Responsive Design Thinking: Transitioning from Human-Centered to a Planetary-Centric Approach to Innovation. Principles and Perspectives

The number of methodologies and tools to deliver sustainability goals is growing at high speed. However, for the past two decades, design thinking has consistently helped businesses reshape the experience of innovating. Today, organizations are integrating and acquiring more designers to work together with developers and engineers and generate more value for the business. The designers’ approach to problem-solving is a non-linear process that optimizes performance and drives innovation. Thinking like a designer is a necessary skill when we confront massive disruption due to the current global pandemic, unexpected climate changes, and exponential technological advances. According to Tim Brown, Executive Chair of IDEO, “thinking like a designer can shift the way organizations deliver products, processes, services and strategy” (Brown, Harvard Business Rev, 86(84):141, 2008). Through immersive consumer research, ideation, prototyping, and iteration, companies like Apple, Airbnb, Netflix or Uber came up with innovative solutions to complex business challenges. As the world is undergoing great changes due to the rapid adoption of new technologies, and the humanitarian and planetary crisis we experience, the role of designers evolves every day. So is the level of awareness of the potential long-term and unintended consequences of what they design. Planetary-centric innovation is a disruptive shift in perspective since we used to design products and services with people at the core. This paper proposes a new framework for innovation to help businesses design better products and services without sacrificing their responsibility to the environment.