Managing Design and Sustainability Innovation - Essay Example

Managing design and sustainability innovation go hand in hand in ensuring that a business survives the current intense world market environment. It is under these concepts that Design Thinking is coined whereby rigidity is eliminated and more innovative approaches that are holistic and agile are adopted. In the article “The Four Phases of Design Thinking”, it is clear that this concept seems hard to incorporate although its outcome is resoundingly beneficial towards a business’ competitive force.

The article has put the concept of Design Thinking in a relatively simple outlook. It is true that Design Thinking is more than the article has highlighted but it has tried to capture the fundamentals that entail the concept: Question, Care, Connect and Commit (Berger 2010). I believe that Warren Berger captured these sentiments from real interaction with designers so as to develop a comprehensive and simple approach to Design Thinking. The study spans 10 years with at least 100 designers reviewed.

It is however true that Design Thinking is more than meets the eye in the actual world of business. When taking the four fundamentals as stated by Berger, it is easy for it to be inapplicable in a real business scenario. The basic reason for this is that the area looked into was the design industry which varies hugely with other industries e.g. entertainment or manufacturing. The basic idea here is customization of Design Thinking to fit the respective context of its application. One example is the critical aspect of trying to uncover end users’ opinions.

In some industries which have less contact with end users it would be hard to track significant information unlike in others for example, the service industry.Design in some way focuses on product creation. This is backed by the fact that in Design Thinking the aim is to ensure that what is to get to the end users is of the expected, if not a higher than expected, value. In this endeavor it is overly clear to deduce that one major force behind Design Thinking is product creation. Apple and P&G have been offered as examples of this scenario meaning that it is true in many recent successful companies.

These companies have concentrated in designing products that surpass market expectations thereby creating a level of curiosity that has inevitably made competitors think in the same direction. To these companies huge profits have been in the offing.Tracking designers’ work to get an overview of what Design Thinking is all about is a good approach. This is because it offers a near true encounter of what is the basic nature of design. After this approach what is left is to customize a certain business in line with these basics so as to ensure competitive advantage within its industry.

Mastery of this automatically leads to sustainable innovation.References Berger, W 2010, The Four Phases of Design Thinking, viewed 31 October 2010, .Brown, T 2006, Innovation through Design Thinking, viewed 31 October 2010, .