Abstract
In this chapter, we look at the way real-life DT implementation programmes set up ‘exploration spaces’ in large, mostly hierarchical organisations. The chapter briefly sketches the conceptual backdrop by outlining how social spaces can enable ‘team-based integrative thinking’ by fostering critical deliberation between T-Shaped people. The chapter then goes on to show how DT implementation programmes carved new institutional spaces out of hierarchical and vertically structured institutions. They did this by installing and promoting transdisciplinary and transboundary DT teams. Based on the analysis of available evidence, the chapter shows how these teams reconfigured modes of accountability between employees within large organisations. By providing DT teams with both thematic and managerial autonomy, DT implementation programmes shifted the model of accountability from a predominantly vertical and hierarchical mode to a more horizontal and egalitarian mode. However, the chapter also reviews evidence of strategies employed by project managers to wrest back control and re-establish authority over autonomous DT teams. The chapter concludes by discussing the lessons to be learned from these implementation experiences.
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Notes
- 1.
We can define the term ‘design thinking initiative’ as a formal programme of organisational change and reform. Programmes of this sort explicitly budget and deploy financial, human and capital resources to implement the methods and mindsets of design thinking in parts or the whole of the organisation. ‘Design thinking initiatives’ are formally endorsed and sanctioned by the management of the organisation in question. This definition, then, excludes informal endeavours by individual employees or managers to introduce design thinking to organisations.
- 2.
Recall from Chap. 1 that T-Shaped people bring to the team specialist expertise that sets them apart from other team members (the stem of the T) as well as interests and preferences that connects them to other team members (the bar of the T).
- 3.
Köppen, Rhinow and Dribbisch anonymised their data and result; the names of the organisations and of individual respondents have not been published.
- 4.
Designating the mini-publics as ‘protective spheres’ is, however, somewhat misleading. Deliberative spaces may offer ‘shelter’ from hierarchical oversight. Yet, they cannot protect individuals from other, more egalitarian forms of social accountability and the critical scrutiny that goes along with it.
- 5.
When Design Thinking teams deal with wicked problems, we can think of these problems as ‘wicked design challenges’.
- 6.
Middle-management here refers to former project managers.
- 7.
In a very real sense, the role for the team in this case harkens back to traditional (mis)conceptions of design—as merely decorative but not generative (Buchanan 1992).
- 8.
Or, as Habermas (1987) puts it, “non-generalisable interests”.
- 9.
Such as those used at the Stanford d.school.
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Ney, S., Meinel, C. (2019). Creating Social Spaces for Exploration. In: Putting Design Thinking to Work. Understanding Innovation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19609-7_4
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