Design Thinking for Creativity - Doc

Design Thinking for Creativity 1
Design Thinking: AirBnB Case Study
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Design Thinking for Creativity 2
Part 1
Introduction
According to Tim Brown the CEO and David Kelly of IFEO which is rated as the
topmost design corporation, they refer design thinking (DT) as a procedure that is employed
by an organisation to help solve a problem. The theorist states design thinking process makes
use of a designers ‘toolkit components such as experimentation and empathy to drive at
innovative solutions (Ikem, Aponte, and Muffatto, 2015, p.832). Accordingly, design
thinking helps an individual to be in the position of utilising their decisions on the grounds of
what their upcoming clients are in need unlike depending solely upon past data. Furthermore,
Brown notes that “design thinking is a human-driven technique that comes the designer’s
original toolkit whereby they integrate customers’ needs and wants using the possible
available technology and existing requirements to realize business success.” Indeed, thinking
like a designer plays a significant role towards the manner in which a corporation fashion its
products, services strategy as well as processes. In the case of this paper, Airbnb is a good
example of an organization that has put design thinking in use, and it is currently enjoying the
innovation as the fruits of design thinking (Michlewski, 2016). As a result of the emergence
of DT as a business strategy framework has revolutionized how business practices are done in
the 21st-century era (Patrício, Gustafsson, and Fisk, 2018). For example, the fast progress
experienced on the internet, as well as the use of integrated platforms, helps Airbnb to
transform from a loss-making venture to making billions.
The most important aspect to note in this cases is that design thinking thrives on the
following principles dynamism, end-user need, action-oriented, change-culture and enterprise
creativity. Dynamism is when the organisation becomes pro-active as well as reactive to the
market modifications. End-user need means that the business is supposed to address the needs

Design Thinking for Creativity 3
of its target consumers. Change –culture is where the business can bring change regarding
culture and culture of the consumer. Lastly but not least, enterprise creativity is core to the
constant innovativeness in the development of the business, therefore for a business to
triumph in this age of design thinking it must abide by these elements. In light of this
statement, this paper looks at how design thinking helps to turn things around at Airbnb from
zero to its present successful path.
Background of Airbnb Company
Airbnb started in 2007 when its designers Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia decides that
they could rent their apartment in San Fransico to achieve their daily chores. As a result, in
order to make ends meet these designers decide to turn their roof space into a lodging space
since there was a design conference that was coming to San Francisco and the hotel space
could not accommodate all the visitors. Therefore, they come up with a simple website
comprising of pictures of their loft-turned-lodging space (Wheeler, 2017). The website
consisted of three air mattresses placed on the flow and an additional service of home-cooked
breakfast in the morning. At first, the site wins them three renters with each paying $80 after
the first week, then afterward they began receiving emails from individuals around the globe
seeking if they could get accommodation at their site for destinations such as Japan, London,
and Buenos Air to mention a few. Accordingly, clients were suggesting what they needed.
Thus, Gebbia and Chesky set off to design the offer made by their clients. Accordingly, as
these designers were striving to solve their problem of how to make ends meet, they were
also aiding other people in solving their problem too. Indeed, Airbnb story is background
information is similar to that of IKEA which are perfect examples of Design Thinking in
action.
Airbnb Tuff Moments and how it Manoeuvre

Design Thinking for Creativity 4
However, some few years later Airbnb was almost collapsing due to running short of
resources to run the business. Similar to other start-ups companies that always struggle to
survive in the new market, Airbnb finds itself on the verge of bankruptcy. Airbnb Company
income could barely reach 200 dollars in one week, thus due to the high loses the business
was crippling the efforts of its founders. As a result of the constant loses experience by the
business, both the founders in collaboration with the creator of the business incubator Y
Combinator Paul Grham, the launched a scrutiny process in determination to the causative
agent of the consistent losses that was being recorded on weakly basis. After carrying out
research, it is found that Airbnb advertisements it was found that there as something in the
pattern at which their ads were published, and the similarity was in the pictures.
Consequently, these pictures were not having a good look since it was not fascinating to
customers.
Certainly, to counter the problem of poor pictures, Chesky and Gebbia the designers
goes out to New York City to for benchmark to learn from the successful hosts. After the
New York City visit, Airbnb is able to revamp its website in accordance to the experience
gained from the host in New York whereby highly crafted pictures are included on the
website like TripAdvisor and HomeAway (Cetindamar, Phaal, and Probert, 2016, p. 7). This
is the time when the company was able to change its name from Airbedand breakfast to
Airbnb in 2010 (Bocken, Rana, and Short, 2015, p. 68). Accordingly, through Airbnb attempt
to move to New York to benchmark from the thriving hosts reveals that as an entrepreneur no
one can survive in isolation just like the class lecture three advocates the use observation of
other peoples (Zervas, Proserpio, and Byers, 2017, p. 689). Some of the great business ideas
do not necessarily come from structured ideas, but it can also come out of observation of
what the competitor is doing by refining it in the most creative way possible (Prudhomme
van Reine, 2017, p. 56). For instance Airbnb after going through the benchmark process it