Design thinking is well known and has long been used to help develop solutions for things that are physical in nature; buildings, automobiles, aircraft, bridges, and apparel, to name a few. In the last decade, design thinking has been reimagined and refactored to help deliver improved solutions beyond just physical products. Design thinking is now being used to support process optimization, redesign teams, define new business opportunities, transform business, and a host of other use cases. Enterprises large and small are being challenged with the rapid changes that are occurring within their organizations, in their industries, and across the ecosystem that supports their businesses. They are being forced to adapt and change if they wish to stay relevant and continue to compete. How do they respond to these never-ending changes that are happening at a pace like we have not seen before. How do they continually reimagine the way their employees work?
For more than five years, IBM has been going through an enterprise-wide transformation, changing the way we work. We are a global enterprise with 400,000 employees and we have used design thinking to ensure we are doing the right work and doing the work right. Unlike in the past, where designing solutions were primarily focused on the product, design thinking is simply the idea that everyone on a team should be focused on their users, first and foremost. With that focus, IBM added strategies, tactics, and activities to create a framework that uniquely scales design thinking across teams of all shapes and sizes, whether they are co-located or widely dispersed; that’s IBM Enterprise Design Thinking.
The minimum expectation for the experiences we want to have is defined by the last best experience we had. As an example, if you went out to your local ice cream parlor and the person who served you created an experience that was amazing, you are likely going to expect that same level of experience from the convenience store personnel if you stopped at such a store on the way home to purchase a few items. This makes it very challenging for enterprises to keep up, because the minimum expectation of their customers may be defined by an experience realized in an industry that is different from the one the enterprise is in. For enterprises to be able to respond to these ever increasing expectations, they need to reimagine the way they work, becoming more agile and flexible; one way to achieve that is through enterprise design thinking.
With the tremendous success realized across IBM through the use of the design thinking framework and combining it with practices like agile and DevOps, we now help clients design for the future while simultaneously evolving their existing businesses. We help clients reinvent, transform, and maximize aspects of their enterprise to realize maximum value. We help them reinvent their enterprise by future proofing their brand, mobilizing their workforce and evolving how they work so they are doing the right work and doing the work right.
Garfield Vaughn
IBM Integration Architect