1. Rapid Prototyping Learning Launch
Visualization Journey Mapping Value Chain Analysis
Customer Co-Creation
Assumption TestingConcept DevelopmentBrainstormingMind
Mapping
8
4640 16_21.qxp:Layout 1 7/26/11 1:00 PM Page 16
Rotman Magazine Fall 2011 / 17
WHEN DESIGNER HUGH DUBBERLY asked Tim Brennan of
Apple’s
CreativeServicesgrouptodefinedesign forhisbook, How Do You
Design?,Brennandrewthe followingpicture:
While many business people appreciate the power of design,
a formal process for its practice has been elusive; until now.
by Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Ogilvie
Designing for Growth:
A Tool Kit For Managers
? $

2. Design, this drawing asserts, is simply magic – a mysterious
no-man’s land where only the brave dare tread. Such a
definition
mocksthe ideathata formalprocesscouldpossiblyexist fornavi-
gating itsmanyhairpin turns.
Our advice: don’t be put off by Brennan’s view of design.
Design has many different meanings, and the approach we will
describe here is more akin to Dorothy’s ruby slippers than to a
magicwand:you’vealreadygotthepower;you justneedtofigure
outhowtouse it.Can the averagemanagerbe transformed into
the next Jonathan Ive? No more than your local golf pro can
turn you into Tiger Woods. But can you improve your game?
Without adoubt.
If Managers Thought Like Designers
Whatwouldbedifferentifmanagersthoughtmorelikedesigners?
Wehave threewords foryou: empathy, inventionand iteration.
4640 16_21.qxp:Layout 1 7/26/11 1:00 PM Page 17
Designalwaysbeginswithempathy–establishingadeepunder-
standing of those for whom you are designing. Managers who
thought likedesignerswould consistentlyput themselves in their
customers’ shoes. We all know we’re supposed to be ‘customer-
centered’, but what we’re talking about is deeper and more
personal than that: trueempathyentailsknowingyourcustomers
asrealpeoplewithrealproblems,ratherthanastargetsforsalesor
as a set of demographic statistics around age or income level. It
involvesdevelopinganunderstandingofboththeiremotionaland
their ‘rational’ needsandwants.
In addition,managerswho thought likedesignerswould view
themselvesas creators.Forallourtalkaboutthe ‘artandscience’of

3. management, we have mostly paid attention to the science part.
Taking design seriously means acknowledging the difference
betweenwhat scientistsdoandwhatdesignersdo:whereas scien-
tists investigate today to discover explanations for what already
is, designers invent tomorrow to create something that isn’t.
Powerfulfuturesarerarelydiscoveredprimarilythroughanalytics.
Theyare,asWalt Disneyoncesaid,“Createdfirst inthemindand
next in theactivity.”
Finally, design insists that we prepare ourselves to iterate our
way to a solution, somanagerswho thought like designerswould
view themselves as learners. Most managers are taught a linear
problem-solving methodology: define the problem, identify
vari-
ous solutions, analyze each, and choose the best one. Designers
aren’t nearly so impatient – or optimistic; they understand that
successful invention takes experimentation and that empathy is
hardwon.Thetask,first and foremost, is alwaysoneof learning.
18 / Rotman Magazine Fall 2011
When groups want to generate new ideas, brainstorming is often
their
first course of action. When this technique is effective,
participants
draw on each others’ pre-existing knowledge to create new
combina-
tions of ideas not previously considered. But brainstorming can
fail in
at least as many ways as it can succeed. Over the past eight
years I
have worked closely with designers who take brainstorming
very seri-
ously and together, we have added a new technique to the brain-
storming mix: improvisation.

4. Like brainstorming, improvisation is a creative collaboration
between people with a common goal of developing engaging
ideas
within a prescribed amount of time. To date, I have taught
improvisa-
tion techniques to approximately 60 practitioners, 170
undergradu-
ate and graduate students and 80 faculty members at Stanford
and
Northwestern Universities.
Early on, participants are exposed to the rules of effective
brain-
storming developed by BBDO founding partner Alex Osborn.
While
‘Osborn’s Rules’ for effective brainstorming remain pertinent,
my
experience indicates that they can be optimized by importing
tech-
niques from the world of improvisation. Let’s look at each rule
in turn,
and how improvisation can enhance it.
1. Identify a Leader. Rarely do groups explicitly commit to a
struc-
ture and set of processes to enhance the session’s effectiveness.
One strategy that can help is to identify a leader to oversee
group
dynamics. In improvisational theatre, participants select a coach
who takes a step back and offers advice. For example, if one
indi-
vidual is not being heard by his fellow ‘players’, the coach may
pub-
licly advise him to speak up. Active coaching can also benefit
brain-
storming sessions. During one session, a leader noticed that a

5. col-
league was drawing interesting ideas on his notepad; she asked
him
to share his ideas and upon doing so, he received praise from
the
rest of the team. From that point on, he positively informed the
out-
put of the brainstorm.
2.WithholdJudgment. A variety of improvisation activities can
help a
group transition to the non-judgmental frame of mind required
for
brainstorming. One such activity, called Malapropism, involves
individ-
uals walking around a room, pointing to familiar objects and
calling
them by another name out loud. For example, a one might point
to a
lamp and call it a ‘garage’. The goal of the activity is to
misname as
many objects in the room as possible. As participants move
through
Using Improvisation to Enhance Brainstorming Sessions By
Elizabeth Gerber
A Toolkit for Designing for Growth
Rememberthat initialdrawingof thedesignprocess?Ourversion
looksquitedifferent:
We start and end in the sameplace asBrennandid, butwe’ve
untangled the hairball into a manageable process. Despite fancy
vocabulary like ‘ideation’ and ‘co-creation’, the design process
actuallydealswith fourverybasicquestions,whichcorrespondto
the four stagesofdesign:

