Claudia Kotchka

Claudia Kotchka is Vice President of Design Innovation Strategy at Procter & Gamble and gave a great presentation this morning.  She attempted to describe what "design thinking" is all about, admitting that she had never tried, but thought it to be one of the most powerful ways to attack innovation.  Perhaps most interestingly, she drew on the behavior of designers, often referring to "them", but emphasized numerous times that "but it isn't about designers. Anyone can learn to think and act this way."  Unfortunately for the Institute of Design, a leading graduate program in design thinking where I teach, she also emphasized, "What's great is that you don't even have to go to school to learn it!"  I'd argue "business thinking" is similiar -- why go to school?  You can teach it to yourself, especially given the plethora of books written on the subjects. Obviously school gives you structure and access to the environment where you can study the topic. 

Her presentation emphasized a number of behaviors including 1. being user centered; 2. being collaborative; 3. challenging existing mental models; 4. use of abductive thinking  ("what could be"); and 5. using prototypes and experiments.  She had a funny stroy where a team was working in this design-oriented way and the manager she assigned to the project called her in a panic one day. "Claudia, you must stop this project.  These people are just jumping in and working on ideas with NO process.  You need to stop this and teach them the P&G way..."  Claudia said she decided to go along with the flow and a great new product, Mr. Clean Magic Clean Bathroom Brush, came out of it. I'll refer back to her presentation more as I reflect on the conference.

Comments

[Mark Schraad]

It is somewhat depressing that this notable spokesperson for the importance of design in business was at such a loss to not only define design thinking, but to also position designers at arms length (them.)

Of course you can learn design thinking and business at the school of hard knocks, or at the bookstore. But the compresssed time and knowledge base of a good school are well worth the effort and expense.

I often wonder about (both P&G and Target) how sestemic the design thinking of many of the business really is. Is it just good PR? Is design the new TQM/SixSigma? I certainly hope not!

[Sriram]

Mark, while I can't comment on P&G, as a current intern at Target in the Innovation group and a student at the Institute of Design, I can assure you that design thinking at Target is not just PR and it's most assuredly not the new Six Sigma (which has it's own role in this organization).

Target has a very user centered approach to design and while the adoption and rigor varies across groups, it's nonetheless present.

Having said that, my experience so far has shown that there is clear value that an ID education can provide in an environment that already embraces "design thinking".