Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World

Advantages of a Design Competency

Design, in the right hands, can reach new markets or extend your organization's assets and capabilities. When a business achieves design competency, crafting valuable experiences is easier and more advantageous.

In the Beginning

Development of new products and services begins in a haze. It's never clear where the best ideas will come from or how long it will take to find them, which is why this early stage is often called "the fuzzy front end." You know you're in the fuzzy front end when:

• Anticipation far exceeds insight. There's much more interest in what could be developed than wisdom about what should be developed.

• Plans seem arbitrary. You can't schedule the creation of brilliant ideas. Any milestones you set are complete guesswork.

• No amount of research data is enough. Despite mountains of research data, insights remain elusive.

• Uncertainty runs rampant. The set of potential solutions seems endless, especially because the problem can be described in multiple ways.

Most organizations lack the talent to find fresh and marketable ideas in the fuzz, because this stage is poorly understood. Yet every process downstream from the fuzzy front end is shaped and determined by its outcome. Design offers a means of framing your problem, revealing relevant ideas and new paths forward.

Traditional Tools Can't Tame the Fuzz

Product-and-service development is one of the trickiest feats in business. Chicago-based strategy firm Doblin estimates that 96 percent of innovation ...