Is Design Thinking sustainable?

As Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher once said, "change is the only constant in life". As in life, this holds true in business. In almost every sphere of commercial activity, orthodoxies are being challenged, accepted norms are being questioned and old ways of doing things are no longer as effective as they once were.

'Business as usual' for many companies, now includes innovating new ways of revealing additional value to existing products and services and is a key USP (Unique Selling Point) in today's competitive markets. Whereas technology, distribution and price were key differentiators in the past, today's consumer focuses on 'experience' as a motivating force. And revealing ways of understanding and leveraging experience is a new challenge facing the business community, and one that has been met by turning to creative methodologies, such as 'Design Thinking'.

Design Thinking is a popular creative methodology conceived by Californian design firm, IDEO in the 1980's. It's unique approach to innovation has been based on the premise that we should ignore our assumptions, adopt an open 'divergent' mindset and make sure we speak to the people whose problems we're trying to solve, as they have the answers we seek.

It relies on skilful discovery research to establish the context of enquiry, and then identifying the right needs to be solved through diligent needs analysis and a trained eye on how to 'read' qualitative data. Consequently, it can be a difficult methodology to implement by teams who are not trained to use it properly.

A common criticism of Design Thinking is that this approach sometimes overlooks the deep insights held by those closest to the problem, the stakeholder groups within the organisation, preferring to focus on end users primarily, and as a result leading to innovations that aren't feasible or viable in terms of budget and resource.

An alternative approach, that we have labelled 'Sustainable Innovation', presumes that the knowledge about 'what works' is freely available within the organisation if we care to investigate. Conversely to Design Thinking, it relies on those stakeholders closest to the problem to identify the areas that need help, define what success looks like, and then through quantitative research identifies people or groups who naturally innovate and excel at that activity. By publicising these exemplar techniques, sustainable innovation increases best practice adherence and performance.

But, how sustainable is Design Thinking? At the core of the methodology is the concept of a 'beginners mind' or blank canvas approach. In practice Design Thinking aims to come up with something new in preference to modifying or upgrading what currently exists. Can we afford to disregard previous solutions that have consumed organisational resources?

Sustainable innovation is by nature a democratic and 'positive' innovation approach as it celebrates people excelling within their workplace. This adds positively to the company narrative which can be circulated through internal communication channels, and can spark even more inventiveness and collaboration throughout the business. These sustainable innovations are quick wins, rapidly deployed, and feasible within existing resources. Internal resistance is low as they don't involve a ground up rethink and discarding of existing processes, software or methods.

This innovation technique is not new. It originated within the international public health sector and has been used to identify best practices within patient groups and organisations, with incredible successes on the way. In the United States it was used to increase guideline adherence for the treatment of myocardial infarction within hospitals, which rose by 25%, and in Vietnam to drive down cases of childhood malnutrition by 80% in 10,000 villages across the country*.

Sustainable innovation celebrates what is working, not what is broken, and leverages the knowledge and experience that exists within every organisation. It creates positive narratives that build workplace culture and rewards and recognises people throughout the business who excel at what they do. As the worlds problems get more acute and urgent, an innovation approach that is sustainable is more relevant than ever.

Taking the lessons learned from international public health and applying these to the business sector, would be beneficial to companies looking to put innovation at the heart of their 'day to day', in a simple, cost-effective and easy to implement way.

Design Thinking continues to play an important role in the innovation space, however, it can be perceived as a sledgehammer approach that is wasteful and lacks respect for an organisations inherent experience and deep knowledge. In these circumstances, sustainable innovation is a good alternative approach that can deliver surprising results with little downside.

* Research in action: using positive deviance to improve quality of health care - Elizabeth H Bradley 1 , Leslie A Curry, Shoba Ramanadhan, Laura Rowe, Ingrid M Nembhard, Harlan M Krumholz