Defining Design Thinking [With a Little Help from Tom Friedman]

Posted by Chris Flanagan on March 30, 2006

Did anyone read Thomas Friedman's op-ed piece last week? In it, he writes, "innovation is often a synthesis of art and science, and the best innovators often combine the two." Isn't that a great way to define design thinking too?

Friedman writes about the pressures and anxieties countries face to nurture innovation through education. Here in the states, schools are in a frenzy over increasing our math and science graduates. In China and India, it looks like they're concerned with other end of the spectrum-creativity.

"Capital will now flow faster than ever to tap the most productive talent wherever it is located, so every country is scrambling to upgrade its human talent base," writes Friedman.

Now, since most of us are not bipolar, in that typically engineers aren't poets and sculptors aren't mathematicians, the companies or organizations that bring a diverse talent base into their gene pool will find success in the 21st century. This ability is the heart of 'design thinking' -- to converge art and science, synthesize great thinking and in the end, create something new and better. [Friedman includes a great snippet about Steve Jobs who took a calligraphy course in his early days. He ended up applying that learning to the design of the Mac.]

Which leads me to a great article in this week's New Scientist about Cameron Sinclar. Sinclar is a new kind of architect, less concerned [if at all] about his intellectual property rights and driven through his organization, Architecture for Humanity, to supply people with long-term, sustainable design and architectural ideas. ['Design Like You Give a Damn' is his motto.]

He's also the recipient of the Technology Entertainment Design prize. Here's why he won the $100,000 prize:

"If there was an earthquake measuring .0 on the Richter scale in Los Angeles, maybe a dozen people would die and a couple of buildings collapse, but a in the hillsides of Peru would kill tens of thousands because construction is technically poor. So I'm going to set up a community that will embrace and support sustainable and innovative housing for all. It will be a sort of global ideas exchange, a web that connects designers, engineers, planners, non-governmental organizations, research facilities, funding agents and, most importantly, local communities round the globe. If we are successful, we could improve the living standards of at least 5 billion people, all of them prepared for potential natural disasters."

Sinclar is a great representation of the missing link between all the jargon about collaboration, or idea exchanges, or social networking to actually make the leap to innovation. That's design-thinking.