Design thinking, as it was conceived 15 years ago, has outlived its usefulness. Enter systems thinking.
Design thinking is one of the most important ideas of the 21st century. The methodology’s impact on product design, how organizations go about solving problems, and how we live our everyday lives has been profound. And its influence has expanded far beyond business and design circles. Universities, nonprofits, even science labs run design sprints based on design-thinking principles. The most popular course at Stanford is one on how to approach your life as a design challenge. The concept is even taught at some elementary schools.
But it’s been 15 years—a generation—since David Kelley had his epiphany to stop calling Ideo’s approach “design” and start branding it as “design thinking.” And much has changed in that time.
This is the second of two excerpts from The Way to Design, a guide to becoming a designer founder and to building design-centric businesses. It was adapted and reprinted with the author’s permission. Read the first one, on the case against empathy, here.