6. 1. What is?
2. What if?
3. Whatwows?
4. Whatworks?
What isexplorescurrentreality;What ifenvisionsanewfuture;
What wows makes somechoices; and What works takesus into
the
marketplace. The widening and narrowing of the bands around
each question represent ‘divergent’ and ‘convergent’ thinking:
in
the early parts of theprocess,we areprogressively expandingour
fieldofvision, lookingasbroadlyaroundusaspossible inorder to
? $What is? What if? What wows? What works?
4640 16_21.qxp:Layout 1 7/26/11 1:00 PM Page 18
Rotman Magazine Fall 2011 / 19
not be trapped by our usual problem framing. That’s divergent
thinking.Afterwehavegeneratedanewsetofconcepts,webegin
to reverse the process by converging – progressively narrowing
downouroptions to themostpromisingones.
There are ten essential tools that a design thinker uses to
addressthesefourquestions.Beforewebegin,wewanttocallyour
attention to one very special design tool: visualization (Tool#1).
This ‘meta tool’ is so fundamental to thewaydesignerswork that
it showsup invirtually every stageof theprocess.Visualization is
an approach for identifying, organizing and communicating in
ways that access ‘right brain’ thinking while decreasing our
dependency on ‘left brain’media such as numbers. It

7. consciously
inserts visual imagery into our processes and focuses on
bringing
an idea to life, eventually creating stories that go to the heart of
howdesignerscultivateempathy ineveryphaseof theirwork.
Now let’s take a look at how the process unfolds across the
fourquestions, andhoweachtoolfitswithin them.
Question 1: What Is?
All successful innovation begins with an accurate assessment of
the current reality.When we think of something new, we usually
thinkabout the future– sowhystartwith thepresent?For lotsof
reasons. First, weneed topay close attention towhat is going on
today to identify the real problemoropportunity thatwewant to
tackle. People often throw away all kinds of opportunities for
growth before they even get started by framing the problem too
narrowly. For years, product developers at Procter & Gamble
focused on improving the detergents that were used to clean
floors. One day they realized (with the help of design thinking)
that what their customers really wanted was cleaner floors, and
that this could be achieved through means other than better
detergents – suchas a better mop.This insightproduceda runaway
best-seller, the Swiffer, a growth initiative that revolved around
a
product invented in the middle ages. Fruitful searches always go
backto thebasics:what is the jobtobedone?
A funny thing happens when we pay close attention to what
customersareupto:weoftenfindthatthecluestoanewfuture lie
in dissatisfaction with the present. Ultimately, growth is always
aboutsolvingpeoples’problems–eveniftheydon’tyetknowwhat
theyare.Ifyoupaycloseenoughattentiontotheir lifeanditsfrus-
trations, you might see what they don’t, and that’s why the most
promising place to start any growth initiative is to find out what

8. customersdon’t likeabout today.
Designoffersanumberoftoolstohelpwiththisstage, suchas
journey mapping (Tool#2), to help assess an idea’s potential for
value creation. This tool teaches us how to ‘follow customers
home’ and develop a deep understanding of their lives and the
problems they strugglewith, so thatwecanbringourcapabilities
tobearontheones inoursweetspot.It isalso importanttoassess
thepotential forvaluecapture,soweneedtodoadeepdiveonthe
valuechaininwhichthisnewideais likelytobeimplemented:Who
are the powerful players?What are their incentives?Will they be
able to help us?Accurate information on your organization’s
own
capabilities and resources (and those of key competitors) is
essen-
tial.You’ll alsowant to recognize early on the capabilities you
are
missing and locate the right partner to provide them.All of this
involvesa value chain analysis (Tool#3).
When will you know that you’ve explored enough? This is
alwaysa judgmentcall.Gatheringhigh-quality informationusual-
ly requiresfield research,which isexpensiveandtimeconsuming.
Keep inmind that theprimaryobjective in this exploration stage
is not tobuild a ‘business case’ for anyparticular idea; that
comes
later.Thepurposehere is toprepare togenerate ideas–notevalu-
ate them. Designers have come up with a number of tools for
the room, they hear others misnaming objects, thereby
normalizing
‘failure’ and breaking free from the mindsets that constrain us
to see
the world as we are accustomed to seeing it.
3. Build on the Ideas of Others. Brainstormers can practice this

9. skill
by playing a popular improvisation activity called Yes, Let’s.
This
involves picking an imaginary activity in which the group will
partici-
pate, such as planning a party or going on a trip. Participants
gener-
ate ideas and offer them to each other, beginning each offer
with the
phrase, “Let’s…”, and the group responds with, “Yes, let’s.”
The first
player makes a suggestion such as, “Let’s travel to Paris” and
then
gestures in a way that supports her suggestion. Withholding any
crit-
icism that might spontaneously arise in a group member’s mind,
the
group responds, “Yes, let’s!” A second player adds a
suggestion:
“…And let’s climb the Eiffel Tower,” and gestures accordingly.
The
group responds, “Yes, let’s.” A third person adds, “…And let’s
return
home and teach our friends how to speak French,” and so on,
until the
energy of the group begins to falter.
In my class, designers often modified this activity to be
product-
focused. One group decided to design a product and a company
to
support their product. The first designer began by saying “Let’s
design
enterprise software that is easy to use.” Withholding criticism,
the

