Design Thinking

I ran across recent article by Tim Brown of IDEO on design thinking (June 2008 HBR). A statement in the introductory paragraph caught my eye:

• "...Edison understood that the [light] bulb was little more than a parlor trick without a system of electric power generation and transmission to make it truly useful."

Brown highlights the need to fit technological innovation into a larger ecosystem. Big-picture engineers probably are better at this than puzzled-oriented engineers. Brown describes the personality profile of design thinker:

• Empathy
• Integrative Thinking
• Optimism
• Experimentation
• Collaboration

He also describes a design thinking dynamic with 3 nodes: Inspiration, Ideation, and Implementation. Inspiration and Ideation would seem to be more divergent (though Ideation is a mixture of divergent and convergent), and Implementation more convergent.

Brown's article is a pointed reminder that truly disruptive innovation often spans multiple levels (system, enterprise, ecosystem), domains (technology, people, process), and perspectives (strategy, operations, consumption, complements, etc.).