What is Design Thinking Anyway?

This article dug into what design thinking is today and how it has evolved, especially over the last decade. Even though "design thinking" can have a very broad definition, they narrowed it down to reasoning tools with deductive and inductive logic. The article also touched on methods designers used and also the stereotypes they can be applied to in the business world. In addition the article also discussed how it was first thought that understanding came just from experiences. But now this is expanded and now it is acceptable to think that understanding can also come from wondering.

Roger Martin is the leading proponent of design thinking at business schools. He doesn't mean merely teaching students about the importance of cool-looking stuff. He sees value in the designer's approach to solving problems -- the integrative way of thinking and problem-solving that can be applied to all components of business. Martin's take on the future of management is shooting through innovation circles: "Businesspeople will have to become more 'masters of heuristics' than 'managers of algorithms."' What does that jargon mean? Martin is saying that corporate managers will have to become flexible problem-solvers rather than sophisticated number-crunchers if they're to be creative and successful. "With the forces of competition today, it will make the difference between success and mediocrity," Martin predicts.

This article brought up several important points:
-design thinking has involved into "a discipline that uses the designer's sensibility and methods to match people's needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity"

-students are exposed to formal logic only by inference and then only to the two dominant forms of logic: deductive and inductive reasoning
-deductive: logic of what must be-general to the specific
-inductive: logic of what is operative-specific to the general
-both are reasoning tools

-understanding shows evolving interaction with a context or environment

-James Dewey and company formed American Pragmatist philosophers and thought one could gain understanding only through ones experience... now thought that no new idea could be proved deductively or inductively using past data

-first step of observation is now wondering... called abductive logic
-look for new data points, challenge accepted explanations and infer possible new worlds

-design thinking isnt something business people are comfortable with- don't like to deal with "creative types" thought to be less productive and lazy
-they like having a set right and wrong answer that is not true with design thinking

-innovations now must make business sense

-designers need to strive for balance with abduction, deduction, and induction

-best way to prosper with design thinking, embrace abduction