10. group members smiled and said, “Yes, let’s.” A second designer
made
a second suggestion building on the first, offering, “And let’s
make
software that people look forward to using every day at work.”
The
group responded in agreement saying, “Yes, let’s.” The exercise
contin-
ued until a company and product had been defined. These
designers
reported generating an idea that – while it seemed crazy at first
–
actually led to a discussion of a viable idea.
4. Generate a Large Quantity of Ideas. Brainstormers can prac-
tice being prolific idea generators using a modified
improvisation
activity called New Choice. For this activity, two people stand
side
by side, and a third player stands to the side. The two players
begin
to have a conversation about building a new product. When the
player to the side doesn’t like what has been said, she asks the
play-
er who last spoke to offer a new choice. If she is still not
pleased
with that response, she asks the player to offer another new
choice.
The goal is not to critique, but to have the players generate
ideas as quickly as possible. For example, one player might say
>>
4640 16_21.qxp:Layout 1 7/26/11 1:00 PM Page 19

11. 20 / Rotman Magazine Fall 2011
looking for patterns in and making sense of the wealth of data
amassed in this exploratory stage. One approach is mind map-
ping (Tool #4), which helps organize the information you’ve
collectedandenables you todraw insights fromit about thequal-
ities of the innovationneeded.Youwill thenuse these criteria to
generate ideas in thenext stage.
Question 2: What If?
Having synthesized the data and identified emerging patterns,
ideasbegintopopintoourheadsandwestarttoconsidernewpos-
sibilities, trends and uncertainties. Even without trying, we are
beginning to develop hypotheses about what a desirable future
might look like. It’s timetomovefromthedata-basedexploratory
question what is? tothemorecreativity-focusedquestion, what if?
Designers call this stage ideation. To generate truly creative
ideas, it is crucial tostartwithpossibilities.Often, inourattempts
to be practical, we start with constraints, which can be deadly to
breakthrough thinking. Ifwe start by accepting all the things
that
don’t allowustodosomethingbetter,ourdesignsfortomorrowwill
inevitably look a lot like today’s.The only hope is to ignore
some
keyconstraints inorder to identify anewsetofpossibilities.Then
the real creativity kicks in – figuring out how to get those con-
straintsoutofourway. It takes a lotofmomentumtodo this, and
thatcanbecreatedinagoodpossibilitiesdiscussionthatenergizes
the hard work of overcoming constraints. In many of the
innova-
tions we’ve been involved with, the creativity that really
matters
livesinhowthenewfuturewasaccomplished,notwhat it looked like.
During this stage, we look at how customers currently frame

12. their problems and the mental models and constraints that we
imposeonthem.Wewillusethisinformationtoformulatehypothe-
ses about new possibilities using a familiar tool, brainstorming
(Tool#5) – althoughwewill apply itwithmore structure than the
free-form approach that is often used.Adisciplined approach to
brainstorming is crucial to overcome its inherent pitfalls. A key
“Let’s create a product for the elderly.” The other might say,
“Yes,
let’s build a safer walking cane.” The third player coaches the
second
player to come up with a new choice by saying “New choice.”
The
second player responds, “Yes, let’s build a wheelchair for
snowy
weather.” The third player coaches the second player for a new
choice again by saying “New choice.” The second player says,
“Yes,
let’s build a new limb for the elderly.” The coach requests new
choic-
es until s/he is satisfied with the new direction.
5.Free-wheel. This simply means generating ideas free of
constraints,
and can be practiced by playing a modified version of an improv
activi-
ty called Presents. During this activity, participants pair up and
pass a
familiar object back and forth. When the object is received in
hand, the
player names the object and then describes an alternative use
for it.
The goal is to pass the object back and forth as quickly as
possible
while generating as many alternative uses as possible, until the
original

13. use of the object becomes just one of many ‘possible uses’.For
exam-
ple, one pair of players passed a small trash can back and forth,
devel-
oping multiple uses for it including “a stool” and “a door stop.”
The stu-
dents realized that to generate more alternate uses, they had to
relin-
quish their preconceptions of what a trash can could be. As they
con-
tinued the activity, the trash can became more imaginative
things,
including a cup for giants and a boat for a mouse.
In the end, brainstorming will always be an unreliable process,
but
it remains one that shows great promise for idea generation. As
indi-
cated, theatrical improvisation offers a new set of tools to
support
the group dynamic that enhances brainstorming effectiveness.
Using Improvisation to Enhance Brainstorming (cont’d)
1.Visualization:Usingimagerytoenvisionpossiblefuturecondition
s.
2. Journey Mapping: Assessing the existing experience through
the customer’s eyes.
3.Value Chain Analysis: Assessing the current value chain that
supports the customer’s journey.
4. Mind Mapping: Generating insights from exploration
activities

