Design Thinking Tools for SMEs: Challenges and Future Steps

Running Head: Design It 1
Design It

Design It 2
Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Identified Problem...........................................................................................................................3
Future steps......................................................................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................8

Design It 3
Introduction
Design thinking has a significant role in the companies but it has been astonishingly disappearing
from innovation due to non-effective conceptualisation of design as a creative economic activity
in the companies. However, there are number of small and medium-sized companies which have
not effective system such as intermediary design way in order to take care of design activities
(Glen, Suciu&Baughn, 2014). It is required from them to focus on other activities in order to
bring attention of people towards new design knowledge. There are many organizations that have
little appetite for risk as well as limited resources. This report will elaborate the challenges in
implementing new design and design management knowledge into the innovative activities of
SMEs. The issues will be resolved with the help of an effective design thinking tools which
would increase better knowledge regarding how to resolve the challenges by taking help of the
design thinking tools. To additional validate this insight is one of the purpose of this paper.
Identified Problem
There are so many organizations that are trying to be connected with digital era in order to stay
with the client for a long time. Many SMEs have to face the issue of adapting to rising customer
experience expectations related to the internal and external customers. It has been found that
there are only 21% of companies are taking use of an effective services of the transformative
value of digital.

Design It 4
Figure 1: A more practical approach to designing and transforming is needed
Source: (Genpact, 2017).
Design thinking tools and techniques
It has been found that the design thinking is considered as the tool which is a human-centered
approach to innovations that incorporates the emotion and empathy of the customer, the
probabilities of digital technology and analytics, and the need for the success of the business.
Design thinking has the capability to modify the experiences of the customers into an executable
prototype, and help cross-functional experiments across the organizations (Liedtka, 2015). It has
been found that the major issue with the company is to absorb external knowledge in order to
bring innovation within the operation of the company. There is a design thinking technique of
absorptive capacity (ACAP), it shows the ability of the organization to identify the value of
external information and apply it to commercial ends.