Why Design Thinking Can’t Deliver Disruptive Innovations?
Innovation is crucial for businesses to stay ahead in a competitive market, and disruptive innovation can be the key to success. Design thinking has gained popularity as an approach to drive innovation, but can it deliver disruptive innovation? Unfortunately, the answer seems to be no. Despite its widespread use, design thinking has limitations that make it difficult to achieve game-changing breakthroughs.
First, it’s important to acknowledge that Design Thinking can be a valuable tool for solving certain types of problems, particularly user-centric ones requiring a deep understanding of customer needs and pain points. However, it’s not a panacea. Design Thinking may be less effective when it comes to driving broader business strategy and transformational change.
Nokia — In the early 2000s, Nokia was the undisputed leader in the mobile phone industry, with a reputation for producing high-quality, reliable, and user-friendly phones. The company was renowned for its Design Thinking approach, which emphasized understanding user needs, desires, and pain points to create user-centred products. However, Nokia struggled to keep up when the smartphone revolution took off.
While Nokia’s design thinking approach focused on incremental improvements to existing products, Steve Jobs and Apple were busy disrupting the market with their iPods and iPhones. Jobs famously declared that “people don’t know what they want until you show it to them” and relied on his intuition to create products that transformed the market. Apple’s approach starkly contrasted with Nokia’s user-centred approach, which involved extensive user research and testing.
Nokia’s Design Thinking approach gave the company sustainable innovation rather than disruptive innovation. While Jobs was working on the App Store for iPhone, Nokia’s design thinking approach was working on modifying the buttons and finding the right shape for the button on its mobile phone when the touchscreen was going to enter and rule the world.
This raises the question — why couldn’t Nokia’s design thinkers come up with disruptive concepts as Apple did?
Despite being bombarded with the notion that Design Thinking can make disruptive innovations, there is yet to be a single disruptive product created through this approach.
Blackberry, formerly known as Research In Motion (RIM), was once a dominant player in the mobile phone market. The company had a reputation for producing secure and reliable phones that were popular among business professionals. In part, Blackberry’s success was attributed to its strong design thinking team and its focus on user-centred design. However, the company’s fortunes changed dramatically with the rise of the iPhone and Android smartphones. Despite Blackberry’s investment in design thinking, the company failed to keep up with the rapidly changing market.
One of the key reasons behind Blackberry’s downfall was its reluctance to adapt to emerging market trends and opportunities. Blackberry’s design thinking approach was focused on incremental improvements to its existing product line rather than driving broader business strategy and transformational change. The company was slow to adopt touchscreen technology and failed to anticipate the emergence of app stores and the importance of the developer community. This led to a lack of innovation and differentiation in the company’s product line, eventually leading to its demise.
Blackberry’s design thinking approach was overly prescriptive and focused on a narrow set of user needs and pain points.
While Blackberry’s phones were popular among business professionals, the company failed to appeal to the broader consumer market.
Why Design Thinking Can Only Deliver Incremental Innovations
While design thinking can be useful for incremental improvements and small changes, it often falls short when driving significant breakthroughs.
Design thinking is often centred around the user, emphasising empathizing with the user, understanding their needs and preferences, and using this information to drive the design and development process. While this focus on user needs and feedback has many benefits, it can also limit the potential for disruptive innovation.
While incorporating user feedback can help create solutions that better fit their needs, it can also limit the ability to identify breakthrough ideas that users may not even know they want. Design thinking also strongly emphasises iteration and refinement, which can lead to small improvements rather than radical change.
One of the key challenges with this user-centred approach is that it may narrow focus on existing user needs and preferences rather than considering new and innovative solutions that have not yet been considered. By focusing solely on what users want and need, design thinking may not allow for exploring entirely new approaches and solutions that could lead to disruptive innovation. As a result, design thinking may be more likely to lead to incremental innovations rather than game-changing innovations.
