HBR Guide to Unlocking Creativity

CHAPTER 19

Why Design Thinking Works

by Jeanne Liedtka

Occasionally, a new way of organizing work leads to extraordinary improvements. Total quality management did that in manufacturing in the 1980s by combining a set of tools—kanban cards, quality circles, and so on—with the insight that people on the shop floor could do much higher level work than they were usually asked to. That blend of tools and insight, applied to a work process, can be thought of as a social technology.

In a seven-year study, I looked in depth at 50 projects from a range of sectors, including business, health care, and social services. I found that another social technology, design thinking, has the potential to do for innovation exactly what total quality management did ...