Improving your Business Potential for Innovation - Limitations and Criticisms of Design Thinking

Design Thinking has been heavily promoted and sold as a process, but it's actually a human-centered approach. As a result, it can be difficult to integrate into highly organized and rational structures. Organizations need to recognize that there is no "plug and play" system for Design Thinking. It requires flexibility, agility, and a willingness to experiment and sometimes fail, which can be uncomfortable for some. When Design Thinking is turned into a linear, gated methodology, it loses its powerful edge of harnessing creativity to solve problems in imaginative and insightful ways. Instead, it becomes just a tool to support incremental innovation. Leaders must demand more from a Design Thinking process to tackle complex problems.