The craze for design thinking

The historical and social reasons why hip designers talk of little else. Plus: elements of an alternative.

Here’s the introduction from the full paper, which can be downloaded from the link below:

In October 2009, Pharmaceutical Executive magazine ran an article on innovation by design. Among 26 mentions of the word ‘design’, nine occurred in the phrase ‘design thinking’. The article was written by two members of the Monitor Group, which is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is run by the world-renowned American management guru Michael Porter.

In a trade magazine, a serious article on design thinking – henceforth DT – is a step forward. What’s more, Monitor has clients among some of the world’s top international managers.

Its article begins by asserting that pharmaceuticals firms must confront ‘multi-layered demands’ and must, in particular, ‘explore new business models while attending to their existing, highly profitable commercial model’. It suggests that designers excel at solving such challenges, and that DT could help pharmaceutical companies ‘frame healthcare challenges holistically, taking into account the needs of all stakeholders’.

Such firms, it’s maintained, should absorb the experience of customers and non-customers, and the contexts in which they live and act; should use cultural anthropologists, social scientists, and ethnographers to add to traditional market research; should draw connections to other fields of study and industries, and should get ‘main insights from the market itself’ – through the rapid prototyping of new models with lead users and non-users in their natural environments.

Throughout, Monitor gives examples of DT in practice – both inside healthcare (the Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente), and outside it (Procter & Gamble). Inside pharmaceuticals, it contends, DT can help firms partner with doctors to help them run more successful business practices; can help budget-holders for health care explore ‘dramatically different models of cooperation and risk management’, and can give patients intuitive, clear information and convenient solutions that enable them to ‘participate in their own care’. In its conclusions, the article notes:

‘Of course, design capabilities are complements to, not substitutes for, the existing innovation capabilities of the [pharmaceutical] industry.’

Given the many, varied and substantial responsibilities that Monitor conferred upon DT, this careful sentence was well advised.

The same month as Monitor published, one leading US pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, announced its takeover of another, Wyeth, for $68 billion. Interestingly, Pfizer was already quick to play up, if not DT, then certainly a key aspect of it – what is now widely known in medical circles as ‘patient-centricity’. But by February 2010, something else happened: the company cut its 2012 budget for research and development (R&D), the most important of its ‘existing innovation capabilities’,from more than $8 billion to less than $7 billion. Pfizer also announced the closure of its main laboratories outside the US, which are located in the UK.

Obviously the loss of up to 2400 jobs at Sandwich, Kent, cannot be laid at the door of DT. But the Pfizer story raises two key issues around the conclusion of Monitor’s article:

1. Is DT, and a designerly orientation to users, really just a complement to, not a substitute for, R&D?
2. When DT claims to facilitate partnership with, and the participation of, stakeholders of all descriptions, are these claims to be taken at face value?

Precise definitions of DT vary and are rather elusive. Here, Monitor’s treatment of DT will have to suffice. Instead of definitions, this paper first examines the current craze for DT, and then looks at DT’s historical emergence over the past 50 years, focusing mainly, though not exclusively, on developments in the US and the UK. In line with perspectives published in 2010 as Big Potatoes: The London Manifesto for Design, the paper is critical of DT, arguing that it acts as a force broadly hostile to technological innovation. As well, the paper looks at the roots of DT today, and, in its conclusion, begins to outline an alternative approach.

The article can be downloaded at http://www.woudhuysen.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Craze_4_DT_on_JW_WEBSITE-1.doc