Adapting Design Thinking Into Strategy Formation

Posted by Gaurav Peshkar on April 5th, 2018

With the wide adoption of design thinking for purposes of problem solving and innovation, it is no longer a foreign concept for organizations. Yet, many companies are still puzzled over how exactly design thinking plays into improving their businesses.

The answer lies in incorporating design thinking in the process of strategy formulation.

Avantika University, ranked as the best design college in India, tailors courses offered by them to enable their students to apply the core principles of design thinking for devising strategies which would enhance the performance of any organization they are part of in the future.

The very basic functioning of an organization can be changed by implementing design thinking to everyday processes. These basics involve things such as- interaction with consumers, prototyping of products and risk assessment.

Strategy formulation that is led by design, while simplifies and humanizes complex systems, is not an easy task in itself. The greatest innovations always cause disruptions in the market, because of which they are at times met with resistance from parties those innovations were intended to benefit. Solving this resistance to innovations which primarily result from disruptions and its effects, can be done by what is known as intervention design. Intervention design is a process that solves the effects of disruption by treating it as a design challenge.

Innovation is part of any successful business strategy. This can be illustrated through the story of transformation of beverage and snack giant PepsiCo. In an interview PepsiCo’s CEO, Indra Nooyi shared how this transformation was made possible, with design thinking powering their best strategy decisions to make their best innovations. According to her, good design is not limited only to packaging as most people believe; it entails understanding and re-imagining the entire consumer experience right from conception of the product to the product being shelved and ends only at the post-product experience. She says, now that business cycles are shortened by a significant amount of time, the demand for constant reinvention is even higher, this is where design thinking is required to be built into strategy development.

Organizations as well as B.Des Colleges in India could benefit from taking a leaf out of such success stories which clearly highlight the importance and need to adapt design thinking into strategy formulation for the running of a great business.

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Gaurav Peshkar

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Gaurav Peshkar
Joined: April 5th, 2018
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