HKSTP Design Thinking Seminar on Management

The Design Thinking Seminar Series (4) named “How Design Thinking helps your Management?” was organized by Hong Kong Science & Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) on 7th Dec 2015. Design thinking is a human-centric problem solving approach which helps people to think out-of-the-box. It is a famous management tools for facilitating innovation. I attended only the serie -3 and this last workshop. The last workshop would summarize the whole series of design thinking and I would like to record for sharing below.

The guest speaker was Mr. Mac Leung (Design Thinking Cert. Facilitator) and he pointed out that the key concept of Design Thinking was “Design for Delight!” There were three characteristics of Design Thinking included Customer Focus (以客戶/受眾為中心), Crowdsourcing (凝聚眾人智慧) and Solving problem in new direction (解決問題新方向). Mr. Leung mentioned that Design Thinking could be used to balance “Desirability”, “Feasibility” and “Viability”.

Then Mr. Leung reviewed the previous workshops. The first workshop related to business development. It considered customer not only user, but also non-user.

The second workshop was related to the product. How do you design a value-added product such as in Beijing MTR?

The third workshop discussed the customer service from Problem to Produce. (See Reference)

The forth workshop was new type of management. Management is like a mess of cables.

After that Mr. Mac Leung explained how to apply Design Thinking through “Know”, “Feel” and “Do”. He listed several business challenges and its design thinking solutions. Firstly, storytelling (e.g. successful cases) was much stronger than figures about growth target. Secondly, Predictablility was employed old data but Strategic Foresight which like Ideal Final Result to be realized and worked back what should be done. He also quoted Peter Drucker that “the way to predict the future is to create”. Sensing the unknown used to manage your ignorance. Value redefinition employed to define your value proposition. Extreme Competition happened when your business appeared and successful. Standardization or Humanization was depended on customer and product. He also stated using Business Model Generation for Strategy and Organization. It could be redefine your business management.

 

Creative Culture vs Prototyping, Mr. Leung used two size paper as example to tell us creativities needed larger space. Then he introduced Nine Principles of Design Thinking below:
- Principle 1: Action-oriented
- Principle 2: Comfortable with CHANGE
- Principle 3: Focus end user’s NEEDS
- Principle 4: Integrates FORESIGNT
- Principle 5: Iterative Process
- Principle 6: Promotes EMPATHY
- Principle 7: Reduces RISKS
- Principle 8: Create MEANING
- Principle 9: Up lift enterprise CREATIVITY
- Principle 9+1: New COMPETITIVE LOGIC

After tea break, Mr. Mac Leung practiced Design Thinking with us using drawing. It demonstrated the creativity power of team work (from Linear thinking to Relation thinking). Design Thinking is not an experiment; it empowers and encourages us to experiment.

The last topic Mr. Lee discussed how to apply Design Thinking through “Understand”, “Observation”, “Point of View”, “Ideate”, “Prototype” and “Test & Feedback”.

At the end, Mr. Lee quoted Idris Mootee (CEO, Idea Couture) statement as conclusion that “Design Thinking is The Search For a magical balance between Business & Art, Structure & Chaos, Intuition & Logic, Concept & Execution, Playfulness & Formality, Control & Empowerment.”

Reference:
HKSTP - http://www.hkstp.org
20151110: HKSTP Design Thinking Seminar on Customer Services - http://qualityalchemist.blogspot.hk/2015/11/hkstp-design-thinking-seminar-on.html