Page 335 - The Design Thinking Playbook

#2.7 Strategic foresight # Design thinking methods

RÉSUMÉS Tamara is the CEO and founder of the Innovation Leadership Board. Thomas works as a Senior Innovation Manager at SIX Payment
She develops tools and processes that promote radical innovation. Services and teaches innovation methods. He studied philosophy
She was a fellow at the Bay Area Science & Innovation Consortium and cultural anthropology and has a Master of Advanced Studies in
and previously worked as a consultant at Deloitte Consulting. She Innovation Engineering. Today, his focus is on creating meaningful
specializes in customer experience, marketing strategy, and inno- and strong added value for customers. He develops and programs
vation. She has a PhD and is often invited to lectures to present her digital solutions in the areas of medicine, finance, industrial, and
work and research. HR. Recently, he won an international hackathon.

WHY ARE YOU A I’ve always been keenly interested in the question of how ideas are I have a deep understanding of end users. Since the 1990s, my way
DESIGN THINKING developed in order to fulfill human needs. I started my career at the of working has been characterized by creative thinking and the fast
EXPERT? Center for Design Research at Stanford University. I was part of a development of prototypes. I didn’t imagine that there would be
global research community there. Over the last two years, I have a name for it later. Several times, I led entire teams toward agile
enlarged the SUGAR network and turned it into a global innovation working, customer focus, and design thinking. I teach blue ocean
network for academic institutions that cooperate with companies in strategy, lead-user method, and design thinking at various technical
order to solve real-world problems. colleges.

YOUR MOST IMPORTANT Interesting solutions begin with interesting problems. Keep refor- Take a lot of time for dealing with end users. The really intriguing
DESIGN THINKING TIP? mulating the problem. The foresight tools we talked about help and innovation-relevant insights are often only gained once trust
understanding the problem better, capturing the problem space, has been built after quite some time and the other person is more
finding unexpected solutions, and supporting the thinking on the open. Don’t reduce a personal, in-depth exchange to a 10-minute
team. interview. Don’t turn a conversation into an interrogation. And
never ever replace personal contact with a phone call.

334