14. and using those to create design criteria.
5. Brainstorming: Generating new alternatives to the existing
business model.
6. Concept Development: Assembling innovative elements into
a
coherent alternative solution that can be explored and evaluated.
7. AssumptionTesting: Isolating and testing the key assumptions
that will drive success or failure of a concept.
8. Rapid Prototyping: Expressing a new concept in a tangible
form for exploration, testing and refinement.
9. Customer Co-Creation: Engaging customers to participate in
creating the solution that best meets their needs.
10. Learning Launch: Creating an affordable experiment that
lets
customers experience the new solution over an extended period
of
time, so you can test key assumptions with market data.
The Ten Tools FigureOne
Elizabeth Gerber is a professor at the Segal Design Institute at
Northwestern
University. With student designer Molly Lafferty, Elizabeth’s
lab created
Betterbrainstorms.com, a collection of improv inspired games
for brainstormers.
She previously spent five years developing programs and
teaching at Stanford
University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (‘the d.School’).
She is also the fac-

15. ulty founder of Design for America, an award-winning
educational initiative build-
ing creative confidence in students through design for local and
social impact.
4640 16_21.qxp:Layout 1 7/26/11 1:00 PM Page 20
reasonthatbrainstormingisoftenunfulfillingisthelackofaformal
process to convert theoutput into something valuable.Thedesign
thinking toolwe introducehere, concept development (Tool#6),
will take the output of the brainstorming process, organize it
into
coherentclusters, andarchitect themostcompellingclusters intoa
robust concept.Wemoved fromdata to insights in thefirstphase;
inthisphase,we’llmovefrominsightsto ideastoconcepts.
Having developed some hypotheses (in the form of con-
cepts)aboutnewpossibilities,we’llbegintothinksystematically
aboutprioritizing theconceptswehavecomeupwithandfigur-
ingoutwhat ‘wows’.
Question 3: What Wows?
If all has gonewell in thepreceding stages, youprobably have far
toomanyconcepts tomove forwardwithall atonce.Onefirmwe
worked with recently generated more than 300, which they nar-
rowed down to 23. Of these, only five eventually made it to
marketplace testing.Clearly, youwill need tomake somechoices.
Whatyouare looking for is ideas thathit the ‘sweet spot’ –where
thechanceof a significantupside incustomervaluemeets attrac-
tiveprofitpotential.This iswhatwecall the ‘wowzone’.
Thisnecessitates startingwith somekindofevaluationof the
only data you’ve got – data about today.Again, keep inmind that
you are not ‘proving’ the value of an idea; you’re just ready to

16. do
some thought experiments to begin to assess what the business
casemight looklike.Becauseit isoftendifficulttoassessthelong-
termpotentialofanewconcept,youwillwanttotreadcarefullyso
that you don’t unintentionally favour the incremental concepts
anddismiss themore radicalones.
The good news is that you have an approach at your disposal
that has been little used in business, but is far more useful in
assessing early-stage innovations than much-maligned but still
commonlyusedmetricslikereturnoninvestment(ROI):thegood
old scientific method. The scientific method uses both creative
and analytic thinking – that’s what makes it such a useful tool
whenwewant tobe imaginative in thesearch forpossibilitiesand
rigorous infiguringoutwhichones topursue.Unlikebrainstorm-
ing, it doesn’t ask us to leave our analytical minds at the door.
It
invites both the left and the rightbrain into theprocess, and it is
custom-made todealwith situations involvinga lotofunknowns.
It accomplishes all of the aboveby treating our newconcept as a
hypothesisandthentestingit: itstartswiththehypothesesgener-
atedby the what if? question; then it takes thesenewpossibilities
(which are really educated guesses about something we think is
likely to be a good idea) and tests them by asking, “What would
needtobetrue for this concept tobeagoodone?”
Inotherwords, yousurfaceandtest theassumptionsunderly-
ing your hypothesis. The hypotheses that ‘pass’ this first set of
tests are good candidates for turning into real experiments to be
conducted in the marketplace. As a result, assumption testing
(Tool#7) isoneofthemostpotenttools inthedesigner’s–andthe
manager’s – toolbox. Remember, the goal here is not
uncovering
‘truth’. All design is essentially hypothesis driven, which, in the
designworld, is shorthand for saying that the solutionsgenerated
are theoutcomeofan iterative rather thana linear process.

17. Having tested your assumptions as carefully as you can, it is
time to move to the real thing: experimentation in the market-
place. In order to do this, you take the concepts that have
successfully passed through the screening process and translate
themintosomethingactionable:aprototype.Rapid prototyping
(Tool#8)seemslikeachallengingtask,butallwearetalkingabout
here is taking the concepts generated in the what if? stage and
turning them into something concrete enough to spur conversa-
tions with important stakeholders.The intent is to create visual
(and sometimes experiential)manifestationsof concepts inorder
to facilitatemeaningful conversationandfeedback.
Question 4: What Works?
Finally, youare readyto launchand learn.First,wesuggest thatyou
try out a low-fidelity prototypeon somecustomers and seehow it
goes. If it succeeds, build a higher-reliability 3D prototype of
the
ideaandseeifanycustomersarewillingtopartwiththeirmoneyfor
it. A particularly powerful approach to determining what works
involves inviting the customer into the conversation in an
active,
hands-on way.The tool you can use here is customer co-creation
(Tool#9).There isnomoreeffectivewaytoreducetherisksofany
growthinitiativethantoengagecustomers indesigning it.
Prototype in hand, you are ready to move into piloting. To
accomplish this, we offer a tool called a learning launch (Tool
#10),whichmovesyourdevelopingconcept into thefield.Asyou
design thepilot, youwill want tobe explicit about the search for
disconfirmingdata– informationthatdisprovesyourhypotheses.
This is themost valuable information you canuncover – and it is
also the easiest to miss.To enhance your ability to detect it, you
must layout inadvancewhatdisconfirmingdatamight look like.
As you proceed, keep in mind some of the principles of this

