How to cultivate design thinking, innovation and strategy?

By Silvia Vianello

Find out how young professionals can develop design thinking and formulate a design strategy.

In order to know what design thinking is, it is first necessary to know what is design and the difference between these two components. Design is not products, aesthetics, experiences or events. It is a process where you first empathize with the needs and wants of the people in order to define and ideate and then to create a prototype, then this prototype is tested through various strategies in the real world in order to create something with collaboration and acceptance of all parties benefitting involved.

Once you have a design process then only design thinking comes into the picture, where the designers sensibility and methods are used in order to create something that matches the people needs along with technologically feasible and viable business strategies and thus to convert customer value to create a market opportunity.

Precisely, to cultivate design thinking and create innovation and strategies in the minds of young professionals it is necessary to change all the wicked problems faced by the society.

The wicked problems being, social values. Bringing a change in what we are being taught since the beginning will surely disrupt the economy and mindsets of people. Once we are successful in changing social values, people will automatically lead to using more autonomous ways adopted in the workplace and thus technology will play a major role, and this is how you can apply innovation and strategy in the young minds.

The young professionals must be made aware of the hyper-competitive economy. Today, there is almost an easy solution for everything somewhere in the world, but it all has a major price to pay. This price must be defined beforehand through design thinking strategies in order to have a backup plan to maintain success.

You can do so by first brainstorming ideas and then in return by defining the most important challenge present in front of you. Then you can work on observing the people that have been facing this challenge and form insights through your observations. Next, frame possible opportunities and try experiments in order to evaluate and gain the best possible solutions to these challenges. The best solution that benefits all is the answer to increase market share and create customer value collectively.

All this design thinking process can only be done and cultivated in the mind of young professionals if it has been presented to them in a very interesting, inquisitive and in a way that will benefit and help them grow in the future.

Young minds love challenges, they prefer to take risks which have a greater return and thus, in order to build this idea in their minds, it must be communicated in the right manner. If they consider the idea as a challenge with a reward, it surely becomes very easy for them to team up with like-minded people that are up for creation, innovation, strategy and thus a design thinking process.

About the Author:

Dr Silvia Vianello, Associate Professor and Director – Innovation, S P Jain School of Global Management is an an expert in marketing, technology and future vision. She is the winner of the Top Middle East Woman Leader Award at the Asian Leadership Awards, got featured in the prestigious Top 100 Forbes Italian Women list 2018 and won Pioneering Woman Leader Award at the World Woman Leadership Congress. Recently Dr Vianello won the award as Fabulous Global Education Leader and Top 50 Women in Education at the World Education Congress.