Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation: What They Can't Teach You at Business or Design School

FOREWORD

Our world is increasingly complex and difficult to interpret. Multiple forces—technological, regulatory, competitive, and so on—act on a given context to shape the rules of what is possible and probable. Uncovering the most valuable opportunities is increasingly challenging for innovators, especially those using a traditional tool kit. New product development processes typically churn out incremental, me-too solutions when more substantial innovation is needed to capture competitive advantage.

Delivering predictable, consistent, and meaningful value from innovation remains a top challenge for executives, but most find the challenge too difficult to crack. Instead companies essentially give up and rely on pure serendipity to stumble upon valuable “eureka” moments, while others default to various versions of a creative process with the hope that it will yield a great outcome. Although these approaches can certainly yield success, the repeatability needed by any large organization is quite low.

This book presents an alternative to the status quo, an alternative that some leading-edge companies have begun to adopt. Design thinking can weed through the uncertainty and anchor innovation on the fundamental drivers of customer behavior, their interactions with the surrounding ecosystem, their interactions with one another.

Although design thinking itself is not new, Idris presents a fresh look at the practical application of this competency within the modern enterprise seeking ...