18. learning-in-actionstage:workinfastfeedbackcycles;minimizethe
cost of conducting your experiments; fail early to succeed
sooner;
and test forkey trade-offs andassumptionsearly.Most important,
playwith theprototypes in thefield insteadof defending them in
endlessmeetings.
In closing
Anunavoidablebuthealthy tensionwill always exist between cre-
ating the newandpreserving the best of the
present,betweeninnovating
newmodels andmaintaininghealthyexistingones.As amanager,
youneed to learnhowtomanage this tension,not adopt awholly
new set of techniques and abandon all of the old.Theprocesswe
havedescribedcangetyoustartedonthepath.
Rotman Magazine Fall 2011 / 21
Jeanne Liedtka is theUnitedTechnologies
CorporationProfessorofBusinessAdministration
at theUniversityofVirginia’sDardenSchoolof
Businessandtheformerchief learningofficerat
UnitedTechnologiesCorporation. Tim Ogilvie is
CEOofPeerInsight, an
innovationstrategyconsultancyandavisiting lecturerat
theDardenSchool.Theyaretheco-authorsof Designing for
Growth: A Toolkit for
Managers (ColumbiaUniversityPress, 2011), fromwhichthis
isexcerpted.
4640 16_21.qxp:Layout 1 7/26/11 1:00 PM Page 21
POL/115 v3

19. Week 3 Assignment Worksheet
POL/115 v3
Page 2 of 2POL/115 Week 3 AssignmentU.S. Federal
Bureaucracy and Public Policy
Step 1: Complete the federal bureaucracy matrix to demonstrate
how it influences the U.S. political system. Include APA
citations for all unoriginal ideas, facts, or definitions.
Elements of federal bureaucracy
In 100-250 words, explain each element, and discuss how it
affects or influences the U.S. political system.
Civil servants
Government corporation
Cabinet departments
Independent regulatory agencies
Independent executive agencies
Merit system
Public administration
Spoils system
Privatization
Negotiated rulemaking
Step 2: Complete the public policy matrix to explain and the
compare the main policy types.
Types of public policy

20. Explanation or definition
How is it the same or different from the other types of policy?
Example of the type of policy
Distributive policy
Regulatory policy
Redistributive policy
Copyright© 2018 by University of Phoenix. All rights reserved.
Copyright© 2018 by University of Phoenix. All rights reserved.
10 | Research-Technology Management • May—June 2012
Roger Martin has been studying what it takes to create
breakthrough innovation for many years. In that time,
he has become frustrated by the increasingly heavy reliance
on analytics in most businesses, which crowds out intuitive
thinking. For Martin, both analytics and intuitive insight
are necessary to create successful breakthroughs; he calls
this productive synthesis “design thinking.” In his books
The Opposable Mind: Winning through Integrative Thinking
and The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next
Competitive Advantage , he explores design thinking and its
importance in making the truly important decisions. I talked
with him about design thinking and how it can be nurtured
into today’s analytical businesses.

21. JIM EUCHNER [JE]: You have written extensively about the
importance of design thinking in business. How do you de-
fi ne “design thinking”?
ROGER MARTIN [RM]: I consider design thinking to be the
productive mix of analytical thinking and intuitive think-
ing. I call it a productive mix because you need both kinds
of thinking if you’re going to analyze the past, project
what you can from it, and create futures that go beyond an
extrapolation of the past. If you use analytical thinking
alone, you will just extrapolate from the past, which will
work for you if you are willing to accept a future that is no
different from the past. If you use intuitive thinking alone,
you won’t take advantage in a rigorous way of the data
that’s available. Both of them are needed. Analytical think-
ing tends to miss new different things that change the envi-
ronment. And intuitive thinking tends to be just plain
wrong too many times. What you want and need is a com-
bination of the two.
JE: Analytical thinking has dominated and still dominates
business, and it’s been fairly successful. Why is there a need
now for more design thinking?
RM: I’m not sure it has been successful. It’s credited with
lots
of success. Science and the scientifi c method have made a
notable difference in the world. But what’s happened in the
business world is that we’ve gotten too analytical, to the
point where analysis is relied on too much. And what that
does is calcify companies. You have to ask yourself, “Why is
it that big companies keep getting beaten up by little com-
panies?” Old companies get beaten up by little, new compa-
nies. How can that be?

22. I’d say the answer is that big, old companies get totally
analytical, and they focus on honing and refi ning what it is
that they’re currently doing. The little companies come along
and challenge that which now exists, and they blow the big,
old companies completely out of the water. I think that phe-
nomenon is a direct function of the predominance of analyti-
cal thinking in these big companies. The problem is less about
the world having changed; it is more about the intensity of
analytical thinking.
JE: That’s very interesting. You don’t attribute disruption to
faster movement of technology and shorter cycle times for
products, but rather to the reifi cation of analytical thinking
in business.
RM: More so. I can’t believe that there is a lot of truth to the
pace of technology explanation. Henry Mintzberg gave a talk
Roger Martin has served as dean of the Rotman School of
Management
since September 1998. Previously, he spent 13 years as a
director of Moni-
tor Company, a global strategy consulting fi rm based in
Cambridge, Mas-
sachusetts. His research work is in integrative thinking,
business design,
corporate social responsibility, and national competitiveness.
He is the
author of four books: Fixing the Game (Harvard Business
Review Press,
2011), The Design of Business (Harvard Business School
Press, 2009), The
Opposable Mind (Harvard Business School Press, 2007) and
The Responsi-
bility Virus (Basic Books, 2002). He also co-wrote (with