Furthermore, design thinking relies heavily on data and experimentation to drive innovation. While these approaches can be effective for identifying small improvements, they may not uncover disruptive opportunities that require more intuition and imagination. For example, Nokia invested heavily in design thinking to create new products and improve user experience. However, the company’s focus on incremental improvements meant it missed out on the opportunity to create the touchscreen smartphone, which would have been a game-changing breakthrough. As a result, Nokia lost significant market value and ultimately struggled to compete in the smartphone market.
Moreover, relying solely on user needs and feedback can also lead to a situation where the design team becomes overly focused on meeting the expectations of existing customers rather than exploring entirely new markets or customer segments. To achieve disruptive innovation, companies may need to take risks and explore new opportunities rather than simply focusing on meeting the needs of existing customers.
Biases — The biases and assumptions of the design team can also limit design thinking. Because design thinking often relies heavily on user research and feedback, the resulting solutions may reflect the biases and assumptions of the design team and fail to consider alternative perspectives.
Time and Resource — Design thinking can be a time-consuming and resource-intensive process. This may not be a feasible approach for companies looking to achieve significant breakthroughs. Companies may need to prioritize more flexible and agile approaches that allow for rapid experimentation and iteration.
Complex and Ambiguous Problems — Design thinking is a problem-solving methodology emphasising empathy, ideation, and iteration. It is a structured approach often used to address well-defined problems with clear user needs and requirements. However, design thinking may not be as effective when it comes to complex, ambiguous challenges.
Complex problems often involve multiple stakeholders, interconnected systems, and a range of variables that are difficult to understand or define fully. In these situations, the user needs and requirements may not be as clear, and the solutions may require a more nuanced understanding of the problem and context. With its focus on empathy and user needs, design thinking may not be sufficient to address these challenges.
In addition, design thinking can sometimes lead to a narrow focus on the user's immediate needs rather than considering the solutions' broader social, environmental, and ethical implications. This can be particularly problematic when dealing with complex challenges with far-reaching consequences.
Furthermore, design thinking relies heavily on prototyping and testing solutions quickly. However, with complex challenges, it may not be possible to quickly prototype and test solutions, as the implications and consequences of the solution may not be fully understood. This can lead to solutions that are not fully developed or may even exacerbate the problem.
The Big Picture — Design thinking typically involves a user-centred approach, focusing on understanding the users’ needs and developing solutions that meet those needs.
However, to deliver disruptive innovation, it is essential to consider the big picture of the business, its industry, and its future needs. This includes looking beyond the immediate user needs and considering how the solution fits into the broader business and market ecosystem. By focusing only on the user needs, design thinking may overlook the broader implications of the solution and its potential impact on the business and the industry.
Additionally, design thinking may not be suitable for addressing systemic or industry-level problems that require collaboration and coordination among multiple stakeholders. In these situations, a broader perspective is needed to develop solutions that consider the interests of all stakeholders involved.
Therefore, it is crucial to balance the user-centred approach of design thinking with a more comprehensive view of the business, industry, and future needs.
As Good As The Team — The effectiveness of design thinking in delivering disruptive innovation is also limited by the skills and expertise of the design team involved in the process. Design thinking requires a multidisciplinary team with expertise in various areas such as design, engineering, marketing, and business strategy. Without the necessary skills and expertise, the design thinking process may fail to identify the key challenges and opportunities for innovation.
Furthermore, the design thinking process often involves a significant amount of ambiguity and uncertainty, which can be challenging for team members who lack experience in innovation and problem-solving. Team members may struggle to generate and evaluate potential solutions effectively without a clear understanding of the design thinking process and the skills to navigate ambiguity.
Moreover, effective design thinking often requires a significant investment of time and resources. This investment may include training team members on the design thinking process, conducting user research, and prototyping and testing potential solutions. Without the necessary resources, it can be challenging to implement design thinking effectively and deliver disruptive innovation.
In conclusion, while design thinking has become a popular approach to innovation, it is not always effective in delivering disruptive innovations. The focus on user needs and feedback, the limited consideration of the big picture, and the need for specific skills and expertise can all limit the effectiveness of design thinking in delivering game-changing innovations.