Categories: Articles

Why You Should Be Thinking About Design Thinking

Where are you/where is your business when it comes to design thinking?

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about design thinking. What does it mean to Mirum? What does it means to business? What does it mean to the personal work that I do with my words? What does it mean to our clients? What does it mean to the future of business? A lot of thinking. A lot of “what does it mean”? Currently, I am in the middle of reading the book, The Designful Company by Marty Neumeier. I am loving it. Much like Marty’s other books (The Brand Gap, Zag and others), they are short, written in an easy-to-understand way, and beautifully designed (typography matters!). It’s not the first book that I’ve tackled on the subject of design thinking, and it is inching me closer to seeing how the focus on design thinking matters in – literally – everything that we do. Currently wrapping up is the Aspen Ideas Festival. A conference that takes leaders out of their standard day to focus – in-depth – on the challenges and opportunities that our world is creating. During this past week’s sessions, Roger Martin (the Martin Prosperity Institute out of Rotman University in Toronto) and Tim Brown (CEO of IDEO and bestselling business book author) sat down with moderator Alexis Madrigal to tackle new approaches of design thinking to improve democratic capitalism. What pragmatic steps might we take to make progress on complex challenges? How can design thinking unlock new ways to drive towards massive change? In this fascinating hour-long conversation (which is well-worth your time), Brown says that design thinking allow you to “be intentional about what we create.” This is a very powerful space. I have seen too many business leaders think that design thinking is just new jargon for “creative types.” It is not.

Why does democratic capitalism need design thinking? Why does your business need design thinking? Watch this…

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.