Design Thinking and Entrepreneurship
Design Thinking Practice and Industry Thought Leadership for Entrepreneurs
Here’s why entrepreneurs need design thinking in this economic climate.
In this post, I define design thinking, share my experience of why entrepreneurs need to use design thinking, add it to their leadership toolbox, and briefly introduce the Thinkers360 network to amplify the skills of entrepreneurs.
Definition of the design thinking process and practice
Design thinking is an innovative method based on agile approaches. The method focuses on the consumers of the solutions. Therefore, the principles revolve around the users of the systems, products, and services.
This method is widely used in many industries and sectors, such as IT (Information Technology), engineering, science, and manufacturing. Design thinking practice can be applied to every discipline.
The practice of design thinking helps practitioners explore uncertain situations in the earlier phase of the solution lifecycle and understand implications and impact by reviewing assumptions, risks, issues, and dependencies.
The design thinking method uses creative problem-solving techniques collaboratively. These collaborative efforts are manifested through design thinking workshops.
The method has several phases. They are called questioning, brainstorming, prototyping, iterative experiments, sketching, and continuous tests.
These phases cover several constructs: empathy with users, defining consumers, ideation, prototyping, and validation.
Why design thinking matters
Design thinking allows designers and solution architects to create solutions both intuitively and logically. In addition, from a solution point of view, design thinking enables team members to recognize new patterns during the data-gathering process.
As the practice is based on agile methods, design thinking practitioners progress iteratively with minimal upfront solution cost. This value proposition matters to business organizations trying to cut costs and make products and services profitable.
Design thinking helps us think outside the box. Practitioners following design thinking principles can be innovative and inventive. It is also a collaborative approach enabling diversity, equality, and inclusiveness in business organizations.
Why entrepreneurs need design thinking in their toolbox
There are several reasons entrepreneurs add design thinking to their power toolbox.
The most important reason is to develop solutions meeting requirements. Entrepreneurs creating new products need to understand the requirements and use cases of their solutions.
The best source for capturing requirements and use cases are meeting the actual users of the solutions. As an alternative, creating personas representing user types can be applied.
The next compelling reason to use design thinking is its agility. Entrepreneurs need to think and act quickly. The agile approach has become the new norm in business ventures, especially in startups. Speed to market is critical for startups to remain competitive.
There is a common perception that agile methods cut things short and reduce the quality of products and services. There is partial truth in this perception. If agile is used randomly without proper thought, it can be detrimental to a quality outcome.
However, using agile with design thinking can address quality problems because potential concerns and risks are discussed and addressed in the inception phase of the solution.
Using design thinking techniques, entrepreneurs can create mental models of how users interact with their solutions in each iteration of the agile program sprints. They work on priorities by adding tasks to backlogs and clearing them based on importance and urgency.
Design Thinking Collaboration
Design thinking is a globally recognized and practiced solution approach. Technology leaders and entrepreneurs embrace design thinking for various compelling reasons that I introduce in this article.
Design thinking is considered the most powerful tool for startup entrepreneurs.
I am inspired to write this post after learning that my design thinking contributions are recognized by the Thinkers360 network, as announced on LinkedIn today.
Annually, the Thinkers360 network organization assesses contributors and informs the public about the top 50 leaders and influencers in the field.
As a Certified Enterprise Design Thinking Practitioner since 2017, I have written books and scholarly papers and penned several articles about design thinking on multiple platforms.
The recent one on this platform is titled: Power of Design Thinking for Writers: Design Thinking is one of the most powerful tools for my professional and personal goals. I apply it to my writing practice too.
About Thinkers360 network
According to organization’s website:
“Thinkers360 is the world’s first, largest and premier marketplace for thought leaders, including academics, advisors, analysts, authors, consultants, entrepreneurs, executives, influencers and speakers to share opportunities, promote and advance their expertise. Organizations and agencies use our tools to find and work with the world’s top thought leaders as well as showcasing their own executives, experts and insights.”