23. Mihnea Moldoveanu)
The Future of the MBA (Oxford University Press, 2008) and
Diaminds (Uni-
versity of Toronto Press, 2009). Roger earned an AB with a
concentration in
economics from Harvard College and an MBA from the Harvard
Business
School. [email protected]
Jim Euchner is editor-in-chief of Research-Technology
Management and
vice president of global innovation at Goodyear. He previously
held senior
management positions in the leadership of innovation at Pitney
Bowes and
Bell Atlantic. He holds BS and MS degrees in mechanical and
aerospace
engineering from Cornell and Princeton Universities,
respectively, and an
MBA from Southern Methodist University. [email protected]
DOI: 10.5437/08956308X5503003
CONVERSATIONS
Design Thinking
An Interview with Roger Martin
Roger Martin talks with Jim Euchner about the need to include
intuitive thinking in the innovation process.
Conversations May—June 2012 | 11
at a conference 20 or 25 years ago where he put up a slide
with a quote about how things are moving so fast, techno-
logical advances are happening as never before, etc. It’s the
greatest we’ve ever seen in history. And he froze the slide

24. and he asked, “Where’s that from?” And everybody thought
it was from last month’s Wired or something. But it was from
Scientifi c American . In 1868. And so it’s stuck in my mind
that
we have to be careful saying how much the world has
changed, when much of it hasn’t changed at all.
There is an insight of this wacky but brilliant twentieth-
century American analytical philosopher, Charles Sanders
Peirce. He was a contemporary of William James and John
Dewey, but his thinking was ahead of many people. He came
to the conclusion that you cannot prove any new idea
through analytical thinking. He argued that no new idea in
the history of the world has been proven in advance through
inductive or deductive logic.
But there are new ideas in the world. Where do they
come from? They come from another thought process,
which Peirce called abductive logic. And I think he’s just
plain right. People relying on all these analytical method-
ologies do not realize that you cannot use them to demon-
strate any new idea in advance. So if you’re using them,
you’re using them to reinforce existing ideas. They have an
embedded assumption that the future is going to look a lot
like the past.
JE: I hear your point. It’s interesting, because at the same
time that design thinking is becoming a much bigger topic of
discussion, people are also focused on competing on analytics
and big data. Do you think the two are complementary, or do
you think that there are people who just have opposing
points of view of how you create the future?
RM: I think the intensity of interest in analytics by some is
representative of the absolute last gasp of attention that
happens before you get a big change. At least most of the

25. stuff I see says, “Wow, we’ve got all this data and we need
to redevelop analytics to deal with it.” I think that it’s
more of a symptom of the challenge than a prescription to
answer it.
JE: A kind of interesting synthesis is in the movie Moneyball
,
which describes a situation where analytics are deeply im-
portant, but so is throwing reliance on past heuristics out
the door.
RM: I could describe that as design thinking, which is the
pro-
ductive combination of both of those. Take advantage of ev-
ery bit of past data that you have, but then add some artistry
to that in order to imagine a future that is productively differ-
ent from the past.
JE: In your book, you say that business leaders don’t need
just to understand designers and how they think and how
they talk and what they do, but they need to become design-
ers. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
RM: I do not think that you’re going to be a great business
leader if you are just an analyst. I do not believe you can ana-
lyze your way to business leadership greatness. Some of the
people who quote me imagine that I’m saying that leaders
have to become artists. I don’t believe that’s the case. The dif-
ference between a fi ne artist and a designer is that a fi ne art-
ist cares about personal expression and not necessarily what
anybody else cares about, or whether it produces fi nancial
success, whereas a designer has to care about whether what
they’re designing will work and provide the economic bene-
fi t that it was designed to deliver.
What great business leaders have to do is become design-

26. ers in the sense of integrating their intuition in an explicit
way into their decisions, rather than suppressing it, hiding it,
and not making it explicit. That’s what I mean when I say
leaders must become designers. They need to develop their
skills and sensitivity. They need to understand qualitative dis-
tinctions between things. And in that way, they have to
become designers.
JE: Let me push on that a little bit more. In most corpora-
tions, there’s a CEO and a senior management team. And
they’re probably heavily biased toward an analytical ap-
proach to the world. But in addition, they’re likely to have a
variety of intuitions on a given issue that they may or may
not be able to express effectively to others. How do you
Roger Martin , author of The Opposable Mind: Winning
through
Integrative Thinking and The Design of Business: Why Design
Thinking
is the Next Competitive Advantage , believes that a productive
synthesis of analytic and intuitive insight is required to create
successful
breakthroughs.
What great business leaders have to
do is become designers in the sense of
integrating their intuition in an explicit
way into their decisions.
12 | Research-Technology Management Conversations

