Design thinking, a useful tool for technology entrepreneurship

During the first period of this semester, I had a course of Design thinking given by Julien Mauroy, at Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship. I would like to share this experience with you because I think it can be really interesting for technology entrepreneurship.

Indeed, this method allows to create a product/service by ensuring that it fulfills needs of the customer and are perfectly adapted to them.

Design thinking is a process to innovate with a close relation with the customer. This process is composed of five steps: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. The power of Design thinking is in the iteration of this process.

I will first explain you each phase of the process and then show why it’s interesting for technology entrepreneurship.

To apply Design thinking you have to work in interdisciplinary team in order to break the walls of the company’s services.

The five steps of the process:

• EMPATHIZE: You have to observe and interview future customers in order to understand and even discover their needs. I said discover because sometimes customers themselves even don’t know what they need. You have to find their needs without the traditional survey, in order “to put people first” (Brown, 2009).

• DEFINE: Then you have to gather all information you have learnt to define clearly the problem. To share information, it’s useful to use storytelling because it helps to feel the customers’ feelings.

• IDEATE: After defining the problem, you have to find lots of idea which could solve this problem. Brainstorming is the key tool to do this. During brainstorming you put all ideas of all members of the team on post-in and you display them on a wall. It allows to build on the idea of others. To be successful, brainstorming needs rules as Tim Brown describes in his book: “the rules are literally written on the walls: Defer judgment. Encourage wild ideas. Stay focused on the topic. The most important of them, I would argue, is “Build on the ideas of others””. Brainstorming will be more efficient than just creating alone because it will provide a wider variety of ideas. At the end of the brainstorming you have then to select one idea.

• PROTOTYPE: You have to prototype your idea. However, the prototype doesn’t have to be the perfect representation of what the product will be at the end. The goal of the prototype is to allow customers to experience your idea in order to provide relevant feedback.

• TEST: You have to test your prototype with real customers and not with employees of the companies. This point is really important to have relevant feedback. During this phase you have to be opened to hear criticisms because, even if it’s difficult, this will help you to improve your product. As Gordon Murray said “You have the idea, but you have to do it, and that’s what cuts the bullshit out.”.

After the test, you have to do the process again in order to improve your product using the feedback of your customers.

Now you know what Design thinking is, I will try to show you that it can be a useful tool for technology entrepreneurship.

First, sometimes with technology, we have a really good invention but it can be difficult to find a good way to exploit it in a product or a service. It is even more difficult to use this invention to create something that customers really needs. Design thinking can help to solve this problem by allowing to co-create with customers. At the end, you have a product and you are sure that it fulfills the customers’ needs and that it’s not just something you think is good for them.

Moreover, Design thinking allows you to prototype earlier your idea and not just at the end of the project when all details are defined. It avoids to spend too much time and money on an idea which are not adapted to your customers.

Design thinking allows to decrease the risk for your company because you are sure that you have a market for your product and this market agrees your choice of conception.

I hope this post will help you, however, it is just a summary of the method, therefore, if you want to learn more about Design thinking, I advise you to read these two books which are really interesting and show relevant examples:

• BROWN Tim. Change by design. Harper Collins, 2009.

• CROSS Nigel. Design thinking, Understanding how designers think and work. Berg, 2011.

You should also watch this TED video: ROY Elise (2015, September). When we design for disability, we all benefit.

Available: https://www.ted.com/talks/elise_roy_when_we_design_for_disability_we_all_benefit?language=en