Design drives Innovation! Read all about it!

“Design as a Driver of User-centered Innovation”
“Using Design to Drive Innovation”
“Design Thinking for Innovation”
“Fostering Innovation Culture In An Unpredictable Economy”

Wow. You’d want to be crazy not to involve designers in your strategy for innovation! Right?! There is quite the clamor to replace, or at least partner, strategy with innovation, business thinking with design thinking, and technology R & D approaches to innovation with consumer-driven approaches. There are some great stories, making great headlines, about innovative new products and services, which are the result of a design-driven approach. Some are truly deliberate from the start; others had a happy ending and could rewrite history to fit the good story! And this is a good story. One that has lessons and insights for every business with faith in the need for innovation and a desire to continually improve their customer’s experience of their business, however they interact with the business. It also requires a will to lead their industry and leapfrog the competition, to regularly provide new customer value, and to inspire their internal teams to succeed.

So you are a business leader and you have seen the headlines and you have a few questions. So what does innovation by design mean? How does design drive innovation? Innovating what? Design thinking, huh? What do I need to do? Who can help me? How do I engage their help? Should I worry about ROI or just let the designers have at it? How can I afford to invest in innovation during a recession? How can designers help me? So many questions, so little time so today I will answer the final question…and only in part. Here are three ways that designers can help. There are more than three, but we’ll work with three today!

Designers can provide a framework within which to drive your innovation agenda. A simple and effective framework is an essential strategy and innovation process, revolving around three essential activities:

1. Gathering the business and consumer insights that will drive ideas
2. Generating as many ideas or business opportunities as possible,
3. Visualizing and prototyping the best ideas.

The icing on the cake is validation upon which to base your measurement strategy and return on design investment (RODI), which in these recessionary times is often an essential component of the decision to invest. Within this framework designers can draw from a wide range of proven tools and techniques to reveal ideas that can drive innovation. Experience audits, differentiation analysis, customer experience immersion, creative brainstorming, rapid prototyping, consumer participation, and strategy visualizations are but a few.

Designers can work with consumers, customers, and users to drive user-centered innovation. User-centered designers bring empathy to their investigations into opportunities for innovating product and service experiences. Insights revealed by first-hand immersion in the consumer experience are often the sparks that lead to great ideas. Building these ideas on a foundation of business and customer intelligence guarantees that your design strategy lines up perfectly in sync with your business strategy. That’s a good recipe for success in good times and tough times.