27. manage the team dynamic? In the end, are you going to end
up relying heavily on the intuition of just the CEO in making
things happen?
RM: There’s where I think excellent management is going to
play out. You put your fi nger very much on it. I think a great
leader is going to be a leader who makes it both legitimate
and safe to put your intuitive thoughts on the table rather
than dismissing them as being of lesser value than the ana-
lytical thoughts. That’s one thing.
And second, a leader helps people develop a language for
discussing these things. A great modern leader will do this
and not let a discussion at the board table be entirely analyti-
cally driven. Otherwise, the intuition of the team is going to
be hidden and the intuitions of the CEO will dominate.
JE: Do you think that design thinking can be taught or
learned?
RM: Absolutely, positively. There isn’t a question in my
mind.
JE: Under what conditions will that happen? It really is a dis-
tinct way of thinking.
RM: This is one of the most interesting things in my work.
People seem to think that something that is untaught is un-
teachable. And other than in a few places, business design
thinking is untaught. The assumption that it’s unteachable is
staggering to me. We’re teaching it here at Rotman, and it’s
totally teachable. Most people in the world of business—cer-
tainly in the world of technology—stopped doing anything
abductive very early in their education. They took an English
literature course maybe in grade 11 or 12, and they haven’t

28. taken a single thing that would exercise one iota of their ab-
ductive logical capability since. Then they go work at an en-
gineering fi rm, and 15 years later they would appear totally
incapable of having any kind of design capability. But it’s be-
cause they haven’t exercised it for a long, long time.
JE: So what can you do with a senior management team to
get them to the point where they can actually express their
intuitions and work with them and have a discussion about
them? Suppose three out of the seven people on the man-
agement team go to a week-long course in design thinking.
They’re going to have awareness, but that’s about it. How do
you help an organization move from one where you might
have an inspired leader to one where you have an organiza-
tional capability?
RM: Procter & Gamble is a good case in point. I worked inti-
mately with them in an effort to make them a design-thinking
company. It took time, but we created a customized process for
taking category teams through the design thinking process.
We would take one category at a time. The fi rst one we
took through the process was global hair care, and then we
did global laundry, skin care, and a whole bunch of others.
We took the senior management teams through a process
that taught them about design thinking, and they actually
applied those principles to the decisions and challenges in
their company and in their category at that time. And we did
eight or nine of them ourselves, and then trained the Procter
people to be able to do it. Now they have a couple of hundred
facilitators who can facilitate the approach.
That’s a user-friendly way for management teams to prac-
tice design thinking and impart their ability to create a future
to the next level. The result is a change in the dialogue at se-

29. nior management team meetings. They all know the lan-
guage that they’re using and how they came up with ideas.
They’ve been told that if you ever say “prove it” to anybody,
it guarantees that you won’t get anything new happening.
JE: What are you teaching in these sessions? Ways of being
aware of and listening to your intuition? Qualitative data col-
lection? Customer insight? Prototyping? What kinds of
things are you helping people get better at?
RM: All of those things. Design thinking includes helping
people get a deeper understanding of customers using more
qualitative approaches. So we teach how to do that and how
to legitimize qualitative research. We also teach some kind of
tools for how to create ideas that may make sense, how you
prototype them, and then how you convert them into strat-
egy. That last step is one of the things that is unique about the
approach that I developed for Procter and that we now teach
at Rotman.
What I think is missing in the design fi eld is how to con-
vert design thinking into a winning strategy—one that puts
the pieces together. The key tools are customer understand-
ing, visualization, prototyping, and strategic business design.
It’s fun to watch the combination at work.
JE: Let’s dig deeper into what leaders need to do to create
environments where these intuitive leaps can happen—
environments that are hospitable to the leaps happening.
Even if you’re not ever going to be a genius design thinker,
you might be able to create an environment in which design
can survive and have a signifi cant voice. When I worked
with designers, their biggest complaint was they just felt
like their concerns didn’t get heard until they were re-
phrased by someone with a different background or way of
talking. I’m trying to understand what people need to do

30. to make design effective in their organizations, even if it
doesn’t become predominant.
That’s a user-friendly way for
management teams to practice design
thinking and impart their ability to
create a future to the next level.
Conversations May—June 2012 | 13
RM: My view is that there are subtle things that can be easily
done that make a big difference. One of the things that A. G.
Lafl ey and I engineered at Procter & Gamble was a relatively
modest change in the way strategy planning meetings were
run. It wasn’t an expansive change; it was kind of a small
change, but it created an environment that allowed for the
possibility of design thinking.
Traditionally at Procter & Gamble, every September all the
categories would come forward to the senior management—
the CEO, the COO, the CFO—to have their strategies re-
viewed. The category teams would come in with big, long
strategy presentations in a PowerPoint deck. They would
come in with many little loops of three to fi ve slides each to
respond to every question they could anticipate. “It’s funny
that you should ask that. Here are the three answers to that
question specifi cally.” The whole goal of these meetings from
the respective categories was—and they used this term for
it—to “get in and get out.” It was a successful meeting if you
could get in and get out unscathed. Nothing changed; there
was no more work to be done.

31. So that was the goal, with senior management kind of
taking the critic’s role. “We’re going to ask tough questions
and you’d better have the answers.”
If that’s your goal, what are you going to generate? You’re
going to have a totally analytical meeting where you try to
prove things so that you can “get in and get out.” We said,
“From here on in, you will send us whatever material you
want to include two weeks in advance. We’ll read it and we’ll
issue you three to fi ve questions that we would like to have
dialogue on in your strategy review meeting. You’re not al-
lowed to bring more than three 8 ½ x 11 inch additional
pages into the meeting, because we don’t want you to create
another presentation that provides “perfect answers” to all of
our questions. We actually want to have a generative discus-
sion of these issues. There’ll be no presentation. We will
think together and come up with better solutions that way.
That’s how we’re going to run the meeting.”
That changed the meetings to meetings that were actually
discussions about what might be—What could we do here?
What might be a good idea?—rather than a discussion about
proving or disproving what the leaders said about their strat-
egies. That changed things tremendously; it created an enor-
mous change in what goes on in those meetings and how
productive those meetings are. They’re now meetings about
imagining what could be, what could be different, what
could be better, instead of meetings about the past.
JE: That’s great. I’m sure A. G. Lafl ey’s leadership made
that
happen.
RM: Absolutely. And it was profoundly disturbing to the ex-
ecutives, profoundly disturbing. They were conditioned to

