Colliding Influences
This article illustrates findings from a case study on the impact of design thinking within a large organization. As teams apply design thinking as a framework for product discovery and development, there is an increased focus on the user as a source of i
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Abstract This article illustrates findings from a case study on the impact of design thinking within a large organization. As teams apply design thinking as a framework for product discovery and development, there is an increased focus on the user as a source of inspiration as well as self-organizing teamwork. This phenomenon contrast to the result of other frameworks implemented in the organization (e.g., Waterfall and Scrum). These new influential factors are to some extent seemingly in collision with other existing influential factors, such as established routines in project management and a corporate strategy. Contrary objectives lead to paradoxical situations within teams and between teams and their managers. It appears that such situations can only be partially resolved by stakeholders. This case study empirically clarifies the impression from previous research that the integration of design thinking appears to be a managerial challenge yet to be mastered.
1 Introduction The data in this article stem from a 6-month case study on the impact of design thinking in multiple product and service development projects within a large software company. It is one of the larger examples of an organization that embedded design thinking as a management model to (re)organize its development efforts. Design thinking as a term (Rowe 1987) has been around for almost three decades, while its origins date back even further to discourses in cybernetics (Simon 1999) and social planning (Rittel and Webber 1973). However, the notion of design thinking as a management model has only been discussed for just over a decade (Buchanan 2004; Lindberg et al. 2010; Carlgren et al. 2011). The management discourse is particularly linked with the idea of design thinking as a model for
H. Rhinow (*) • C. Meinel Hasso Plattner Institute for Software Systems Engineering, Campus Griebnitzsee, 14482 Potsdam, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 H. Plattner et al. (eds.), Design Thinking Research, Understanding Innovation, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40382-3_3
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enabling innovation. In its detailed form, the discourse varies from researchers who consider design thinking a resource (e.g. Brown and Watt 2010) to researchers who consider state design thinking a condition that can be nurtured through resources (e.g. Martin 2009; Bucolo and Matthews 2010)—with nuances in between. Nonetheless a few aspects are repeatedly mentioned within the discourse that seem to be ingredients of a design thinking experience, for example the relevance of a userfocus (Brown 2008), prototyping (Brown and Watt 2010) and self-organizing teamwork (Bucolo and Matthews 2010) around complex issues. In recent years, the notion of design thinking as a management model has gained widespread attention in business contexts, in particular in organizations that reorganize their product and service development efforts (Clark and Smith 2008). There is empirical evidence that profit and non-profit organizati
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