How Design Thinking Adds Value to Strategy

Design thinking has become a buzzword for disruptive user-centred innovation. Design thinking is an abductive and iterative approach for transforming observations and related insights into practical, validated solutions. Abductive reasoning starts with a set of abstractions, that is, an incomplete set of observations, and seeks for the simplest and most likely solution. The initial solution is then improved upon through inference until it becomes a robust solution. Design thinking for strategy addresses shortcomings of traditional strategy development methods in a dynamic and fast-paced business environment. It applies methodologies used by designers, such as architects, artists, or creative directors, to solve problems that are incomplete by nature and cannot be resolved by traditional linear problem-solving approaches. Design thinking proceeds in four steps: observing, learning, designing, and validating, by iterating through divergent and convergent thinking. This leads to unique value towards developing strategies that work by taking a customer-centric viewpoint.