I get regularly asked by people from outside the design (management) community what can design actually do for them and their business. My spontaneous answer for sure is: A lot! - However the tricky part begins right after when it comes to explaining why and how ;-)
Therefore as part of my design management lecturing activities and inspired by Roger Martin’s thinking I try to give my audiences an answer to the question above by starting with a broader illustration what makes Design (Thinking) different from Business (Thinking). Wait, wait this is not a question of black/white, right/wrong, better/worse, but rather an issue of ‘context’ in which problems occur.
Without going into details here I do start my workshops by presenting my audiences different approaches on how to perceive and understand problems on a general scale. From this level at the two ends of a spectrum you can perceive a problem as something that has one, single solution (a Puzzle) while at the other side problems are paradoxes with multiple possible options. The tendency to see problems as puzzles is more likely to be found in business schools while designers somehow unconsciously accept paradoxes as a natural part of their problem solving process.
While this might sound reasonable on paper audiences are indeed interested to see what ‘overcoming paradoxes’ means in terms of design solutions. Well not surprisingly I do show some great everyday examples (no iPhones, iPods, etc. ;-) like for example Orikaso tableware. Fortunately over at Core77 today I’ve found another great YouTube video that shows what you can do with design as a tool to solve paradoxes. Watching this reminds me on how puzzle driven I am too often ;-) Simplicity rules!