32. getting hammered for not having everything perfect. A. G.
had to prove over time that he actually wanted a dialogue; he
actually wanted a discussion about what might be and what
could be. We fi rst did that in 2001. Now, I don’t think they
could go back. If they went back to the old approach, it would
be so depressing for people, so disconcerting, that it would be
really hard.
JE: They still have to make decisions, for example that
they’re
going to invest $200 million in this area and not in that area.
How do they get to the point where they’re willing to make
those bets about a world that may not be?
RM: There’s just more recognition that that’s how all impor-
tant decisions are made. There is no proof. It’s a matter of
getting out of this fool-proof mode.
That’s what I hate about the “competing on analytics”
idea. You’ve got to prove everything to be right before you
can do it. But the things that you can prove to be right or
wrong tend to be the most inconsequential things in the en-
tire decision. The things you cannot prove at all are the most
consequential elements of any decision. That’s what you get
paid the big bucks for.
JE: I guess another way to look at it is that a lot of business
teams are focused on not making the decision to invest in a
bad initiative and less focused on failing to invest in a good
initiative. There are two types of errors, right?
RM: Yes. And certainly one is more correlated with the use of
analytical techniques. Analysis makes you overconfi dent
with the impulse to keep on doing what you’re doing. So
that’s what we get in many businesses today. We get lots of

33. people confi dently doing more of the same. You have Gen-
eral Motors confi dently having their production plan for
2008 be more pickup trucks and more full-sized sport-utility
vehicles. Was that stupid? No. If you analyzed the past and
extrapolated it into 2008, 2009, you could extrapolate the
SUV and pickup truck demand, and you could say we should
gear up to make many more of these vehicles. There’s an
overconfi dence created by the analysis of the past.
JE: How do companies that you’ve worked with achieve
the right balance? It may be diffi cult for one person to be
both a great intuitive thinker and a good placer of bets on
something that isn’t so certain. How do companies create
a successful synthesis, or what you call the productive
synthesis?
But the things that you can prove to
be right or wrong tend to be the most
inconsequential things in the entire
decision. The things you cannot prove at
all are the most consequential elements
of any decision.
14 | Research-Technology Management Conversations
RM: I think a whole lot of it has to do with respect for the
other side. The best intuitive thinkers understand the limita-
tions of their intuition and give credence to analytical types
and partner with them.

34. JE: I have just one more question. A lot of the people who
will read this interview are leaders of innovation functions or
R&D labs. What kind of advice would you give them about
design thinking and what they can do to incorporate it into
their worlds?
RM: One of the big problems internal R&D labs have is that
they get very analytical and very reliability focused. That’s
the biggest thing to watch out for. I would say, on average,
I am struck by how conservative and analytical corporate
R&D departments are.
JE: How do you suggest they get beyond it? They’re by na-
ture embedded in a very analytical tradition.
RM: I would stop hiring all analysts. That’s one of the biggest
problems in big companies: their selection criteria are either
implicitly or explicitly driven to focus on analytical talent.
And so they get many analysts, and guess what the analysts
do? They analyze.
Think about actually having your selection criteria in-
clude something about somebody’s intuitive capacity. Think
about it. What do R&D departments look for when they
hire?
JE: They’re looking for the technical disciplines and execu-
tion ability. People in R&D are looking for people who have
made creative contributions, but perhaps—
RM: Not much. I don’t fi nd that. I fi nd there is a focus on
super-high grade-point averages, and how do you get a
super-high GPA?
JE: You’re very good at what the schools are teaching, which

35. are the analytical subjects.
RM: And on the fi nal exam, with the big project that’s worth
everything, are people likely to take a leap to do something
wacky and way out there? No, because that one B could be
the difference between a 3.9 and a 3.85, and you’re going to
lose out to some other 3.9. It’s incredibly narrowing conser-
vatism. And we in business select for that. It’s scary.
JE: Just to build further—you can’t hire one or two designers
to create this capability. You’ve got to start getting a critical
mass. So what do you think a critical mass of people with that
sort of background is, or am I barking up the wrong tree?
RM: It would be the fi rst tree I’d bark up. But you don’t need
a design background. Take Claudia Kotchka, Procter & Gam-
ble’s head of design under Lafl ey. Before going to Procter &
Gamble, she was an Arthur Anderson auditor.
She’s a friend of mine. She’s brilliant. But it’s not about
her having a design education but about having a mind that
was open to design. And she’s learned a lot. She hangs out
with designers; she reads everything about design. So she’s
very knowledgeable. But it doesn’t necessarily take design-
ers. That’s why I make a distinction between designers and
design thinking.
Design thinking is a way of thinking. What you need to be
successful is somebody who encourages a different way of
thinking in the organization. You will end up hiring design-
ers and working with designers because you’ll say, “Wow,
there’s real value in that kind of training and expertise.” But
the training is not the key. There are lots of designers with
great training who are not design thinkers.
JE: I very much appreciate your insights. It’s been a fascinat-

36. ing discussion.
Design thinking is a way of thinking.
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