solutions to difficult challenges.

Takeaway

Design thinking is an invaluable tool for strategy-making, as it focuses on human behavior and uses iterative prototyping and experiments to create successful products and services. It can help companies unlock new markets and uncover fresh strategies to stay ahead of the competition.

The Explainer: What Is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is like a detective game: it helps companies figure out what customers want without asking them directly. Designers use tools from the world of design to observe people and their behavior and try out ideas on them to see what works. It's like playing with clay - you make something and then you change it until it's perfect for the customer. For example, Procter & Gamble used design thinking to develop a new skin care product line that was a hit with different age groups. Design thinking is a great way to unlock new markets and develop strategies that really work!

Video Quotes

"Form a few theories about what customers might want, but don't have by immersing yourself in their lives." - David M. Kelley and Tim Brown of IDEO

"Use iterative prototyping with good enough products or services, and conduct a few quick experiments to see how consumers respond." - Roger Martin of the Rotman School

"By using imaginative, human-centered problem solving, design thinking can help you unlock new markets and identify new strategies." - David M. Kelley and Tim Brown of IDEO

Related Quotes

"Design thinking is a creative problem-solving process focused on user needs." - Dr. Barry Katz, Professor and Design Thinking Expert

"At its core, design thinking is about understanding the people you're designing for and creating solutions that are tailored to their needs." - Dr. Barry Katz, Professor and Design Thinking Expert

"Design thinking is really a process of continual iteration, where you constantly evaluate and refine your ideas." - Dr. Barry Katz, Professor and Design Thinking Expert

Competencies

1. Creativity and Innovation
2. Strategic Thinking
3. Customer Service

Learning Outcomes

1. Understand: Explain the three major stages of design thinking (inventing a future, testing ideas, and bringing products to life).
2. Apply: Utilize design thinking to identify new strategies and unlock new markets.
3. Analyze: Compare and contrast design thinking with traditional strategizing methods.
4. Evaluate: Assess the effectiveness of design thinking by analyzing the success of Procter & Gamble's Oil of Olay turnaround.
5. Create: Develop a plan for using design thinking to solve a real-world problem.
6. Evaluate: Critique design thinking and suggest possible improvements or modifications.

Sample Answers

1. Design thinking is a strategy-making process that utilizes tools from the world of design to shift the focus onto human behavior. It involves three stages: inventing a future, testing ideas, and bringing a product or service to life.

2. An example of successful design thinking was Procter & Gamble's turnaround of the skin care brand Oil of Olay. The company observed shoppers in different stores and identified a large market to be captured, experimented with new formulations, and tested different prototypes, price points, and store displays.

3. Design thinking allows companies to make decisions based on evidence rather than backward-looking data or instinct. It also helps them unlock new markets and identify new strategies by utilizing imaginative, human-centered problem solving.

Harvard Business Review

Harvard Business Review is a global leader in advanced management thinking. Founded in 1922, it is the preeminent source of cutting-edge research, analysis, and insights for business leaders worldwide. Its mission is to improve the practice of management in a changing world. Harvard Business Review is associated with Harvard Business School, one of the world's leading sources of business knowledge and education. Harvard Business Review is uniquely positioned to provide expertise on What Is Design Thinking as it is a field that has been studied, discussed, and written about by the world's leading business minds for decades.

Learning Design

Creativity and Innovation: This competency is essential for leadership as it allows leaders to think outside the box and develop new ideas, processes, and solutions. It is also important for leaders to be able to take risks and try new things. A framework students can use to help build this competency is the Design Thinking process, which helps to break down complex problems into more manageable tasks. Through this process, students will learn how to ask the right questions, come up with new ideas, and create solutions.

Strategic Thinking: Strategic thinking is an important competency for leaders as it allows them to make informed decisions and develop long-term plans. It is important for leaders to be able to think critically and analyze data in order to make the best decisions. A framework students can use to help build this competency is the SWOT Analysis which helps to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Through this process, students will learn how to assess a situation and make decisions based on the available data.

Customer Service: Customer service is an important competency for leaders as it enables them to understand their customers better and build relationships. It is important for leaders to be able to listen to customer needs and provide solutions. A framework students can use to help build this competency is the SERVQUAL model, which helps to identify customer needs and expectations. Through this process, students will learn how to assess customer needs and provide solutions that are tailored to their needs.

Assessment

Q. What is the purpose of design thinking?
A. A. To make risky bets based on instinct
B. To collect backward-looking data
C. To apply tools from the world of design to shift the focus to human behavior
D. To identify strategies to unlock new markets

Answer: C. To apply tools from the world of design to shift the focus to human behavior

Questions

Common Hypothetical Questions:
1. What is design thinking?
2. What are the three major stages of design thinking?
3. How does design thinking help companies set strategy more effectively?
4. What is an example of design thinking being used to turn around a brand?

Real-Life Examples and Scenarios Questions:
1. How can design thinking help companies identify new markets?
2. In what ways can design thinking be used to experiment with different price points and store displays?
3. How can design thinking help companies better understand their customers and their behavior?
4. What resources or capabilities do companies need to effectively use design thinking?

Keywords

Design Thinking, Human-Centered Problem Solving, Oil of Olay, Future Customer Wants, Prototyping Iterative Experiments

Facts

1. Design thinking is a strategy-making process that shifts the focus to human behavior.
2. The process involves inventing a future by immersing yourself in customer lives and testing ideas through prototyping.
3. Design thinking was popularized by David M. Kelley, Tim Brown, and Roger Martin.
4. Procter & Gamble used design thinking to turn around the skin care brand Oil of Olay.
5. Design thinking can help unlock new markets and identify new strategies.

Trends

1. Create an infographic or data visualization to illustrate the different stages of design thinking and how they can help companies innovate.
2. Develop an educational video series outlining the basics of design thinking to teach business owners how to apply the principles in their own company.
3. Make an interactive online tool or game to help business owners practice the steps of design thinking and get feedback on their strategy decisions.

Source

This learning instructional guidance was formulated using the GPT-3 language model created by OpenAI.

Share


Unlock new markets & develop innovative strategies: Design Thinking! Observe customer behavior, iterate prototyping, and experiment to understand customer wants. #InnovativeStrategy #DesignThinking #CustomerFocus #Observation #Experimentation 😊 @Accredicity

Earn Credentials for Upskilling Yourself with Videos from YouTube

At Accredicity, you can gamify your Lifelong Learning, with Cred, in order to earn Stackable Credentials and Undergraduate Certificates from Bite-Size Education.

A+-Done

Processing...

This may take a few moments. Please wait.

We use cookies to ensure you get the best user experience.
By continuing to use our site, you accept our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.