Marketers can teach ‘Design Thinking’ to Spur Business Growth

I bought the first edition of Tim Brown’s, executive chair of IDEO, timeless 276-page book ‘Change by Design ‘in 2010. The striking red colour hardcover book still sits right on top of my mini-library case, holds a set of inspiring collections, boring the brave yellow words ‘How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations And Inspires Innovation’ on the front cover. I mused through the pages of this book, once again, to synthesize my thoughts as to how ‘Design Thinking’ can positively influence marketing and business in the post-COVID era. And, interestingly I find the concept more appealing and relevant now than ever before.

What is ‘Design Thinking’?

I’ll clarify this with some certainty: Design Thinking is not a bunch of multi-coloured sticky notes stuck on a glass wall; not the lego blocks inside the corporate conference rooms, and definitely not a short-lived workshop to fire-up creative muscles. These are, at best, enablers to introduce the concept. So, what is it then?

Defining ‘design thinking’ is itself ridicule to this formless-yet-fascinating concept. But if I am forced to spell out, then I would simply put it as ‘Thinking Like a Designer’. The concept espouses the idea that professionals outside the rigid boundaries of design can tap their creative potential to solve business and social challenges. Common left-brain attuned specialists like data scientists, full-stack developers, ethical hackers, financial analysts, scientific researchers have the ability to dig up their imagination for remarkable breakthroughs is what Tim Brown declares in this book. He asserts this theory based on his experience in leading IDEO, world’s leading design and innovation company, and to deliver solutions for brands like Apple, Samsung, Mattel, Nokia, Steelcase, and Coca Cola etc.

Why ‘Design Thinking’ is vital in 2020?

LinkedIn Learning 2020 Workplace report highlights ‘Creativity’ as the # 1 soft skill in-demand, followed by persuasion, collaboration, adaptability and emotional intelligence occupying the top 5 list. LinkedIn published this report in Dec 2019 by analyzing the data of 660+ million professionals and 20+ million jobs on their platform. In the last few months, we’ve been witnessing how collaboration and adaptability are well established through virtual meetings, remote working and digital sales. After the COVID crisis, every industry has started to relook at their business model with a fresh ‘creative’ lens — how to innovate and move forward. Design Thinking will help both employee and employer to come up with creative ideas that differentiate their brand, products and services in the forthcoming robotic-human era.

Marketers design Mind Maps

Do marketers think like designers? Could they skillfully observe and discern emotions, colour palates, visual cues, bountiful nature, human psychology and social constructs? The straightforward answer is ‘yes’. Successful marketers are curious humans who possess an uncanny ability to join disparate dots to put out something big in this world. They tend to construct the mystic ‘mind maps’ in their minds and turn that creative cobweb into implementable action points. Every day, marketers juggle animation, press releases, copy blocks, stories, data, dashboards, intuition, ideas, orders, arguments, rejections and more to build and execute effective marketing campaigns. Often times, all these incongruous dots collide in marketers’ mind as a map before getting into shape. As much as it appears spontaneous, the pace of this collision and the process of channelizing these maps into the desired business outcome is a skill that marketers acquired with years of putting creativity into practice. It is a hard-earned skill.

Build Creative Leadership

The concept of creativity is under-appreciated in corporate corridors as it stands in the way of time-tested, guaranteed-output processes and sometimes even seen as a threat to the favourite business term — efficiency. Thankfully, marketing teams enjoy a little (or more if lucky) leeway as they still carry the creative legacy even in this number-driven business world. Marketing leaders deliberately facilitate a safe space for their teams to challenge the status quo, suggest new ideas, experiment and fail with pride. Because they believe in non-linear thinking and come from a school that historically thrived on eureka moments and big ideas.

Despite the success, this non-linear modus operandi is confined to creative functions. It is perhaps time for marketing leaders to pass on the creative baton to cross-functional teams. Expand the marketing mind map, bring outsiders onboard to exchange insights and synergy for a giant leap. R&D to Sales, Human Resources to Legal, Finance to Quality — all these functions have an enormous opportunity to multifold their performance if they are trained to think creatively. It is easier said than done, though. However, marketing leaders should strive to instil ‘design thinking’ across all business functions, with perseverance, to build a strong interdisciplinary creative business leadership which would put organizations into a new orbit of growth.

Get inspired and Visualize differently

There is no single framework to exercise design thinking. It is an exploratory, iterative, non-linear process designed specifically to a goal or a context. A good starting point would be to read the insightful red book ‘Change by Design’. I am pretty sure that at the end of the read, you’ll not have any concrete summary notes but you’ll thoroughly get inspired and will start to look the world just like a designer.

‘Design Thinking’ will be in action.