DESIGNED
TO SUCCEED
Established
companies are using empathy, rapid prototyping and
visualisation to
reimagine brands, come closer to clients and see sales grow
Design Thinking is a methodology used by designers to solve complex
problems, and find desirable solutions
for clients.
Design Thinking draws upon logic, imagination, intuition, and systemic
reasoning, to explore possibilities of
what could be, and to create desired outcomes that benefit the
end user (the customer).
Pepsico chief executive Indra Nooyi
has given employees two-three years
to adapt to a new design thinking
culture, telling managers that if they don't
change, she would be happy to attend
their retirement parties.
Corporate leaders today are using design
thinking to connect with customers
at an emotional level, and in the
process boost growth. Vishal Sikka of Infosys,
Nisa Godrej of Godrej Industries,
Kishore Biyani of Future Group and Harsh
Mariwala of Marico are betting on the
same subject.
With the spurt in growth of startups
and entrepreneurship, chief executives of
established companies are increasingly
making it a part of their core strategy
and seeing healthy results in
innovation growth and profitability .
Last Thursday , Infosys launched
`Akido' (offering next generation services),
where “do“ refers to the service
offering on design thinking. Nisa Godrej,
executive director of Godrej Consumer
Products, calls her organisational
thinking
`Antevasin', one foot rooted in where
we come from and the other foot constantly
moving. “We have been around for over
118 years and our customers trust us. Yet, we are often considered our
parents brand.Design thinking helps us be an Antevasin,“ she said.
The home grown FMCG company has used
tools of empathy , rapid prototyping
and visualisation to reimagine brands
such as Cinthol and Good Knight, and
create new ones that have led to a big
jump in sales.
Experts said the pace of reinventing
organisations and brands has quickened
from about eight years to two-three.
Design thinking is generally understood to
involve a creative and systematic
approach to problem-solving by placing the
user at the centre of the experience.
“The pace of change in most industries
is increasing rapidly and the level of
competition is at a point where there are
very few differences between products
especially from a functional
standpoint,“ said Dheeraj Batra, managing director
of DLabs at the Indian School of Business.
To elucidate, he said, “Is an Apple
iPhone really that different from a Samsung
Galaxy? They both have similar
specifications and similar apps and even they
cost more or less the same. Going back
to Samsung vs Apple, the reason
people buy Apple products is because
they value the overall experience that
has been designed for them; they don't
buy the iPhone because it has a dual-core
A5 processor.“
Vishal Sikka had said recently that
for Infosys to stay relevant, employees need
to learn to think on their feet, be
creative and come up with questions and
solutions that are outside the
abilities of an algorithm.
The company is trying to improve the
effectiveness of its sales team by
incorporating elements of design
thinking, among other measures, while
making pitches to prospective clients
in an effort to win more orders that
exceed $100 million in annual revenue.
Over the last nine months, `Do' has
been offering a design services for clients to
help them understand their path. The
company has done 40 design service
workshops. “In my experience, design
thinking is a great approach to help us
find problems, to help us see what is
not there, to help us see something that
is not visible not directly in front
of us...we are all trained ...to solve problems
specified to us ...but we are rarely
trained to identify what is not there, and
design thinking is a great mechanism,
a great technique to systematically
uncover some highly relevant problems
that are feasible to solve,“ said Sikka.
“We at Infosys have made an unprecedented
embrace of design thinking ...we
at Infosys have possibly made the
greatest embrace of design thinking ever ...we
have more than 43,000 Infosions who
have been trained on design thinking ...but
`do' is about bringing design thinking
to our clients to help them find the
problems that are of incredible
importance to them,“ said Sikka.
The CEO of a consumer goods company
said on conditions of anonymity:
“Utility and fashion is happening in
every sector, and as consumers evolve,
they are buying heavily into design.
So earlier design was all about consumer
durables, now it is about lipsticks, a
toothpaste opener, or cap or a food packet.“
In a recent HBR interview, Indra Nooyi
said when she visits markets every
week, the shelves just seem more and
more cluttered. “So I thought we had to
rethink our innovation process and
design experiences for our consumers--from
conception to what's on the shelf. Now
our teams are pushing design through
the entire system, from product
creation, to packaging and labelling, to how a
product looks on the shelf, to how
consumers interact with it.“ Pepsico is also
reported to be using design thinking
for new products for women.
In 2012, Nooyi brought in Mauro
Porcini as Pepsi's first-ever chief design officer.
Now, Nooyi says, “design“ has a voice
in nearly every important decision that
the company makes.
Infosys' Sikka handpicked Jason Wolf
from SAP to help find creative and
next-generation solutions to business
problems faced by some of its big
customers, such as Bank of America and
General Electric.
Similarly, Godrej Consumer Products
has a head of design, Darshan
Gandhi, and has invested a lot in both
design and R&D.
“For all our projects, we create
cross-functional whole-brained' teams. We
are constantly looking for people from
different backgrounds and encouraging
them to ignore hierarchy . Our design
thinking approach is not restricted to our
products alone. For example, we are
very keen on recruiting passionate people,
as they are particuarly good at design
thinking,“ said Godrej.
Mariwala, chairman of Marico, said
design thinking is part of innovation. “So it
cannot be just a separate design team
put in place. The culture in an organisation
has to be innovative to think outside
the box and then design capabilities come in.
I think the larger platform has to be
innovation, of which design thinking will be
a part“ he said.
Biyani, CEO of Future Group, said
design thinking helps use both
sides of the brain and finds solutions
to every challenge. “It has helped us create
so many new formats and build new
brands“ he said.
Design thinking is being applied
successfully at two levels into the organisational
strategies as an approach to bringing
a culture shift which eventually would
impact everyday challenges, and as a
radical or incremental change-driving
innovation platform enabler. While
doing so, it brings in an approach shift from
the conventional management practices
and thereby pushes for newer targets to
be looked upon.
“Yes design thinking culture, and the
work life emitting out of that cultural aura,
is an extremely comprehensive platform
for innovation,“ said Alessandro
Giuliani, managing director, MISB Bocconi
India.
“In a fast changing India, with new
segments of consumers and needs popping
out every week, the adaptability and
responsiveness of a design thinking
approach al lows practitioners to gain
big advantage as compared with
traditional management practices.
|
Kala Vijayraghavan & Rica
Bhattacharyya
|
ET29AUG15
|
Saturday, August 29, 2015
DESIGN THINKING SPECIAL......................... DESIGNED TO SUCCEED
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