Thinking different

In my last post I wrote about the strategist’s role of finding the compelling idea within an organization and stripping away the rest, and made an admittedly highfalutin’ comparison to Michelangelo’s statement that the sculptor’s task is to find the statue hidden inside every block of marble.

No one’s saying brand strategy or corporate ID design is competing with Renaissance art, but the truth is that the link between brand strategy and art/design is more than a metaphor. As design thinking gains more momentum in the business world, the mindset of artists, designers, and “creatives” is one that has the potential to change the way organizations operate.

Read the BusinessWeek article by an IDEO partner, “Why Design Matters.” One of the author’s main points is that “design” is not synonymous with “style” or “aesthetics,” but should be thought of as “a process, a way of approaching challenges which designers and nondesigners alike can learn to use to create positive change in the world.” That process involves being proactive rather than reactive, seeking powerful, underlying patterns instead of getting lost in irrelevant details, and not being afraid to take dramatic steps away from the norm, make mistakes in doing so, and learn from them.

Maybe I misread part of the article, but in one section the author seems to be arguing against his own thesis:

For every success like the iPod, there are scores of beautiful market offerings that failed because no one bothered to think about how to manufacture, deliver, sell, support, and retire them in ways that met people’s needs. Since market success depends on the complex interaction of so many variables, it is silly—even naive—to try to pin it all back to just good design.

Sure, all those variables are important, but any or all of them could be approached with so-called design thinking. Drawing a pretty picture of an iPod’s supply chain won’t help all that much, but I’d argue that the concept, structure, and execution of the Apple Stores speaks more to the mindset described herein than that of a more safe, traditional, business-minded approach, which might have seen iPods sitting on the shelves at Circuit City in ugly boxes.