Summary of the chapter Transition: Becoming a Design Minded Organization from the book: "Design Thinking: Integrating Innovation, Customer Experience, and Brand Value." Contains 10 key elements critical to success. To buy this book: http://amzn.to/1YvrJGe

1. Ten Principles of Design Minded Organizations
Andrew Leone, BS Engineering, MBA, MS Finance
Summary of “Transition: Becoming a Design-Minded Organization”

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Shifts impacting the role of design
Change is here to stay, and it is crucial for organizations to become more design-minded
“And the role of the designer has shifted from solving simple problems to solving complex problems, and
from working independently in a single-discipline focus to working collaboratively with cross functional
team. Design is everywhere.” – Thomas Lockwood, PhD, President of DMI
• Globalization
• Web 3.0
• The “triple bottom line”
 Social, economic, environment
• Innovation drives business, and design enables innovation
• Seeking meaning in an “experience economy”
• From mass media ads to brands as stories & relationships
• From manufacturing-centric to consumer-centric
• The integration of customer touchpoints

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Moving from status quo to design-minded
Its not about process or techniques, but empowerment, transparency and having an open mind
“Four Orders of Design” (R.Buchanan, 1995):
• 1st and 2nd orders are about design as an outcome; foundation every company uses
• 3rd order is also commonplace, but handled w/ various degrees of effectiveness
• 4th order: integrative & holistic; building methods into internal systems & processes; core competency
1. Communication
Creation of signs
& symbols to be
used in mass
communication
2. Construction
Creation of
objects via
traditional
industrial
design
3. Interaction
Actions &
behaviors of
people, as
affected by
design
4. Organization
Design
considerations in
context of
organizations,
environments,
systems & cultures

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Common personality traits of design thinkers
Empathy, integrative thinking, optimism, experimentation and collaboration
• Broad curiosity
• Ability to employ tacit knowledge
• Ability to develop awareness and foster insights
• Ability to understand complex problems
• Ability to identify root causes of problems
• Ability to anticipate and visualize new scenarios
• Ability to invent ideas and synthesis
• Ability to solve problems

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Design terminology
Profile of terminology
Objective Scope Process Players Thinking style
Design Thinking
Innovation,
clarifying fuzzy
font end, direction
finding
Concept of
objects, services
and processes
Collaborative,
conceptual,
iterative, idea
formulating, demo
Designers,
researchers,
managers,
individual contrib.
Abductive
Design Strategy
Clarify design
attributes and
design policy
Define use of
design and style,
incl. look & feel
Define & guide; a
continuous
process
Designers, design
managers, brand
managers
Inductive
Design
Management
Direct design org.
& ops, processes,
resources &
projects
Project, business
unit, or corporate
level
Management of
people,
processes,
projects & budget
`Design manager,
brand manager,
project or program
manager
Inductive and
deductive
Design
Leadership
Connect design to
business, lead
design operations
& collaboration
Design and
business
integration, top
level advocacy
Influence and
guide top
management
decisions
Chief design
officer, design
council, expert
consultant, CEO,
VP
Deductive

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Ten principles of design-minded organizations
Key focus areas to incorporate into business, culture and processes
1. Develop empathy for the customer
2. Engage unique design processes
3. Connect w/ corporate culture
4. Set design strategy & policy
5. Align (and help define) business & design strategy
6. Design for innovation and transformation
7. Design for relevancy and each touchpoint
8. Focus on the customer experience
9. Empower creativity
10. Be a design leader

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1. Develop empathy for the customer
Role of design is to guide the research process to focus on
desired outcomes and identify unmet needs:
• More than just giving customers what they ask for (order
taking)
• Understand the world from the customer perspective v.
assumed similarity
• Use insights to design and prototype concepts increasing
possibility of discovering new opportunities
• Practice trendspotting to understand what customers may
want next
Understanding what customers value is more important than understanding what they want

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2. Engage unique design processes
Integrate design into key business processes to gain traction
Begins understanding root cause leveraging “five whys” technique
Develop customer insights via observations, interviews and analysis
Identify patters and connections to get close to needs and desires
Move to ideation, design quick concepts, prototypes, story boards
Designers appreciate constraints, focus scope & increases challenge
Integrated design management process
• Players come and go as needed
• Continuous improvement
• Collaboration: cross discipline & cross function
• Ongoing design check-ins, previews
• Design reviews

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3. Connect with Corporate Culture
It’s not about putting design into corporate culture, its about putting corporate culture into design
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3
4
5
7
6
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Determine cultural
norms & drivers
Determine how design
can support the norms
Build awareness about
the value of design
Set appropriate design
org. & partners
Integrate design process
w/ policy & practice
Measure the value
gained by design
Train and empower others
in design thinking methods

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4. Set design strategy & policy
Plan to make something
• Identify challenges and frame solutions in order to create new solutions
• Recognition that every activity and output of an organization is dependent upon design
• Design is what makes corporate strategy a reality
 Strategy is a series of activities and all activities need to be designed
• Proper design of all activities can influence the effectiveness and internal adoption of strategy
• Design is the process and the output to bring innovation to market
 By aligning the organization and enabling corporate strategy to succeed
• Design strategy sets the proper look and feel
 1st design vision & road map, then establish principles, visual org structures & signature elements

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5/6. Align strategy: innovation & transformation
New way of approaching strategy
• Bring business strategy & design strategy together
• Strategy meant to bring about desired outcome
• Broadest overlap is in “triple threat”
• Leverage design thinking as open-out method
 Avoid traditional funnel-down method
 Avoid styling near end of process
• Integrate design into other process
 Incl. customer research w/ emphasis on
observational processes, customer empathy

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7. Design for relevancy at each touchpoint
Including brand identity, imagery, products, services, environments, interfaces and communications
Design influences perceptions, perceptions influence purchase, therefore design influences purchase
Environment
Extremely influential on
professional & personal
Service
Emerging discipline
Product
Most visible aspect.
Reason company is
known, drives attitudes
Information
From web interfaces to
product to signage to
invoices, etc.
Communication
Affects all
touchpoints

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8. Focus on customer experience
Turn customer insights into meaningful brand experiences
• People want to accumulate two types of capital in life: economic and cultural
• Cultural capital helps people create meaning from their experiences,
• If designers incorporate, it can help create solutions that matter to the consumer
• Focus should be on identifying key “moments of truth” for customers
 Ex: purchase or repurchase a product or service
 Strategically design those moments to increase the cultural capital associated w/ experience

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9. Empower creativity
Engine for economic growth
Dysfunctional organizations cults vs Design-friendly culture
Control and hierarchy Empowerment & authorization
Performance and short term success Learning from failure; long term outcomes
Efficiency and cost cutting Effectiveness and value creation
Productivity & busyness Reflection and focused action
Competition & empire building Collaboration & shared purpose
Compliance & assurance Judgement & trust
Risk avoidance Possibility & experimentation
Blame shifting Truth telling & honest critique
Process & policy as salvation Heuristics & agility
Journey involving multi-disciplined team incorporating thinking, climate and actions

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10. Be a design leader
• How to develop proper functions of all parts of the
organization
• How to mobilize key resources to maximize
opportunities
• Leverage personal leadership skills
• Key aspects of building culture of design
 Planning
 Processes
 Resources
 Staffing

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Recommended Reading
Lockwood, T. (2009). Transition: Becoming a Design-Minded
Organzation in Design Thinking: Integrating Innovation,
Customer Experience, and Brand Value. New York, New York:
Allworth Press.

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