As an Industrial Designer, a Technologist, a Problem Maker and a Sales and Marketing Guru, I am a big follower of the term “Design Thinking.”
A current interpretation is as follows:
Design Thinking is about learning and developing highly transferable skills such as teamworking, problem-solving and communication- that helps people succeed , not just in creative thinking, but life in general.
Design Thinking plays a powerful role in the origination of new products, particularly in bringing focus and relevance to innovative concepts. How do designers think? How does creativity and innovation work? How can businesses create a climate for creative thinking and for fostering innovative ideas?
We all give credit to Tim Brown of IDEO, which is one of the most innovative industrail design firms today, and who coined the term “Design Thinking” and made it popular.
And of course, George Kembel, Executive Director, Stanford d.school, brings some reality to it all in the recent NY Times article
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/business/05unbox.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=stanford&st=cse&oref=slogin#
“It would be overreaching to say that design thinking solves everything. That’s putting it too high on a pedestal. Business thinking plus design thinking ends up being far more powerful.”
By the way, in order to expedite matters, I prefer to call it “Design Doing.”
