Design thinking concepts have been gaining a lot of importance in recent times due to its ubiquitous application possibilities. It has helped transform products, services and experiences alike in a range of industries including high tech, healthcare, consumer goods and many others. So when we think if design thinking can be applied to create new business models, it seems to be natural fit. Let’s explore this a little more:
The basic tenets of design thinking are captured in the graphic below:
Design Thinking
So for any idea to come to life or any new business model to be conceived, design thinking applies the above process:
• Empathize with your users, customers, employees or more generally stakeholders to know about the current situation. This will give a fair idea on what are the problem areas, strengths, areas for improvement and other finer details.
• With a fair amount of data collected on the current landscape, we will be able to define our objectives and end goal.
• With the goal set in mind, a barge of ideas can be generated through effective brainstorming involving people from multiple disciplines. Multidisciplinary approach will help in arriving at a solution that will be wholesome and will help in achieving multidimensional relevancy.
• Prototyping the best ideas lead to quick feedback, learning and fine tuning. Anything can be prototyped, for instance a product, service or experience. Prototyping is a powerful tool which will help in visualizing the idea quickly and efficiently.
• Finally testing the almost finished product, service or experience will give a glimpse into how it will be received in the real world. Learning from this step is really important because the action points collected here will ultimately decide the fate of the new idea.
With the above points in mind, Design thinking surely can help in creating better business models in any type of industry. Business Model Innovation can learn a whole lot of things from design thinking principles.
What do you think design thinking can do for BMI? Pour in your thoughts!