Design Thinking our Way into the Heart of Business

By Steve Sato, Principal, Sato+Partners, LLC

Question: What do the following trends have in common?

• Design thinking

• Experience design

• Customer-centered design

They are all trends at the intersection of design and business. They have more hype than bite. They each require a multi-disciplinary team to work together in new ways to integrate approaches designers use, in order to deliver better results than before.

The first barrier for design to live at the heart of business is a lack of critical mass of designers with skills to “influence without authority.”

The fault lies w/design schools, who focus 99.999% of their energies on aesthetics & the promise of ‘design stardom’ 2 drooling audience.

There is a reason “Design Strategist” is not a major in design school — you have to ‘evolve’ into one….they don’t make them in factories.

Link to Viewpoints article at DMI via @rotkapchen