management | Service Innovation & Design

“What’s in for me?”, the manager asks.

“Anything”, we answered. “It depends on how we find it”.

Figure 1: Photo by Gabriel Sollmann / Unsplash

In terms of developing or dealing with the new in increasingly complex interdependencies and the capability to integrate various perspectives in the decision-making process, Design Thinking (DT) implies the potential to become a great asset for any organization. With its universal usability, DT has the power to become a key innovation driver. Katja Tschimmel (2021) concludes “that organizations should concentrate their innovation strategies and practices on creativity and design-based methods and their mindset.”

Changing awareness

However, this requires a mindset accordingly to resonate within the yet established traditional business development concepts, which are, according to Tschimmel (2021), based on rational problem-solving techniques. Not only that thinking besides the beaten path is simply difficult for anyone, Mauro Porcini in Kelley & Kelly (2013) goes even further and defines the very beginning of the journey as “pure denial”, culminating in the proposition that “we’re not creative”.

Relocating mindset

To push this thinking laterally, as De Bono (1994) describes it 30 years ago, a new way of management education is being in the need. Educators within this field, like Martin Parker (2018) question the traditional business education agenda and demand a critical view on how the ethos is being conveyed. Referring to his thoughts, educational research projects like the D-think project of Tschimmel & Santos (2018) can be observed already. It is on the design thinking approaches to relocate positions on how management could act alternatively in order to conduct change.

Figure 2: Photo by Maria Thalassinou on Unsplash

Within this context, project-based teaching & learning is the most effective pedagogical framework for both teachers and students to develop new perceptions and values in a collaborative approach in DT institutes (Tschimmel, Katja. (2011)).

Educating creative confidence

One such session was held online in DT course as part of Service Innovation & Design program at Laurea, where, lecturer Katja Tschimmel took us through the DT process with 7 key principles; a communal methodology involving many stakeholders (Collaboration), leading to build-up a user’s prospective (Human Centeredness/Empathy), which is iteratively investigated (Experimentation) to find out all possible outcomes (Divergence) and shaping to form/images (Visualization/Prototyping) considering wider context and environment (Holistic Approach) in a creative process. We were introduced with a practical exercise to the more elaborative Design Thinking model from Mindshake (as below).

Figure 3: E.6² Design Thinking Model by Mindshake

In search for answer that how design experts assist their students to evolve the capacity of design thinking, researchers discovered multiple levels of creative knowledge, which can be attained by design thinking education, evolving to a potential, termed as “Creative Confidence” (Rauth et al. 2010). Kelley & Kelley (2013) advocate to consider the social ecology in a group setting in reference to foster this creative confidence. Deferring judgement for example, among other guidelines, is vital.

Further thoughts

In summary and in reviewing the masterclass, the management education of future “innovation agents” (Tschimmel 2021) needs more than knowledge about the tools. By adding and exploring components of group psychology, facilitating dynamics or such, can leverage the full potential.

Figure 4: Photo by Stefan C. Asafti on Unsplash

Written by Ahmad Arslan & Manuel Schaumann, SID MBA Students at Laurea University of Applied Sciences

References

De Bono, E. (1994). De Bono’s Thinking Course
Kelley, D. & Kelley, T. (2013). Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All
Parker, M. (2018). Why we should bulldoze the business school. The Guardian, [Online]. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/27/bulldoze-the-business-school [Accessed September 2021]
Rauth, I., Köppen, E., Jobst, B., Meinel, C. (2010). Design Thinking: An Educational Model towards Creative Confidence.
Tschimmel, K. (2021). Creativity, Design and Design Thinking – A Human-Centred ménage à trois for Innovation.
Tschimmel, K., Santos, J. (2018). Design Thinking applied to the Redesign of Business Education. In Proceedings of the XXIX ISPIM Innovation Conference, The Name of the Game. Stockholm.
Tschimmel, K. (2011). Design as a Perception-in-Action Process. 10.1007/978-0-85729-224-7_29.

By Salla Kuuluvainen

I participated in the Social Tools Conference organized by Pixelache Helsinki, an artist collective. I have been taking part in Pixelache events for a quite a while since I feel that they are a great source for finding out about ”weak signals” conserning the future and trends.

Decentralization as Trend

This time the topic of their event was decentralized organizations, which is a topic that has been discussed and debated a lot in more forward thinking management business circles. Teal organizations and Frederic Laloux’ book Reinventing organizations has sparked a lot of interest – even in Finland there is an active Teal organizations community.

There has been lots of more or less successful companies taking the organization more towards decentralization and selforganization, as a successful example could be mentioned Buurtzorg from The Netherlands and as a less successful Zappos, which suffered from an attempt at selfmanagement.

Learnings from Founders of Loomio and the Hum

At Social Tools Confrence I attended a workshop by Nati Lombardo and Richard D. Bartlett, the founders of Loomio and the Hum, which help organizations and groups becoming wanting to become less hierarchical, Loomio by offering software for organizing and the Hum through consultancy and workshops.

At the workshop I thought especially about how design thinking could be applied towards social organizing. The Hum team had created a system of 12 principles that should be applied when designing for decentralization, but the principles were not formulated as tools or a timebound process, instead more as a framework.

The principles included things like decisionmaking, creating trust, planning for communications and discussing power relations in the organization. I could easily see how some of those principles could be combined with a a Design Thinking tools to provide a timebound process for designing a decentralized organization: e.g. for creating psychological safety in a team, some tools that are used in Design Thinking process in the empathy phase could be used, like creating empathy maps of team members. 128763AA-1EF7-47DD-94F9-5A348C2A304B

What Do You Need to Take Into Account?

Generally I learned at the workshop that when designing an organization there are lots of things that need to be taken into account – it’s not only about structures, but also about culture and those things that are often either taken for granted or not spoken about, e.g who is doing care work at the office, like organizing birthday gifts for collagues or seeing to general well-being. An organization is never a given, but an entity that can be purposefully designed, like a service or product, and decentralization is a way of designing organizations in a new, very contemporary way.

I thought the workshop was simply great, one of the best ones that I had attended in while, and can heartily recommend Nat and Richard for anybody who is wants to learn in an engaging way about decentralization in practice.

An exercise in team skills and attributes – what are we like to work with?

Service Innovation & Design

Studying in the SID Master's programme at Laurea

Tag Archive | management

Design Thinking For Management Education