The organization covers the following business, technology, and sustainability topics in their skills assessments and thought leadership rankings:
“5G, Agile, AI, Analytics, AR/VR, Autonomous Vehicles, Big Data, Blockchain, Business Continuity, Business Strategy, Change Management, Climate Change, Cloud, COVID-19, CRM, Corporate Social Responsibility, Cryptocurrency, Culture, Customer Experience, Customer Loyalty, Cybersecurity, Data Center, Design Thinking, Digital Disruption, Digital Transformation, Digital Twins, Diversity & Inclusion, EdTech, Emerging Technology, Entrepreneurship, ERP, FinTech, GovTech, Health & Safety, Health & Wellness, HealthTech, HR, Innovation, InsurTech, IoT, Leadership, Lean Startup, Legal & IP, Management, Marketing, Mental Health, Mergers & Acquisitions, Mobility, Open Innovation, Predictive Analytics, Privacy, Procurement, PropTech, Public Relations, Quantum Computing, Renewable Energy, Retail, Risk Management, RPA, Sales, Smart Cities, Social, Startups, Supply Chain and Sustainability”
You can learn more about Thinkers360 from this YouTube video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLmC_fDfdA&t=10s
My journey in the Thinkers360 network
I joined this organization a few years ago as recommended by industry influencers whom I follow. My business and leadership mentors believed that this organization could create extended visibility for my work, patents, publications, and overall leadership profile in the industry. It was true.
Since joining the organization, my profile usually hits the top 100 list in technology based on my contributions to technical communities. In addition, my professional network substantially increased, and I met many collaborators globally.
Thinkers360 creates a profile for members based on their publications on the web. In addition, members can include links to their published materials in various disciplines and formats.
For example, my thought leadership profile has included a portfolio of academic papers, article and book writing, industry influence, speaking engagements, and entrepreneurship based on my patents.
Industry recognition of Thinkers360 network
As an independent global organization, Thinkers360 is supported by market leaders such as Accenture, IBM, EY, Oracle, and many more corporate organizations.
Thinkers 360 membership
Joining Thinkers360 is free. Free membership allows a certain amount of engagement. However, it enables paid members to have extra benefits such as blogging, adding more publication links, and extensive networking with industry leaders.
Conclusions
Design thinking is a globally used solution method by technology leaders in large business organizations and startup entrepreneurs. Practitioners can gather feedback early and redesign solutions. It reflects the entrepreneurial principle of failing fast, cheap, and early.
Design thinking is based on an agile approach, the design thinking practitioners can help the solution architects and designers promptly capture customer requirements and solution use cases.
The outcomes can be produced fast if requirements and use cases are understood and solutions are developed based on approved requirements. In addition, these solutions meet the quality goals of business ventures and the desires of consumers.
Even though practitioners run the design thinking workshops, from experience, it can be ideal for each solution designer and architect to learn the method and its techniques and run the workshops themselves. Many organizations invest in training their technical solution staff. I was one of them and reaped many benefits in my solution design and enterprise architecture career.
Design thinking practice has been a god-sent to me when architecting complex digital transformation solutions in this economic climate. It helped me excel in my profession.
I used design thinking in my IoT (Internet of Things), digital twins, Cloud Computing, Edge Computing, cybersecurity, ethical hacking, enterprise architecture, business architecture, robotics, big data, and artificial intelligence solution design, development, and deployment projects.
In short, design thinking is essential for excellent technical leaders and even more important for being a distinguished leader. Joining professional networks like Thinkers360 can enhance our capabilities with collaboration, including industry thought leaders and market influencers.
I believe anyone can be a designer as long as they learn and practice design thinking. I explained why and how anyone could be a designer in this article by providing a simplified and methodical point of view for the design approach. I also guided on how to think like a designer by introducing simple and essential steps to design anything for non-designers.
Design Thinking can also be valuable for writers, authors, bloggers, and other content developers. I explained the method in a recent article under five steps.
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As part of my creative non-fiction writing goals, I’d like to share a few stories that might warm our hearts with a bit of humor into weighty topics.
Sample Humorous Stories
Finally, After Burning Her House, Georgia Found Enlightenment
Hilarious Tips to Prevent Brain Atrophy and Keep the Gray Matter Giggling
8 Psychological Points I Had to Unlearn and Relearn the Opposite
Based on my writing experience and observations, I documented findings and strategies that might help you amplify your voice, engage your audience, and achieve your desired outcomes in your writing journey.
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