Hunting, Gathering and Taking It Home: Bringing New Perspectives and Perceptions into Organisations

Abstract

Design Thinking helps people innovate by mobilising a plurality of approaches, skills and perspectives. This is why exploration spaces in large organisations (discussed in Chap. 4) need large reservoirs of variegated (and even contending) ideas. In this chapter, we look at how Design Thinking generates and manages these pools of contending ideas, frames and perspectives. In particular, this chapter reviews two ways of creating a plurality of views for exploration. First, the chapter examines the way multi-disciplinary teams contribute to these reservoirs of ideas. Relying on the available evidence, the chapter depicts how DT implementation programmes encouraged and mobilised a plurality of views and perspectives within DT teams. Second, the chapter also shows how methods of qualitative social science and ethnography enable design teams to ‘hunt and gather’ insights from users and stakeholders (Plattner et al. Design thinking research: Measuring performance in context. Springer Science & Business Media, 2012). Here, again based on available empirical evidence, the chapter looks at the effects the introduction of these methods have had on large organisations in the private and public sectors. Like Chap. 4, this chapter draws lessons from the analysis of the implementation cases.